Page 60 of This Could be Love

I furrowed my brow and sent a question mark. The reply came almost immediately.

Sorry. It’s me. Vince.??

My heart skipped a beat though it should have been upset.

I don’t answer unknown numbers.

Understandable. Second attempt???

I wavered. He wanted to call? Now? Undecided, I looked at my phone for a few seconds before sending a thumbs-up. The call came instantly, but, before answering, for some odd reason I straightened my hair.

“Hey,” I replied in a neutral tone.

“Hey. How are you feeling?”

I couldn’t lie. It was nice to hear his voice.

“Well, I’m not vomiting my chamomile tea back up. That’s progress, right?”

“Man, I really hope it wasn’t the shrimp.”

“It’s just a frigging totally normal intestinal flu,” I shot back.

Silence.

“I would’ve been in touch sooner, but I didn’t have your number, and I didn’t want to ask Laurie.”

“Butwe’re getting along much better now.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing. Who gave it to you?”

“Gabe. I hope that was okay.”

“Of course.”

Silence again.

“Umm…listen, I know it’s not the best time, but there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Oh! Wow!Thiswas the direction he wanted to take things. Just what I needed today. A guy dumping me, or tossing phrases at me like “Everything’s still cool between us, right?” I decided to beat him to it.

“It’s fine. We don’t have to make a big deal out of it. All that stuff between us was nice and all, but…”

“Nice?” he interrupted, sounding slighted.

Unbelievable. Did he need his tummy rubbed? Hear how good a kisser he was?

“Yeah,nice,” I repeated, a tad aggressively. “But don’t worry about it. I didn’t read anything into it.”

Suddenly the line went completely still. For at least five seconds. Five seconds for me to congratulate myself on my aplomb and theatrical abilities. Five seconds for me to consider whether Vince wasn’t slighted but hurt? But why…?

“Well,Iread something into it.”

I gasped and my heart began to pound.

“That’s why I wanted to ask you whether you wanted to go to beach with me on Saturday, a place you can swim with sea turtles.”