The Love Hotline [ ✓ ]

XXI

Gideon | Carys

Idiot Dog is calling...

Despite trying to tell her racing heart that he must have misclicked, there was no stopping the hope that had wedged its way into her heart that maybe, after three years, he liked her back. She could almost imagine Angie's confident smirk: "I told you he would come around."

Suddenly, there was complete silence and her phone had stopped its incessant ringing before it lit up with a message:

Why didn't you pick up?

If there was a prize for being able to make someone's heart stop with just a text, Gideon would have received one for every single day they had texted.

Never mind. I'm going to call again. Pick up.
Please.

Hands shaking, she picked up her phone to reply that she wasn't ready. That despite telling her friends that she was one hundred percent ready to accept when he finally asked her out, she had too many doubts.

Her ringtone blared again, lighting up with a photo of Gideon and herself he had insisted they'd take on the day he discovered her identity.

Carys took a deep breath and slid her finger across the screen.

"Hey."

"I call you twice and that's the first thing you say to me?"

"Well, I was planning to start with 'what'. Would that have been better?"

Gideon laughed and Carys swore her heart just sped up ten times faster.

"So... You said to call up the girl I liked and tell her how I felt."

"Yeah. So what the heck are you doing, still talking to me?"

Silence.

"You don't get it, do you?"

Carys' breaths started to lose steadiness. She wasn't ready to put her heart on the line. Not yet.

"Get what?"

"I'm talking to her right now."

If she had been any other girl, she would have been elated to hear that her crush finally liked her back but Carys felt nothing but crushing fear.

"Gideon. This isn't funny."

"Does it sound like I'm laughing, Carys?"

"If I find out that your friends put you up to this, I won't hesitate to take you and your whole posse down."

"Just... let me talk. Please, Carys."

"Okay." Carys said, almost a whisper.

She heard the boy on the other side of the phone take a deep breath.

"I like you. I like your sarcasm and your humour. You were the only girl, after knowing my identity, who still treated me with indifference. It feels like whenever I don't talk to you, I lose a part of myself. I may not have known you before this whole cupid thing but now that I do, I can't stop thinking about you."

Silence settled briefly on both sides before it was broken.

"You what?"

Three years of an unrequited crush and that was all she could say. Two words. She didn't know which emotion had taken a hold of her; fear or shock.

How was she supposed to believe that after all those years of not even noticing her, Gideon would start to like her after a few months of texting?

"— my fault. I'm so sorry, Carys. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, I promise I'll try my best to —"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence."

She almost slapped herself. What had come over her? She could almost feel his smirk on the other line.

"Miss me already, cupid?"

Carys pouted. "Shut up."

"Cute."

It was funny how one word could send her heart into overdrive.

"So... Does that mean you feel the same or am I reading this in an entirely different way?"

"I don't know, Gideon..."

"What's wrong? If you're afraid of the spotlight, then we can put our relationship on the down low until we graduate."

"I'm the Vice President of the school. I think I'm used to being occasionally put in the spotlight."

"So what's wrong?"

"I'm scared of your fans; the girls who slept with you in the hopes that some day, you would settle for them. Preston's most eligible bachelor snatched up by someone not from the popular crowd? Sounds like some fantasy from a romance novel."

She could hear the boy on the other side of the line take in a deep breath.

"We'll make it work. I promise. I've never felt this sure about anyone before. I realised that infatuation was something far different from an actual emotional connection."

Carys' heart started to thump in her chest.

"So Carys, are you willing to take this leap with me?"

For a moment, her brain was telling her to stop this. This had to be a trick. Gideon was way out of her league to be asking her out.

But her heart urged her forward.

"Okay. But you'd better not break my heart."

She could almost see his smug smile on the other end. "I won't."

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