Page 86 of Stud

So instead of professing my love to Owen, I worked on my website and drank and hiked and talked and laughed with the girls, beyond thankful to have them in my life.

Until Monday arrived and my ever-vigilant, supposed best friends still wouldn’t give me my phone. I glowered at them. “You said five days. It’s been five days.”

Taller than me, Gwen held my phone in the air. “Now it’s just fun. We have bets on when you’ll start pulling out your hair.”

I was about to launch myself at her, when my cell buzzed. We all froze. Then I lunged, but she used her CrossFit muscles to hold me at arm’s length. She and Rachel crowded over my phone, the one not in my hands. They sighed in unison.

“He’s such a dreamboat,” Rachel said.

“Is it Owen?”

She grinned. “Yeah.”

I reached for the tiny cellphone that housed my heart. “Give it here.”

“Back off, buttercup. You still have two hours.” Gwen held it at distance, the screen facing me. “But you can read it.”

“This must be how Cinderella felt about her awful stepsisters.” My irritable tone slipped into a whisper as I read Owen’s text:

I can’t live without you.

My pulse pitter-pattered, tears gathering in my eyes as I clutched my throat. More bubbles appeared below, but Gwen pulled my lifeline away before I could glimpse his next message. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Instead of continuing to humor them, I attacked. I pounced on Gwen, tickling her armpits until my phone flew into the air. My dive to capture it ended with me face-first on the plush couch. “Victory!” I crowed. Then I ran.

I locked myself in the bathroom, cradling my one tether to the man I loved as though it were Waterford crystal. I devoured his words greedily.

I plan to melt my glass into one sheet and break it in two. Half for you. Half for me.

If there was any remaining doubt he was devoted to me, it vanished. I was his matching piece of glass, and he was mine.

I pulled the silver chain from around my neck, a delicate strand with his blue shard hanging from the end. The top of the glass was encased in wisps of wound silver wire. I’d found the glass in my pocket the day I’d driven here. Had kept it close, hoping it could help me see the light. The day he’d texted, I’d evaded Rachel and had descended on a jeweler in town, begging for a rush job.

Unable to contain the swelling of my emotions any longer, I wrote: I’m so sorry.

Me too.

I love you.

What the fuck?

I shouldn’t have written it in a text. Those words were meant to inspire enraptured kissing and voracious sex. Wild, voracious make-up sex. And I sent them in a stupid text. There were no bouncing balls to hint at a reply. I couldn’t see his face or read his body language. No wonder the girls had kept my phone from me. Total self-sabotage.

When the dots showed, I pressed my fist to my mouth.

I had to read that ten times. My heart’s about to burst through my chest.

Mine was pumping as hard. Have we made up then?

Doesn’t count until I’ve seen you naked.

Sign me up for that extracurricular activity. See you at 12.

Vibrating as fast as Blue Bunny, I unlocked the bathroom door to find my friends squished in the same chair. They were facing Rachel’s computer and my yet-to-be-live website.

“Who gave you permission to creep my work?”

Rachel waved an impatient hand at me. “Shush. We’re reading.”