Careful What You Wish For

Chapter Twenty-Four

Checking her phone for the hundredth time, Sophie scrolls through each of her social media accounts again, before then slipping into Evan's Instagram for any new updates or photos. Nothing. He hasn't posted anything in seven days.

Brianne reaches across the table and snatches the phone out of Sophie's hand. "I absolutely cannot watch you do that anymore." Her face is pinched, as though Sophie is hurting her. "You have to stop."

"Fine," Sophie forces the word out.

"Why do you feel like you have to keep checking?"

"I don't know!" Sophie tries not to get angry. She runs her hands deep into her hair and tries to focus on her breathing, but the obsessive thoughts keep coming until she wants to start screaming...

She's woken by a distant, yet highly consistent scratching sound. It grinds on the edge of her consciousness slowly and steadily.

What is that?

Sophie opens her eyes to the afternoon sun slanting through the open awning windows of Brianne's room. Confused by the time of day, she lies unmoving on her sofa bed, staring at the ugly popcorn ceiling and enjoying the way the sun catches in the crevices. Moving very slowly to avoid giving in to the sleep inertia, she sits upright. Repositioning herself on the couch, she kicks off the throw rug and stretches her legs. Her head feels a lot clearer than it had that morning, although a coffee would be ideal.

Remembering her night, like a far-off dream now, she reaches for her phone to see if Brianne or Jonas have messaged her. Nothing. She sighs, dropping the phone on the couch with a thud.

The room is very quiet. The scratching sound that woke her has stopped.

Her thoughts drift to Jonas.

Initial concerns that they would have nothing to talk about all night were entirely unfounded. They talked like old friends about things completely unrelated to Evan and the situation with the stalker, including classes, swimming, travel and soccer. It turned out that they had more in common than simply swimming. Jonas was an avid European soccer fan, just like Sophie, and they both had a keen interest in history, particularly historic buildings. For the first time in her life, Sophie imagined what it would be like to date someone she actually held shared interests with.

There was only one awkward moment. When Evan unintentionally came up.

"...and Evan read somewhere that women found men who could cook wildly sexy, so he signed us all up for cooking lessons with this chef he had heard about, who turned out to be a vegan chef."

Sophie throws her head back and laughs loudly. "Did it work?" She asks. "Did it make you all irresistible?"

Jonas shakes his head. "We all tanked the class." Sophie laughs harder.

He watches her with a smile as her laugh descends into giggles, and his face turns more serious.

"Sophie. There's something I need to say to you, that I've wanted to say for a really long time. I feel like a complete jackass for never saying this before now."

Sophie swallows nervously. Gosh, this was going to be awkward. She already knew what was coming.

"I am so sorry that I delivered that breakup message to you," Jonas says in a rush. "I don't know what I was thinking. Evan seemed to sincerely think it was for the best and you were going to be so much better off without him, which I genuinely agreed with, and he convinced me that this would be the least painful way to end it. It just made so much sense at the time."

Jonas looks so completely devastated by this that Sophie finds all she wants to do is smile. "I guess even men aren't immune to Evan's charms," she says.

Jonas laughs, and the awkward moment passes.

Kicking over an empty coffee cup with a loud echoing ding rapidly startles her back to the present. Glancing down at the mug and still thinking about coffee, she shuffles across the room to turn on the kettle before remembering they had no coffee. Sophie curses under her breath.

On the other hand, a coffee from Delilah's sounded much nicer.

Sophie rifles through her suitcase in the corner of the room to find some clean clothes, noting with a sinking heart that she would have to either do laundry soon or go back to her house to get more clothes. Locating a pink singlet she forgot she had packed and her denim skirt, she grabs her towel and toiletries and heads for the shower down the hall.

~

Wandering back up the hallway to Brianne's room, fresh and awake from her shower, Sophie's thoughts are with Luke. The cycle of their relationship runs through her head once more as she tries to pry more out of it or find some connection to what is happening now. For what feels like the hundredth time, she comes up with nothing.

She is so deep in thought she almost misses it.

Something is different. Sophie pauses with her hand on the doorknob of Brianne's room, trying to find the difference.

Then she sees it. There are scratches on the door of Brianne's room.

Were they there before?

She looks more closely. Sophie sucks in her breath sharply and takes a giant step away from the door, her heart thumping painfully in her chest.

There are words scratched into the door. Only about two centimetres high.

I miss you.