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The phone vibrates in my hand and a message lights up the screen.
It buzzes again.
And a second later, two more texts.
His cell keeps blowing up. A steady stream of messages and emojis and snaps and—oh my God… a closeup of some girl’s boobs!
I drop the phone on my desk, suddenly feeling really dirty.
Ninety percent of the stuff on there probablyisdirty, and I want nothing to do with any of it.
I pick the phone back up between the thumb and index finger of my left hand—because at this point, I haven’t entirely discounted the possibility of catching an STD just from coming into contact with his phone—and I turn the volume to mute with the index finger of my other hand. Then I place it face down on my desk.
I stay awake, reading, for the next three hours because I don’t want to be asleep when he shows up at my window again looking for his phone.
He doesn’t come, though. Which seems weird, because I can’t imagine he hasn’t noticed it’s missing, given how often it seems to ping and buzz and consistently remind him how in demand and revered he is. I would think its absence would be glaring.
I eventually fall into bed feeling ten times more exhausted than I did before Jock Boy’s epic booty call screw-up. But here’s the thing: my encounter with Sebastian Murdoch tonight put a bit of a positive spin on my mindset about this whole job hunt. Because he reminded me these are not rocket scientists I am up against. If Sebastian, who can’t even get the right address for a casual hookup, managed to climb to the top of the high school popularity chain in three weeks, then surely I can handle an after-school job and the basic social interactions that entails… right?
Chapter Four
Seb
“What’sthedealwithyou not answering your phone?” Scarlett’s standing in my doorway with one hand on her hip, looking way more pissed than she sounds. But then, “pissed” is Scarlett Thiels’ default look. I’ve known Scarr since we were kids and she’s one of my closest friends, but she’s also the frostiest girl I’ve ever met. Not to me. Okay, sometimes to me. But at least I know another side of her; the reason behind the cold front.
“Lost my phone,” I shrug.
She lets out a dramatic sigh, shaking her head at me like I’m a wayward golden retriever who just peed on her prized rose bushes. “You lose everything.”
“Not my good looks and charm.” I wink. “They’re here to stay, baby.”
She rolls her eyes and reaches past my chest to grab my flannel shirt from one of the hooks along the mud room wall. No idea why it’s called a mud room; there is no mud anywhere within a ten-mile vicinity of our nine thousand square-foot house. We literally live on a rocky cliff.
She tosses the jacket at me. “Put it on, dork. We’re going for a drive.”
Scarlett Thiels is the only person who has ever called me a dork. Probably one of the reasons I’ve stayed friends with her over the years. Even though she gets more and more bitter with age. Kinda like a good wine.
Or is that bad wine?
Whatever.
I shrug into the jacket as I push the door open.
“Going for a drive!” I call over my shoulder, covering all my bases so my folks can’t say I didn’t tell them I was heading out. Last thing I need is another excuse for them to lay into me. Let’s just say the atmosphere in the Murdoch household has been a little tense since the show-down yesterday with Mrs. T. and the four-day suspension handout that, to be fair, was totally deserved. Once I remembered what the hell I was even being hauled in for, that is.
Fucking blackouts.
You’d think I’d be used to them by now: the way my brain trips me up lately and suddenly shoots me into a black hole. But it’s still scary as hell. I’m left stumbling through my memories like an idiot, grasping at whatever random bits of information I can piece together to help me fill in the empty gaps. And for however long it lasts, I feel like a stranger ghosting my own body. I have no idea when it’s going to happen, either. Hell, sometimes I don’t even realize until later that itdidhappen. I remembered yesterday, though. But not until twenty minutes into the meeting with Graham and Mrs. T. Long enough that I’d already uttered a pile of inappropriate and probably weird responses to their tag-team berating to leave any chance of getting off scot free this time around.
I thought at first the blackouts and stuff were just a concussion, because it feels sort of like that. God knows I’ve had enough to know what those feel like. Only this shit started almost three months ago.
A concussion doesn’t last for months. Not with the intense symptoms I’ve been experiencing, at least.
“Seb! Whoa!” Graham’s voice calls from somewhere down the hall. “We said you had to do homework before you can—”
“Have fun at the concert!” I call, pulling Scarr against me in order to speed up our exit, then I slam the door firmly behind us.
My folks are heading out to a jazz concert or something in half an hour. They didn’t want to leave me home alone tonight, in keeping with their vow to go all strict on my ass and “crack down” on monitoring my schoolwork. But they bought the tickets five months ago and reserved a special room at a fancy restaurant with three other couples beforehand. So, culture over discipline in this case, I guess.
