Tessa looks away from me, but that’s okay. It will take some time for her to get used to hearing these things from me, but she will get used to it. I’ve made a vow to tell her how I feel and to stop being selfish and expecting her to decipher my every word and intention.
The vibration of her cell phone breaks the stillness, and she pulls it from the pocket of her oversize sweatshirt. I force myself to pretend that she bought the WCU sweatshirt and that she’s not wearing Landon’s clothing. I have been subjected to wearing every embroidered piece of WCU merchandise known to man, but I hate the idea of his clothes touching her skin. It’s irrational and fucking stupid, but I can’t stop the thoughts from entering and taking root in my mind.
She swipes her thumb across the screen, and it takes a moment for me to realize what I’m seeing.
I snatch the phone from her hands before she can stop me. “An iPhone? You’re shitting me!” I stare down at the new phone in my hands. “This is yours?”
“Yeah.” Her cheeks flush, and she reaches for the phone, but I stretch my arms above my head, out of her reach.
“Oh, so now you get an iPhone, but when I wanted you to, you absolutely refused!” I tease. Her eyes are wide, and she takes a nervous breath. “Why the change of heart?” I smile at her, easing her discomfort.
“I don’t know. It was time, I guess.” She shrugs her shoulders, still nervous.
I don’t like how she looks unsettled, but I’m hoping that a little playfulness is all that’s needed. “What’s the pass code?” I ask while hitting the numbers that I’m guessing she’ll have used.
Ha—got it on the first try, and I’m welcomed in by her home screen.
“Hardin!” she squeals, attempting to grab the phone from me. “You can’t just go through my phone!” She leans across and grabs my bare arm with one hand and reaches for the phone with the other.
“Yes, I can.” I laugh. The simplest touch from her has me buzzing; every cell beneath my skin is alive from her skin on mine.
She smiles and holds out a demanding little hand to match that sweet little grin that I’ve missed so much. “All right. Give me yours, then.”
“Nope, sorry.” I continue to tease her while obsessively scrolling through her text messages.
“Give me the phone!” she whines and moves closer to me, but then her smile disappears. “There are probably a lot of things on your phone that I don’t want to see.” And like that, I can feel her guard sliding back into place.
“No, there isn’t. There are over a thousand pictures of you and an entire album of your bullshit music, and if you really want to see how pathetic I am, you could check the call logs and see how many times I’ve called your old number just to hear that robotic bitch voice tell me that your number is no longer in service.”
She glares at me, obviously not believing me. Not that I blame her. Her eyes soften but only momentarily before she says, “None of Janine?” Her voice is so low that I barely catch the accusation.
“What? No! Go on, look at it. It’s on the dresser.”
“I’d rather not.”
I lean up onto my knees and press my shoulder into hers. “Tessa, she’s nothing to me. Never will be.”
Tessa’s trying hard not to care. She’s fighting within herself to show me that she has moved on from me, but I know her better than that. I know that she’s stewing over the idea of me with another woman.
“I need to go.” She stands to leave, and I reach for her. My fingers gently grab her arm, softly asking for her to come back to me. She hesitates at first, and I don’t force her. I wait for her, my fingers rubbing small circles into the soft skin above her wrist.
“I know what you think happened, but you’re wrong,” I try to convince her.
“No, I know what I saw. I saw her in your shirt,” she snaps. She pulls her hand away from me but stands closer.
“I was out of my mind, Tessa, but I didn’t fuck her.” I wouldn’t have. Having her touch me was bad enough. For a moment I wonder if I should tell Tessa the way I couldn’t stand Janine’s cigarette-flavored lips on mine, but that seems like it would only set her off.
“Sure.” She rolls her eyes defiantly.
“I miss you and your attitude.” I try to lighten the mood, but she only rolls her eyes again. “I love you.”
That gains her attention, and she pushes at my chest to put some space between our bodies. “Stop doing that! You can’t just decide you want me now and expect me to come running back to you.”
I want to tell her that she’s going to come back to me because she belongs with me, that I will never stop trying to convince her of this. But instead I smile at her and shake my head. “Let’s change the subject. I just wanted you to know that I miss you, okay?”
“Okay.” She sighs. She brings her fingers to her lips and pinches them, making me forget what I was going to change the subject to.
“An iPhone.” I turn her phone in my hand again. “I can’t believe you got an iPhone and weren’t going to tell me.” I glance over and watch as her frown turns into a half smile.
“It’s not a big deal. It helps a lot with my schedule, and Landon is going to show me how to download music and movies.” Landon’s offer as we were leaving the cell-phone store seems so long ago. So much has happened in such a short time.
“I can help you.”
“It’s okay, really,” she says, trying to dismiss me.