Emergency Contact(29)

He told it to her.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Got it,” he said.

“Okay.”

Penny reached over and slammed the door. “Text me when you get home?”

“Yes, Mom, I’ll text you when I get home.”

She scowled then, which made him smile.

“Sorry. I promise I will. I’ll get some food and go straight home and into bed. And I will call you because you are now my official emergency contact.” Sam turned to go.

“Wait!” shouted Penny again through the window. He turned around.

“Isn’t the whole concept of an emergency contact that you’re too dead to call them?”

Sam laughed. She had a point.

“Don’t forget!” she called out before driving away. He pulled out his phone.

The text read:

This is penny


He smiled, trudged up the stairs, and immediately fell asleep in his clothes for the next ten hours.

? ? ?

When Sam woke up he had a pounding headache. He stuck his head under the bathroom faucet and chugged until he thought he was going to be sick. He checked his phone. Almost two a.m.

No calls from Lorraine. Or texts. In fact, the last thing he got was “This is penny.”

Crap. Penny. Penny who he’d promised to hit up ten hours ago. He felt awful.

Still, it was way too late to text someone. Or was it? From what little he knew of her, she seemed the type to wait up. He was embarrassed about his panic experience—he remained reluctant to label it a full-on attack—but it was way worse to make her worry.

Ugh. Why was he so worthless?

He saved her number as “Penny Emergency” and texted her one word: Home


Penny’s text bubble popped up immediately with the little ellipses. Then it disappeared. Then it popped up again. Only to be deleted again.

Finally, she wrote back:

ok


Sam wondered if she was angry with him.

He texted her again:

I’m sorry. Fell asleep She texted:

Sleep’s the best. HUGE FAN.

Hard to do it when your emergency contact’s dead so . . .


Shit. She was pissed. Still, he smiled. Was he her emergency contact too? Maybe nobody knew how emergency contacts worked.

Sry

Srsly

TY!

I’m a dick

ugh

Good night

Night He sent her the frowning emoji. The extremely contrite one with no eyebrows.

It wasn’t his style, but the moment required it.





PENNY.


Penny was in the shower when Sam texted again.

GOOD MORNING


Just like that.

All caps. No exclamation.

It sounded so sunny, so smiley. In fact, the text bubble seemed happy to see her. So much so that she went back to the conversation to make sure it was actually Sam from yesterday. She’d saved his number as “Sam House.” The jerk. She couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep before he’d texted her. It was irresponsible and inconsiderate. She didn’t want to sound fussy and overbearing, but a text wasn’t asking too much.

As if the text bubble could read her mind, it spoke again.

IT’S UR EMERGENCY CONTACT

I REALLY AM SRY S2G


And then:

I’LL STOP YELLING NOW

FML

I feel HORRIBLE

Hope u didn’t lose 2 much sleep bc of me I won’t ask u 2 forgive me but hope u will Wow.

It was fascinating. The dispatch made her heart do a crazy dance. Not even a cute dance. More an erratic flailing, like those windsock things you see at car dealerships. She thought about his hot armpit again. And his cowlick. And the tattoos she didn’t entirely understand. It usually irked her when people wrote “u” instead of “you” and “2” instead of “to”—especially “too”—but telling people things like that was probably why she only got texts from her mom. And Mark. Crap, Mark. She had to call him.

Penny attempted to respond, hey. Her hands were covered in lotion and her stupid phone wouldn’t register her fingers as humanoid and that’s when Sam texted again . . .

Did I wake u?


And then:

I hope I didn’t wake u O NO DID ME NOT WANTING

2 WAKE U RN WAKE U RN?!!


She closed her eyes and held her phone to her heart like a big dumb girl in a movie.

Then she wiped her hands on her towel and wrote back.

Please stop yelling He texted back:

((hi)) <- denoting indoor voice of normal vol Penny smiled. She typed:

I hope you feel better And then:

You didn’t wake me Penny padded quietly back into her room and got dressed. Her phone lit up again.

Did you get any sleep?

I can’t believe I did that to you Penny smiled. Then she bit her lower lip. She noticed him noticing the “to/you” thing. Shit. He was so great. Penny thought of pregnant Lola. And then about her roommate’s Ironclad Friendship Ask. Jude was dead asleep in her bed a few feet away. Her eyelid twitched, detecting a disturbance in the force. Penny knew Jude would bug if she discovered Sam was in this much trouble, but these weren’t her secrets to tell.

Penny texted him:

Yes

Good

Have a good day