This isn't weird.

Start With Hello

A short while later, they were all back at the table.

"You really think you can get the number?" Isaac asked, watching Indigo diligently typing on his phone.

"Got it," Indigo said. He texted the number to Ben before looking up from his screen.

"What? How?" Ben asked.

"It costs very little to do a basic background check. I just found a list of her previous residences. There's only one in Texas, and only one phone number registered to that address."

Ben ducked just in time to avoid another smack from Miguel.

"See?" Miguel scolded him. "If you had just been open with us—"

"Yeah, yeah, would have figured it out months ago," Ben grumbled.

"Bro, you've got the number!" Dustin said excitedly. "You can call her right now!"

"Right now?" Ben repeated. "It's almost midnight. And two hours later in her timezone."

"So what?" Dustin rolled his eyes. "She's gonna be too happy to hear from you to care what time it is, bro. Wake her ass up!"

"Oh my god, yes, you have to!" Miguel agreed.

"This isn't all for your entertainment, you know," Ben said pointedly.

"Come on. It's romantic," Miguel insisted. "Like you couldn't stand to go a single minute more without hearing her voice."

"Can someone please tell me when exactly I became the protagonist of a bad romance novel?" Ben asked.

"The moment you laid eyes on her?" Isaac suggested.

"Et tu, Isaac?" Ben groaned. He motioned toward Dustin and Miguel. "I expect as much from these two, but you're supposed to be the sane one."

Isaac shrugged.

"I think you should call," Indigo interjected, "before Tess has a chance to interfere."

"Shit. That's a good point." Ben looked down at his phone, his heart rate quickening. The entire day, all he'd thought about was finding a way to reach her. Now that it was actually happening, he felt like he might hyperventilate. "Fuck. Fuck. I don't know if I'm ready."

"You're ready, dude," Dustin assured him.

"What am I even going to say?"

"You could start with hello," Isaac suggested.

"Then tell her how much you miss her," Miguel chimed in.

"Perhaps an apology for waiting so long," Indigo added.

"Phone sex!" Dustin said with a grin.

Miguel smacked Dustin and Ben upside the head simultaneously. "Stop overthinking and dial the damn number!" he snapped.

"Okay, okay, just don't give me another concussion!" Ben picked up his phone, dialed the number, and took a deep breath. "I can do this. I can do this—"

Dustin's hand darted over and pushed the call button.

"You fuck—shit, it's ringing, it's ringing, oh god—"

It rang six times, and just as he began to lose hope that anyone would answer, he heard a voice.

"Hello?"

Eyes widening, Ben hung up.

"What the fuck!" Miguel exclaimed. "Why did you hang up?"

Ben sat back in his chair with a long sigh. "It was Arthur."

It was a deeply unsatisfying conclusion of the night for all. The surge and subsequent crash of adrenaline the call had given Ben left him exhausted, disappointed, and aching with a powerful need to curl up in the fetal position. He put his phone down on the table, slumped back in his chair, and closed his eyes. "Fuck," he muttered. "I forgot he was there this weekend. God, I hope they don't have caller ID."

"Sorry, Ben," Miguel said sheepishly. "We shouldn't have pressured you to call right this second."

"At least you know for sure it's the right number," said Isaac.

"He flies back on Sundays, right?" Dustin asked. "You can call again tomorrow night."

"I think so. Probably. I guess." Ben took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. "Okay, it's time for me to take off. I'm so tired I'm about to fall over. Thank you guys for... well, everything. I'm lucky to have you all as friends."

Hugs and a few more awkward apologies were exchanged, then Ben headed home in a sleepy, vaguely dissociated haze. It was a major victory to finally have the number, but anticipating the sound of her voice only to hear Arthur's instead had left him feeling numb. "Tomorrow," he reassured himself quietly, though it felt like a lifetime away.

Waiting at a red light, he heard a quiet ping from his phone. At first he ignored it—he was generally very strict about not looking at his phone behind the wheel—but for no particular reason, he fished it out of his pocket to glance at the screen.

Milliemckilljoy just posted a photo.

Ben closed his eyes, opened them, read the notification again. It was real. His heart was in his throat.

Millie had rarely posted on Instagram for as long as he'd known her, but since leaving for Texas, she had abandoned it almost entirely. Only one thing had been posted from her account in all those months—a captionless photo of a winding gravel road, sloping up and disappearing over a hill, the grass on either side smothered beneath a blanket of brilliant purple flowers. He had stared at it for hours in search of meaning, trying to convince himself that she had posted it just for him, a shy attempt to share with him some tiny piece of her corner of the world.

A blaring horn startled him, and Ben realized that the light had turned green. With a muttered expletive, he accelerated through the intersection. Home was only five minutes away, but an overwhelming sense of urgency forced him to pull over at the first empty stretch of curb he spotted. All feelings of exhaustion had evaporated.

Ben opened the notification, and there was her face, rosy and smiling, on the receiving end of a friendly kiss from the most ruggedly handsome man Ben had ever seen in his life. His stomach lurched. Who was this? Had she left Arthur in favor of a man even more impossible to measure up against?

The photo had a caption.

#oldbestfriend

After a long moment of slack jawed staring, he tore his eyes away from the photo to pull up another one—the very first selfie he and Millie had ever taken together. The caption was exactly as he remembered.

#newbestfriend

"Oh my god," he whispered.

This was for him.

Wasn't it?

All at once he was typing out a message to her. There was no time to double guess the impulse. He had to talk to her. Or at least, try. He agonized over every word, typing and deleting and typing again. No matter how many words he wrote, they never looked right. They were all too desperate or too aloof, too serious or too glib. Damn it, this was taking too long—

"Fuck it," he said, and called her.