to the moon & to saturn | cate blanchett

chapter 3

"Text her," repeated Dylan for the 7th time since Elle got home from work. She turned down the volume on the TV in the living area.

"Not yet!" yelled Elle from her bedroom.

She just got out of the shower and was getting dressed into her pajamas for the night.

"Why?" groaned Dylan, exasperated at Elle's defiance. "I thought you liked her? You've been talking about her nonstop since Friday."

As soon as Elle walked into the room and settled down on the couch, Dylan attacked her, both physically and verbally.

"Text the beautiful woman," chanted Dylan, poking Elle in the side multiple times.

Elle slapped Dylan's hand away.

She wanted to text Cate—she really did. More than anything. She even saved the number in her contacts, but she didn't have anything interesting to say. She was afraid Cate would find her boring and lose interest.

"I want to know why she left her number," said Elle. That was the other fact holding her back. Cate is a married woman. Why on Earth would she leave her number to some random mediocre waitress? Was this a habit of hers?

Dylan threw her hands up in the air, accompanied by a dramatic noise of aggravation.

"Either she wants you, or she's looking for a friend. You can't lose either way," said Dylan, stealing Elle's phone from her. "I'll text her if you don't."

"Give that back!" shrieked Elle, jumping off the couch to chase after Dylan, who sprinted off to her own bedroom and locked the door.

"I can lose, by the way! I can't just be friends with someone who makes me feel the way that she does! It's impossible and it would destroy me," screamed Elle through the door, rattling the doorknob to no avail.

She pounded incessantly on the door, but Dylan would not let her in.

"Dylan, please don't text her," pleaded Elle.

She placed a hand over her heart. Her heart rate was rising rapidly.

"Please," repeated Elle softly.

Dylan opened the door after a couple minutes of silence and grinned mischievously at her disheveled roommate.

She carelessly tossed the phone back to Elle.

Elle caught her phone and went to the messages app. There was no thread between her and Cate. She clutched her phone tightly in her hands and thanked Dylan.

"Thank me at your wedding," smirked Dylan, skipping back to the couch to continue watching Friends.

"Lay off that wedding shit," groaned Elle. She popped some popcorn in the microwave and poured it into a bowl before sitting down next to Dylan.

Dylan shrugged—an indication that she had zero intentions of laying off—and took a handful of popcorn from the bowl.

The two girls sat through three episodes of Friends before Elle decided to retire to bed. It was now well past midnight and Elle was exhausted from her first shift.

Before dozing off, Elle hoped that the perfect opening text to Cate would come to her in a dream.

☆ ☆ ☆

Elle slept in the next day until 10:00 am, which is as late as she would ever allow herself to get up and out of bed. She was most productive in the morning hours so she enjoyed getting up early, but her waitressing hours were nighttime only, so her sleeping schedule shifted slightly.

Unfortunately, she had a dreamless sleep and was no closer to knowing what to text Cate.

She immediately reached for her phone on her nightstand. When her vision adjusted to the harsh blue light, she bolted upright and angrily stomped into the kitchen.

Dylan was in the middle of making a huge waffle feast for breakfast, which was Elle's favorite food.

Elle thrust her phone in Dylan's direction.

"I thought you didn't text her!" Elle screeched.

Dylan avoided the interrogation. "Boy, don't these waffles smell delicious? The first one will be done in just a minute!"

Elle momentarily lost her train of thought; the waffles really did smell and look incredible.

"Nope," said Elle firmly, "You don't get to distract me with breakfast food."

She paced around the kitchen until finally coming to a stop, leaning on the counter on her elbows with her phone in her hand.

She stared at the message from Cate, sent to her at 3:05am:

"That's not quite the text I was expecting. I was hoping for your name, but I apologize. It appears we have now both made each other feel uncomfortable in the short time we've been acquainted."

When Elle read the message out loud to Dylan, her roommate smiled wide and cheered.

"You two are going to be together forever," said Dylan, who seemed to be lost in a romantic fantasy. There was a twinkle in her eye.

Elle panicked. She was frustrated that Dylan's reaction didn't match up with the actual message at all.

"Did you even hear me correctly? She said I made her uncomfortable! And whatever you said to her clearly made her believe I was uncomfortable as well. This is a dead end."

Dylan flipped a waffle onto a plate, handed it to Elle, then replied, "I heard you, Elle. Loud and clear."

Elle ate her waffle in a silent but delicious contemplation. What was Cate doing awake at 3am?

"Can you at least tell me what you texted her?"

To Elle's surprise, Dylan offered that information to her immediately and without hesitation.

"I asked her why she left her number."

Dylan's waffle was cooked now, so she poured syrup over it and started to dig in.

"I hope you were more polite than that."

"Nope."

Elle whined, "Now she's going to think I don't like her."

"Oh no, if only there was something you could do about that," said Dylan, her voice dripping with sarcasm like the syrup from her waffle.

Dylan tapped Elle's phone screen. "Text her back and make sure she knows that you do like her."

A/N:
Thank you for reading <3 I'm very excited for this story!