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I’m a plant. Why are you asking me for family advice?
“Valid argument.”
Everett could be asking a wide array of questions about my encounter with Harper with that question mark, so I’d do my best to head them all off. I finally settled onI did not plan that.
Naturally there was no response for two full episodes ofJudge Judy.
??, Everett replied at last.
What? I consulted Phil again; he just shook in the breeze from sucking the air out of the room and filtering it to keep me from infecting anyone else, although that wasn’t possible with anthrax.
Right. No way was I putting more analysis into this than Everett and whatever had prompted him to text.???, I responded.
You tell me. The answer was as cryptic as his previous messages until an image popped up: a screencap of our conversation. Above Everett’s first?message, there was another one, timestamped 7:09 a.m.Call me ASAP, it said. From me.
I did not send that. I—I hadn’t even had my phone until lunchtime. Even with the time difference, the math didn’t work.
Oh—oh no. The realization crept over my skin, heat and chill all at once. One person had had access to my phone and my passcode. One person who had asked me multiple times if I wanted to contact my family about my current situation.
One person who’d preached about ethics and doing every single thing the “right” way from the moment I’d met her. Who’d judged me from that very second. Who’d found me lacking in that area over and over again.
Un. Be. Lievable.
I glared at the plant. Phil trembled like he was the target of my wrath.
“Chill, little buddy.” I lay back in the bed, staring up at the television without any of the programming actually registering. The anger seething through my whole chest slowly began to solidify into a solid, burning coal.
I knew what to do.
First I would clean up this situation with Everett.I didn’t send that, I replied.Coworker took my phone.
Hope she’s cute. Everett added a dog emoji. I rolled my eyes. Only one of us could be considered a dog—and only one of us would automatically assume a coworker stealing your phone was flirty and cute.
It was neither.
Of course, Everett had to think she was stealing the phone to flirt withhim, not me, so maybe the dog emoji was supposed to refer to him.
You good?Everett asked.
Nice of him to pretend he cared, probably because he assumed Cassie was still watching.
The last time I’d faced a life-threatening illness in the hospital had proven that I could not ever trust Everett to come if I needed him. I guessed he’d decided I was too pathetic to care about, past all hope. I wasn’t about to show that kind of weakness to him again.
I was more than a little sarcastic as I typed back,No, I’m in the hospital with anthrax.
LOL, Everett replied.Good one.
I clicked the screen off. I couldn’t even be mad. The conversation was dead, like I wanted. I hadn’t intended for him to take me seriously, and our relationship was as safely superficial as ever.
But it wasn’t Everett who’d let me down this time.
I should have known. I should have known no one could possibly want to be close to me. How could I have been so stupid to hope? I had three decades of experience that told me nobody could care about me that way.
Cassie had caught the barest glimpse of the broken parts of me and she’d immediately run to do the exact thing I asked her not to—the thing that would hurt me the most.
I glanced at Phil, still shaking in the negative pressure airflow.
He was not the one who should be shaking in their splash-guarded boots.
