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“You haven’t sent him any? Not even to tell him you got home safely?”
“No, Luce. I already told you this.” At least, I thought I did. “I was waiting for him to text me to check to see if I was alive, and he never did. So a day or two afterward, I decided it was too late to say anything.”
“It might be too late to say anything about that, but you could say something else,” she reminded me.
“Like what?” All of my ideas sounded so stupid. I felt like an eighth grader trying to ask someone to be my boyfriend or some shit.
“You ordered fish, right?” I nodded. More or less. “Okay, send him a picture of your food when it gets here and say something like, ‘Not nearly as good as the fish we had at’ wherever-the-fuck he took you. Simple enough.”
I stared at her for a moment trying to comprehend what it was she wanted me to do and why. “I don’t know the name of the restaurant we went to.”
“Then say, ‘that place you took me,’” she suggested.
“But what if he thinks I’m just sending him a lame-ass text to get his attention?” I countered.
“You are,” Lucy reminded me.
“So what if he doesn’t answer?” The thought of me sitting up all night praying for my phone to ding with a message made my stomach twist into knots.
Lucy shrugged again like none of this was of any consequence whatsoever. “Then he really is a fucking jerk, and you don’t need him.”
“He could send me a pity text. Then I won’t know what to do.” The possibilities continued to go round and round in my head, like they had been ever since I said goodbye at the dock.
“If he does, I will help you reevaluate the situation,” Lucy offered. She finished her drink, but right when the straw began to make that annoying slurping noise, Steve showed up with another. He was a great waiter, that Steve.
All through dinner, I continued to lament whether or not I should just bite the bullet and send Beau a text. I did take the picture of my food with a few bites out of it so he would know I’d tasted it, but it sat on my phone, staring at me, as if it, too, were confused about its purpose for existing.
“Just do it already!” Lucy urged when we were done eating and waiting for the check.
“I can’t. I’m a failure, Lucy! A total failure.” I shook my head and shoved my phone in my purse, aware that I was being a big baby, but at that point, I didn’t care.
“Do you want me to do it for you?” I could see the mischievous glint in her eye and knew immediately what my answer to that offer had to be.
“Fuck no,” I told her. “You’d find a way to send him a nude picture of me even though I’ve never taken one.”
She laughed maniacally. “Yeah, probably so. Listen, if this guy is the richest dude in Sitka, and I already know his first name, it won’t be hard for me to find him myself. I can reach out to him and ask him why he ghosted you. Then, you’ll be sorry.”
“Do you want me to be sorry?” I asked her.
“No! I want you to do something, Georgia. For once in your life, take control, and go after what you want.” Lucy sounded exasperated, but she was right. I did need to take control and just get it done already.
But not here. “I’ll send it when I get home.”
“Do you promise?”
My mouth opened and closed a few times, probably much like the fish I’d just eaten had done right before it met its demise. “Yes. I will send you a screenshot.”
She continued to hold my gaze for a moment before Steve arrived with the check, which we promptly paid. When we stood, I gave Lucy a quick hug before we said our goodbyes, and I headed out to my car to make the drive home.
All the way back to my apartment, my mind went over the possibilities of what I should say to Beau and what he might say in response, if he even answered me at all. By the time I got home and pulled into my parking spot, I’d essentially convinced myself not to text him at all. I’d just keep waiting for him to reach out to me. Even if I had to wait forever.
When my phone began to vibrate, I assumed it was Lucy, urging me to just text him already. But it wasn’t. Picking up my phone, I saw that it was Beau calling me.
“No fucking way.”
17
BEAU
