Page 102 of Talk to Me

“I’m very fucking tired of acting like I don’t want to be with you every minute of every day,” Theo said. “This last month has sucked.”

I laughed.

“Can you forgive me?” Theo asked. “For being a piece of shit for the last month?”

Waffling playfully, I sat back on the bed, pretending I wasn’t certain of my answer. Theo shook his head and smiled at me.

“I mean,” I said, “it might require some free coffees, but I think I might eventually be able to get past this.”

Theo chuckled.

“Listen,” he said, “I just want—”

Before he could finish his thought, the dorm door swung open and Collin dashed inside. Theo and I both whipped our heads around to look at him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Collin, not answering, dashed across the room, grabbed things off of his desk in a rush, and dashed back out of the room. Theo gave me an amused, yet confused look. I shrugged.

“He’s a weird guy,” I said.

With a laugh, Theo stood from the desk chair and shuffled over to stand in front of me cautiously. Looking down, he put a finger under my chin and tilted my head back to look up at him.

“So,” he said, “you kind of might love me back?”

Nodding up at him, I said, “It’s possible.”

“And we’re going to let people talk and say whatever they want,” he said, “because we’re happier finding out where this love goes.”

“Yes.”

Theo, filled with glee, slumped down to sit on the bed next to me, took my face in his hands and planted the biggest kiss on me. Surprised by his sudden movements, I jerked, but managed to rescue the moment and wrapped my arms around him as we continued the kiss. Unsure of how much time passed as the two of us held each other, our hands roaming each other’s bodies, and our lips and tongues exploring each other, I finally pulled way.

“What do you say,” I said, slightly out of breath, “we make it a night in? Since we have classes tomorrow and everything? We can order pizza? Watch a movie. Snuggle and get a decent night’s sleep for once?”

Theo grinned.

“What we do best,” he said, then stole another quick kiss.

Waking in the middle of the night to the white-blue glow put off by a phone screen, it took me a moment to figure out that I was still in my bed in my dorm. A quick glance at the clock on the microwave on top of the dorm fridge told me it was after two o’clock in the morning. We’d been asleep for nearly four hours. Theo was lying in the bed next to me, on the side of the bed by the wall. He was propped up in bed, his phone out, staring at it. Rolling over to face him in the near darkness, I cleared my throat of sleep.

“What are you doing?” I asked sleepily.

When he didn’t answer, I reached over, laying an arm across his middle and squeezed him.

“Are you a zombie?” I asked, feigning fear. “Did I wake up to an apocalypse?”

Theo chuckled nervously as he continued to stare down at his phone.

Having Theo ignore my questions a second time immediately made my gut start to twist. Him looking down at his phone in the middle of the night in a stupor could mean a variety of things. However, after the year we’d had at Midway, I assumed it meant one thing in particular. Something had happened on Peepers again. Ben had posted another video or the tide had turned and Theo and I were being flamed online once again.

I slid my hand up and wrapped my fingers around Theo’s wrist in the dark. When I tugged gently on his arm, Theo seemed to come out of a trance. His eyes shifted from the screen of his phone to look down at me lying next to him.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Theo took a deep breath, then sighed.

“Do you really want to know?”