Love At First Text ✔️

Her

"She's picking you up from here?" Caleb asked Eden. He was sat beside her, cuddling the frame she leaned into him, and reading the messages over her shoulder. He hadn't admitted such explicitly, but she knew that he was. Eden wasn't much hiding the phone from him, and he'd fallen rather still over the past few minutes. The question itself told Eden that Caleb had familiarised himself with her plans.

"Yeah, if that's alright?" She returned.

He hummed, kissing her hair. "Of course. You're sure you want to go if that Seb is there?" He paused with thought. "Why is she inviting him, if she thinks it'll make you uncomfortable?"

"We just had a disagreement one time, but it was nothing major. We're still friends." Eden assured. She hadn't spoken much to Caleb about Sebastian. It seemed rude to discuss the man she'd spent a few spectacular dates with and cried over with the man she was currently seeing.

She assumed that she was seeing Caleb, anyway. They hadn't specified on that particular detail, but she was confident enough that she wasn't stretching to come to that conclusion. She'd spent three nights with him since Saturday, become intimately familiar with every inch of him on several occasions, and she was here, even after that, cuddling with him while they half watch the movie on TV. By now, if a man had got what he wanted from her, they saw her off and never messaged again. Caleb had been more than eager to see her again.

It had all happened with ease, something unusual with Eden. She enjoyed his company, enjoyed the sex more, but she didn't feel... much. She could leave today without missing him. She could go tomorrow without battling a desperation to text him. It was oddly casual, so different to what she was used to. By now, she was often besotted with the man she gave her attention to, but with Caleb, she was very aware of the absence of infatuation.

It was no secret as to why. Of course, she had been furiously upset with Zoya for outing her in such a cruel way in front of their friends, but everything she had said was right. Eden was using Caleb as a rebound. Someone to occupy her time so she had nothing spare to think about a certain someone else. That was why she had rushed into sex and constant contact. Really, she was doing everything within her power to maintain it until the switch flipped, and her minor unhealthy obsession changed course from one person to the other. She was waiting impatiently for it to happen - it needed to, and soon. Caleb really liked her, he was offering her everything she desired. That was what she had always wanted.

Liar, she thought. What you want, is Sebastian.

And she did. Even still, after everything. It scared her, truthfully, how after he let her down, promised her nothing more than friendship, she still thought of him. Continued to crave his attention, his touch, his smile and laughter. She hasn't lied when she told him that he made it so difficult to dislike him. God - she had almost kissed him when they sat on that curb together. She'd looked at his mouth, and had been but a second from first reaching out to touch it with her fingers, then her lips. She'd thought, for an equal stretch of time, that he looked at her like he wanted to do the same thing.

How she wished she could do this - the casual, emotionless sex and companionship with Sebastian instead. It would at least feed some of her cravings, even if she couldn't have it all. She wanted to know him, for more than what he offered her. She wanted to learn exactly where his body was covered in tattoos, and the lay of his muscles, and the shade of his skin. Her fingers itched to run over the warm expanse of his stomach, her lips tingled with the ghost of what it might feel like to press them to his chest. She wanted so much more, even though he wouldn't give it to her, because he didn't want to hurt her. Sensible really, because that is exactly what would happen.

How much she hated that he was so considerate. She'd never wished more to be used, despite it being what she actively avoided. He'd ruined all sense of Eden's logic, that was for sure.