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“What?”
“You just said I’d never guess who messaged you.”
“Oh, right.” It took a moment for her to accept the change of topic, staring at her phone in her hands. Finally, she sucked in a breath, accepted my olive branch, and swiped it on. “Here.” She passed it to me. “Read that.”
I skimmed the text.
Honey: Heyyyy! So...first thing you should know about me is I suck at messaging. Second thing you should know about me is...I meant what I said when we met in that bar. (Remember? The night you dumped what’s his face?) I immediately liked you. I’ve claimed you as my Port Douglas bestie. I’m so sorry for not messaging sooner, bestie, but...guess what? I told my brother about your idea of him building something on the bottom of the sea (if he wants to find that elusive utopia he’s searching for), and he thinks it’s a crazy idea. Crazy not possible. Crazy stupid. Crazy let’s try! I gave him your number. He’ll probably get in touch. He’ll probably say he’s fallen in love with you within a day ’cause that’s what he’s like. But don’t worry, you can’t sleep with this one because he doesn’t like tacos. *Snicker.
My gaze shot to Neri’s. “I have no idea what any of that means. Or why you’re showing it to me.” My heart smoked with leftover jealousy, remembering her with Joel and all the nights I’d had to endure with him over here, sharing dinners and movies and kissing her right in fucking front of me.
“Shit, sorry...scroll down.” She tried to grab it. “Wrong message.”
“Hang on.” I kept her phone out of her reach. “Do I have any reason to be concerned about this brother of hers? Why can’t you sleep with him just because he doesn’t like Mexican food?”
Her lips curled and the first genuine laugh I’d heard in a while tumbled from her mouth. “Taco is slang for pussy.” Her cheeks pinked. “She means her brother is gay. I’m surprised she didn’t send a sausage emoji.” Her eyelashes came down. “Besides, I’m with you, Aslan. I married you. I’m never going to be with anyone else for as long as I live.”
Her words tried to ease the pinch in my chest, but I didn’t let them. Neri kept pretending things were okay, but they weren’t. They were so far from okay that I was starting to lose control.
Leaning closer, she tapped the screen and scrolled to the message below that one. I read it, even though my pulse fluttered with warning from her standing so close.
Honey: Also...don’t freak out, but I had the strangest feeling that I should message you today. I know you were super sad at messing stuff up with your other bestie, and if she didn’t forgive you (her loss, by the way. Huge loss. HUGE!), then I’m offering myself up as tribute. Don’t know why I had the urge to message you so strongly. Here I am, waiting in line at the store (buying another box of huge-ass condoms for my huge-ass boyfriend who is against all big pharma and doesn’t want me on the pill, even though condoms suck), and I had the strangest feeling that you might need a friend. So, friend...let’s talk. I’m here. I’m a vault. And if I’m totally scaring you right now, no biggie. I scare a lot of people. So just flow with it and message me anyway!
With a slightly shaking hand, I passed the phone back to Neri. “She sounds...chaotic. Chaotic but nice.”
Neri cradled her phone as if it’d suddenly become immensely precious. “I met her the night you kissed me for the first time. I felt an instant connection with her. I gave her my number but forgot to get hers. I’ve looked for her on Facebook but didn’t have any luck.” She sighed, revealing the young girl I’d known since she was flat chested with her head in dolphin-shaped clouds. “I’ve missed having a girlfriend. I...I can’t tell you how glad I am that she messaged. I can’t wait to tell her all about us and—”
“You can’t tell her about us, Nerida. No one can know.”
“Of course, they can know. You’re not invisible. It’s not like you don’t exist.”
“For me to exist I have to be invisible, remember?”
“Oh, I remember all too well. Each time I think about suggesting we do something, I remember. Each time I think we should go see a movie or perhaps go do something we’d never normally do like horse riding or kayaking or literally anything, I remember that you can’t. You can’t get into most places without ID and we can’t do any activities where you might get hurt because you can’t get medical treatment. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, if you get caught, you die. So yeah, I remember, Aslan. Believe me.”
My temper blackened. “I’m so sorry to be such an inconvenience to you.”
She reared back, hurt flaring in her pretty blue eyes. “Why are you being like this?”
I opened my mouth. I tried to explain the anxiety I was feeling. The awful pressure that we were out of balance, and if we didn’t fix it soon, something bad was going to happen. “It’s nothing,” I snapped, unable to be mad at her after everything she’d endured. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I worry, Aslan. I worry all the time.”
“Like I would know.”
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you broke your promise.”
“What promise?”
“What promise?” I laughed blackly. “You know what promise.”
“All I know is...I came in here wanting to share the awesomeness of having a new friend. Honey seems special. She even feels the same nudges as I do.”
“Certainly seems like it.” I raked a hand through my hair, struggling to cool my anger, but failing. Dropping my arm, my chin tipped up and I clipped, “I wonder why she sensed you needed a friend, huh? Could it be because you’re hiding stuff? Could it be that you’re bottling up how you’re truly feeling and it’s starting to spill out into whatever emotional plane we all exist on? Because I have the same nudges, Neri. Nudges that tell me you aren’t being honest with me. You’re not talking to me. You’re letting what happened overshadow everything you do, and you promised me, fucking promised me, that you would talk to me. That you would let me try to help you, but instead, you think you can lie to my face all while I see how you aren’t sleeping, barely eating, and constantly looking over your shoulder. You’re worse now than the day it fucking happened, and I can’t take much more. I can’t last much longer if you don’t let me help—”
“You do help me.” Her eyes glistened with sudden tears. “You help me so much.”
