Text Me by K. J. Reed Page B

her bedroom?
    “I wanted to tell you tonight after dinner,” he said softly.
“I planned on it. But then you brought me back here and my resistance broke.
You do that to me. And no matter what, I hope you believe me. Even if this is
the end, I hope you believe me.”
    She wanted to believe. Was desperate to believe him and move
on. But a small voice in her head that sounded annoyingly like Mary Ellen
warned her to be skeptical.
    “I think,” she said slowly, “that I need some time to
process.”
    He was still a moment then nodded sharply. “All right. I’ll
leave.” He crossed to the bedroom door and paused. “If you need anything, or
just want to talk…you know my number.” He shut the bedroom door quietly behind
him.
    A moment later she heard the front door close.
    Ariel didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She stared into
the dark until her eyelids were heavy with exhaustion. She got up, stripped the
bed of the sheets that still smelled like sex and him and remade it with fresh
ones. Then she crawled back under the covers and decided to pull a Scarlett
O’Hara.
    She’d think about it tomorrow.

Chapter Eight
     
    “Bombed, huh?”
    “Shut up,” Trav muttered as he backed away and let Pete into
his hotel room.
    He’d come home the night before and crashed, not bothering
to see if Pete was back yet. If his friend was in the middle of an all-night
sex-fest with Mary Ellen, he wasn’t in the mood to interrupt.
    Pete flopped down on the bed. “I missed the breakfast
buffet. Did you bring back anything to eat?”
    Trav waved a hand toward the desk, which held a plate with
pastries. Pete jumped up and threw himself into the desk chair, attacking the
plate with a vengeance. Trav took his place on the bed, knowing nothing short
of a mortar attack would stop Pete in the middle of stuffing his face.
    Three danishes later, Pete asked, “So
what happened?”
    “I tried to explain right after we split up. But we got sidetracked.”
    “Sidetracked being an euphemism for ‘fucking’ right?”
    Trav lifted a brow at that. “Do you even know how to spell
the word euphemism?”
    Pete rolled his eyes. “Ha. Clever. Stop stalling.”
    Trav blew out a breath. “To answer your question, yes. She kills
my resistance. I had my mind all made up, this entire speech planned out and
then bam . She takes me back to her apartment and suddenly I can’t say a
word.”
    “So you didn’t tell her?” Pete asked between bites of his
second croissant.
    “I told her…eventually.”
    “Mary Ellen said she thought Ariel would believe you. Said
combining you and this text dude she thought she’d been talking to would be
like a dream come true.”
    Trav stared at his friend. “You told Mary Ellen?”
    Pete shrugged. “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to leave the area
too soon in case you got it over fast and needed a drinking buddy. So we had to
kill time somehow.”
    “And you chose to do it by talking?”
    “She’s hung up on someone else. Nice girl, good sex. But I’m
not interested in playing someone’s second string.”
    Wise words from the man for whom all women would be second
string. “Why did she say Ariel would believe me?”
    “Ellen—sorry, Mary Ellen said Ariel’s one of those ‘believes
in the good in all’ people. So maybe she just needs a day to think and she’ll
forgive you.”
    Trav stood, too restless to relax, and
paced the small hotel room. “And what if she doesn’t? What if we leave here in
a few days and she’s still processing? What if she never talks to me again?”
    “What if?” Pete repeated. He used the last croissant to
point at him. “Fact is, we are leaving in less than a week. And you can’t
change that. You know we have to report back. And then what? We get back, sign
our re-up papers and start all over again. Her life is here. You heard her say
that, all those plans. She’s got ‘roots’ written all over her.” His point made,
he popped the pastry into his mouth.
    He was