“Get out.”
Clenching his jaw, he nodded his head, then turned and made his way out of his own house, out to his driveway to get into his car. Once inside, he stared up at his house with his family inside… and finally started the car, so he could drive away in the only thing that was still really his.
---
Willow’s phone chimed, alerting her that she had forgotten to put it on vibrate, but also that she’d finally gotten a response to the text she sent an hour earlier.
“North in.”
Frowning, she read her question, “What are you up to tomorrow?” and then his response. She waited for him to type more, fixing what she assumed must be his typo, but there was no sign he was typing. Bringing up the keypad, she looked at the letters to see what he may have meant to type back, and she came up with, “Nothing.”
“Ha! Eat my shit, Wagner.”
Willow glanced up at her boyfriend, eloquently dissing his beer pong opponent. “Hey, on a scale from one to ten, how crushed will you be if a friend of mine does that art thing with me tomorrow instead of you?”
Visibly brightening, he said, “Really?” Then, dramatically lowering his gaze and giving his wounded puppy dog pout, he said, “I mean, I was really looking forward to that… but anything you for you, babe.”
She smiled and shook her head as he winked and went back to his game, then she tapped out, “How would you like to go with me to this clay sculpting class I signed up for tomorrow? I’m signed up for two and we’ll be creating some kind of animals out of clay. Spot’s yours if you want it!”
“Is you want. What time,” he replied.
“Are you at home?” she sent back, frowning at his second typo in a row. He was typically really good about no typos.
It took a minute before he responded, “Yes.”
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she debated how to word her question. “Are you spending your evening with your whiskey bottle again?”
She imagined him smiling as he typed back, “How did you know?”
“Your typos gave you away,” she stated.
“Where are you?” he typed back, apparently more carefully that time.
Glancing up at the beer pong table again, she hesitated. “At Brian’s.”
“Ah. The boyfriend. Does he know you’re testing me?”
She assumed he meant “texting” but thought the slip might be Freudian—except she only though
t of it as testing herself, not so much him. “No. I told you, he doesn’t really know about you.” Since that seemed sneaky, she quickly added, “He knows I’m texting a friend though, so he has an idea.”
“I think we were a little more than friends,” he sent back. She began to smile and type back, but he was already typing again. “Unless you sleep with all your friends now.”
Not immediately sure how to take that one, she sent back a joke. “I do actually. Even the girls.”
“Figures.”
That one made her frown. “I was joking.” For good measure she added, “I feel like this one got lost in translation, were you also joking?”
She kept checking her phone for a response—his phone never told her when or if he read her text messages—but he didn’t reply and she couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was sniping at her.
After a few minutes, she dropped the phone in her lap and tried to refocus her attention on her friends. Her mind refused though, continuously wandering back to her phone. She continued to check it every couple of minutes to the point that she was irritating herself, but he never responded—and she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Willow stood in front of the café, wedged in the small space between the large window and the door. An older couple walking down the sidewalk approached and she stepped aside as they made their way inside.
She checked her phone again, whether to check the time or to see if Ethan had texted her, she wasn’t sure.
That morning she had texted him asking if he wanted to meet her for food before they went to the sculpture class, and he had agreed. He hadn’t been real talkative, but she wasn’t sure how much he’d been drinking either—he might have a hangover.