Page 49 of Last Night Was Fun

I’m here?

Her heart beat like a frantic drum. Her hands had begun to sweat. But she calmed when she saw his dots immediately appear.

Me too?

Her head popped up to look around. Aside from her and Gabe, she only saw a family with a toddler playing on the lawn and the sweaty jogger having stopped to stretch.

Where?

By the lily pond. Right in front of the building.

Emmy stood and did a full three-sixty turn to look for him. The fantasy palette of twilight sky, stucco, lawn, and rainbow of flowersblurred by. But she didn’t see anyone new. It was on her second rotation that she noticed Gabe standing too, phone in one hand, flowers in the other, and an expression of stupefied shock on his face.

“What?” she asked.

He silently blinked at her, looked down at his phone, and then looked back up at her.

The realization hit Emmy with the force of an atomic bomb. In a blink, the world as she knew it ceased to exist.

Chapter10

“It’syou?!” Emmy screeched in disbelief.

“It’sYOU?!” Gabe echoed, always having to one-up her.

She suddenly couldn’t breathe. She might never find oxygen again. The earth was crumbling to bits beneath her. Up was down. Inside was out.Gabe freaking Olson was Axe Murderer.

“No,” she said out loud. “No, no, no. This is not possible. It can’t be you!”

“It can’t beyou!” he cried.

Birds took flight from a nearby tree at the shrill sound of their voices. The family playing with their toddler scooped him up and moved farther down the lawn.

Emmy couldn’t even feel her feet on the ground. Reality was shredding to pieces before her eyes. She went full Sally Field inMrs.Doubtfireon him. “The whole time?The whole time?!THE WHOLE TIME?!”

She wanted to sink into the earth. She wanted to drown in the lily pond. She wanted to break into the Air & Space Museum and launch herself to Mars on one of the old rockets.

“You’reBird Girl?” Gabe said, and gaped at her as if he was still collecting the pieces and needed her to confirm.

Emmy didn’t know how to respond other than to hold up her phone. “You’reAxe Murderer?!”

They showed each other the other half of their shared conversation, and sure enough. Every box on her screen that was blue was gray on his, and the other way around.

“No!” Emmy screeched again. She stamped her foot and balled her fist. She felt shocked and betrayed—by who or what, she couldn’t say—but most of all, she felthumiliatedGabe Olson had been on the other end the whole time. All the things she’d told him. All the jokes, the secrets—the vulnerability she’d never shared with anyone else.

“No!” she snapped once more. Then she stepped toward him and shoved a finger in his face. “I swear, Olson, if this is some kind of sick joke.”

He held up his hands and stepped back. “Emmy, IswearI didn’t know. I hadno ideait was you.”

She shook with nerves, nausea, utter terror over it all. “This is impossible. What is even happening right now? I think I’m going to throw up.” She gripped her face in her hands and took a deep breath.

“Here, how about we sit down?” Gabe said, and gently reached for her.

“Don’t!” she snapped.

He recoiled in fright.

“Sorry. I’m just— This is... I can’t—”