My Childhood Friend is a Werewolf

Chapter Four

Emma looked at it for a week.

The nuclear war missile that was a neatly folded piece of paper sat on her coffee table for a whole week while Emma agonised over whether or not to text the number on it. (Hannah recommended tossing it in the garbage, but Emma stubbornly and stupidly refused to.) She tried to weigh the pros and cons of texting versus not texting, picking apart her interaction with Antonella and trying to find a reason why she should just throw the stupid piece of paper away. But there it stayed on her coffee table, tempting her.

She finally broke on the eighth day, inputting the number into her phone and saving it under the contact name "DON'T DO IT". Emma told herself it was only to get rid of the little piece of paper tempting her and Hannah called her on her bullshit not even two seconds later.

"He didn't even have the balls to talk to you before he left without a word in high school!" she shouted, angry that Emma was even considering it. "You can't seriously want to text him!"

"I don't want to text him," she said, but that was a hundred percent a lie, "but I think I deserve some kind of explanation."

Hannah sighed loudly but said nothing more because she, too, wanted to know. Dren had left so abruptly that for a moment they thought something bad had happened to him. After days of unanswered calls and texts, they finally realised he, his family, and his brother Weston had simply left with no goodbye. It had hurt the two of them deeply. Hannah and Dren were not particularly close, but they enjoyed each other's company all the same. She considered him a good friend.

So Hannah sat with her as she saved his number into her phone in quiet support.

"What are you gonna say?" Hannah asked as Emma stared at the empty message box.

"I'll think of something," she said.

She didn't lie; she did think of something, it just happened to take her two months to think of it.

It was a fairly short message. "Hey, this is Emma Hadley. Antonella gave me your number. This is kind of random, but I was wondering if you're able to grab coffee sometime?"

After she hit the 'send' button, which took her about three hours of anxious pacing to do, she threw her phone on the opposite side of her bed and buried herself under the covers, hoping the blankets would hide any notification sound. After a while she poked her head out and gave into temptation, grabbing her phone to check her messages only to be disappointed when there was no reply.

He must be busy, she thought. I'll just give it a little time, she thought.

After three whole days of absolutely nothing, Emma accepted that he wasn't interested in reconnecting with her and was simply ignoring her message. Any normal person would give up at this point, having made the appropriate amount of effort and knowing that making any further effort would simply be pointless... but Antonella's comment lingered in her mind.

'I do hope you'll match his stubbornness with more of your own.'

Envigored by that thought, she picked up her phone and typed out another message.

"Hey! Thought I would follow-up and see if you can find any time to meet up? Sorry for bothering you if you're busy."

Another two days passed with no reply. Instead of being sad, Emma just got pissed.

"Hi, hope these messages are getting through. Any chance you can fit me into your busy schedule? I promise I won't take up more than an hour of your time."

Four days.

"At this point I'll take a text convo. We don't have to meet up, just let me know you're receiving these?"