The One After [SHAWN MENDES]

Chapter 64

Jealousy is a bitch.

I know that I have no right to be put out by the fact that Shawn is fucking someone, but it's been like a thorn in my foot for the last four days. Yeah, I had issues with Camila, so this feeling isn't new, but I took some comfort in the fact that he'd truly loved her. It made his remaining feelings for her understandable. The woman he was going to shower with was an unknown, which was more bothersome.

Shit. I was doing it again. I was thinking as if what happened during my coma was real. Why the fuck did it feel so vivid that my brain was comparing that life to my current one? I needed to stop.

Scratch all of the above. Let's focus on shower-girl. Is it a good or bad thing that she's not Camila? I'm not sure.

It felt like he was flirting with me before she showed up. Was that real or my brain carrying over a warped perception from my dream? I'm like Peeta from The Hunger Games series who struggled with telling what was real from not real. It fucked him up permanently, and I don't want that happening to me. So no...Shawn was not flirting. He was being kind because he was concerned about me and nothing more. What type of guy flirted with one girl while the other was waiting in the wings for sex? Certainly not Canada's heroic life-saving pop star, Shawn Mendes.

Oops, I did it again (thanks Britney). Maybe the real Shawn Mendes is that type. I don't know him, so I can't make assumptions about what he would or wouldn't do.

Here's what I know to be the truth:

1. He's a good enough guy to feel bad about implying I was a prostitute
2. He didn't think twice before diving into a lake a save my life and now feels a connection to me because of it
3. He's generous
4. He likes to talk on the phone
5. He cares about how people perceive him
6. He has a hold on me that he would never understand in a million years

I closed up my journal and checked my phone. Bethany texted that she'd be a little late because she was at her boyfriend's. I sent her a reply that she didn't need to come at all since I'd been fine every night. A few minutes later, she sent another message saying that she might stay over at her guy's apartment and asked if I could keep that to myself. She'd graduated college but still lived at home, so I understood how precious spending the night with him was. I told her that her secret was safe with me.

After deflating the air mattress, I folded it up and put it in my closet, relieved that finally my nights would be back to semi-normal. In a little over a week, I could start work again, and I was positive that returning to my old routine was what I needed more than anything.

I curled up on my couch and started a playlist made up of my favorite songs, including some that went back to when I was a kid. My mom had been a music lover and she introduced me to all of her favorite genres, so this mix featured songs from six different decades and close to a hundred artists. I couldn't look at my phone, so I'd opened the shades in my living room and was gazing out the window.

A summer storm was brewing and the early evening sky was an ominous shade of purple. A sudden flash of bright white light caused Inky to leap off her perch and crawl under the couch in fear. The electric storm got even stronger as time passed, so I walked over to the window and snapped multiple pics, hoping to get an artsy shot of lightning. None of them caught the right moment, so I took a video instead. When I reviewed it, I was able to pause and take a screen shot of a classic jagged strike.

"What the hell," I muttered to myself. "Maybe it's time to be more active on social media."

I posted the photo and captioned it, 'Relaxing at home and enjoying this storm.' Maybe it wasn't a blizzard, but when I'd posted something similar in my dream, it had a wonderful result.