A Single Glance (Irresistible Attraction #1)(48)

I’m feeling good, how are you? I text them both the same thing. I don’t even realize it at first.

I just haven’t heard from you. Anything new? Laura writes back first.

I write a few words and delete them. Write some more and delete those too. I finally settle on, Maybe. I’ll know more when we go out this weekend.

My heart does this little pitter-patter thing and my head tells it that it’s na?ve.

The three dots at the bottom left of the screen tell me she’s writing something, but before she can finish, Jase messages.

I was hoping to see you tonight. But things came up. Tomorrow.

He doesn’t ask. He tells.

I debate on what to say, focusing on the first part and then the second. He was hoping to see me. The butterflies Emmy feels … I feel them too. They kind of scare me. Everything that’s happening scares me.

Before I can respond to him, Laura writes back.

What’s new? I can’t take the suspense. You know I thrive on instant gratification.

Shifting on the sofa, I pull the blanket up my lap, hating the draft coming from the old window and focusing on that rather than the butterflies.

I pick up my mug and take a swig of it; the decaf tea is lukewarm, but still satisfying.

I don’t know exactly what it is yet, I tell Laura. But when I do, I’ll let you know.

I press send and then realize I sent it to the wrong fucking person. The mug slams down onto the table when I realize, but thankfully my tea’s almost gone so none of it splashes out.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mutter under my breath, feeling my heart race.

Sorry, I meant that for someone else. See you tomorrow. I type out the response quickly, before Jase can respond. My heart’s a damn war drum as I copy and paste what I sent him to send to Laura.

“Fuck a duck,” I say out loud, letting my head fall back on the sofa. I am … a mess. A living, breathing mess.

Omg that’s so exciting! Tell me everything! Laura writes immediately.

You don’t know what “what” is? What is “what?” And who are you talking to? Jase writes back. Fuck, he knows. It doesn’t take a genius to know what I’m talking about.

“Shit, shit, shit,” is all I can think and say as I stare at his message.

Rubbing the stress away from my forehead, I decide they can get the same message again.

I’m heading to bed. Sorry, we’ll talk later. As soon as the text is sent, I toss the phone on the other side of the sofa and stare at it as it goes off. Again and again. Taunting me every time. And with each one, I wonder if it’s Jase, or Laura.

Fuck both of those conversations. It’s late, and I’m obviously not with it. I’m tired, but I haven’t been able to sleep. They can wait. Everything can wait.

Rubbing my eyes, and ignoring the sick feeling I have inside, I finally get up off the sofa and wonder if I should grab another cup of tea, or just pass out like I said I was going to do.

My mind won’t stop with all the questions though. So sleeping is nonexistent.

I don’t know what we are. Jase and me. I don’t know where this is going. And I don’t know how I’ll be all right if I don’t have Jase in my life. I owe him a debt, and the hours are numbered. It will come to an end. I’m fully aware of that, and it’s terrifying.

Sleep doesn’t come easy for me and with that thought in mind, I pick up the small bottle of pills from my purse. The handwriting on the back merely says, All you need is one.

I can add assault and theft to my résumé after what happened two nights ago.

Before I left Jase’s home, I swiped the bottle of sleeping pills from his medicine cabinet. I don’t know if he knows yet, or what he’ll do when he finds out, but he can add them to my tab.

This goes against everything I know; everything I’ve ever done. Both the stealing and taking the drugs. They’re only sleeping pills, I remind myself. And I desperately need sleep. Holding the pill up, I see it’s a gel capsule with liquid inside. Just like an Advil.

But everything about this week is more than morally ambiguous. And everything has changed.

The phone pings again and I check to see what they said after getting a glass of water and a single pill.

Laura wrote back a novel. Text after text demanding I give her every detail. To which I reply, I still love you! I’ll tell you all of it soon!

And Jase wrote back, Sleep well. To which I reply, You too. And feel far too much just from being able to tell him goodnight.





It’s so cold here. At first I don’t know where I am. Sleep came too easily. I remember feeling my entire body lift as if I’d become weightless, right before falling so deeply into darkness. Even now I can remember it, as if I could touch it and relive it. Although I know it’s already passed.

I fell and fell, but it didn’t feel like falling. Everything else was moving around me until I landed in this room. A small room with dirty white walls. There’s a radiator in the corner with a thick coat of paint, or maybe many coats of paint. It’s white too, like the walls. The thin wooden boards on the floor are old and they don’t like me walking across them. They tell me I don’t belong here. They tell me to go back.

But I hear the ripping.

Something is being torn behind the old chair. It’s a tufted chair, and maybe it was once expensive, but faded fabric is being torn down the back of it.