Page 69 of Josephine and Clay

Three.

Seven.

No typing bubble.

No reply.

The phone stays dark.

And I lie there in the room I grew up in, leg broken, body aching, head too full, listening to the quiet stretch wider around me while the one person I actually wanted to hear from says nothing at all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Josephine

JUNE 22ND

The first problem is that I don’t sleep, and the second is that I try to pretend I did.

By seven a.m., I’m sitting upright in my own bed, back against the headboard, the sheets twisted around my legs like evidence of something I can’t quite deny, staring at my phone like it might rearrange reality if I look at it long enough.

It doesn’t.

Clay: Been off the grid. Sorry. Had a bit of drama but all good… how about you?

The message sits there, unchanged, irritatingly calm.

A bit of drama.

I press my lips together. “Yeah, I’ve had a bit of drama also, Clay. I’m pregnant. With twins. Yours.”

Yeah, I don’t think that’s ever going to feel real.

From the other side of the room, Penny groans into the oversized armchair she claimed sometime around three a.m. “Are you talking to yourself or to me?”

“Neither, technically,” I say.

“Well, that clears up absolutely nothing.”

I glance at her. Her hair’s a mess, and one eye’s cracked open just enough to assess whether I’m actively losing my mind or only flirting with it.

“You didn’t sleep,” she says.

“I rested,” I reply.

“That’s not the same thing.” She frowns at me. “You look dreadful.”

“I’m aware.”

She pushes herself up slowly, blinking toward the light filtering through my curtains. “Have you been staring at that phone the whole time?”

“No.” A pause. “Not the whole time.”

“Josie.”

I don’t argue, which is how she knows she’s right.

The message burns in my peripheral vision.