Gio and Taehyung had been texting the entire weekend. From Friday until Sunday, younger employees worked at the restaurant so she had the entire weekend to spend as she wished, so she usually did something with her brother or her mother- or even her friends, sometimes- but that weekend she did not want to go anywhere without her cell, unable to bear the thought of being unavailable when Taehyung messaged. He sent voice clips when he was busy recording with his group, which Gio treasured immensely. With time, it seemed- or at least to Gio, his messages got weirder and weirder, not in a bad way but almost reminding her of herself. Gio loved that she could be her bubbly, overly-expressive self around him, she felt so comfortable with him despite only knowing each other for a limited amount of time. She had a bad habit of falling for boys fast and easy, but things usually never moved as fast or as far as they had with him. Naturally, she often found herself questioning: is this real, or am I just hormonal? Does he even truly like me back?
Gio had wanted to ask one of her more experienced friends for advice, but Nany had enough to worry about with her sick cat plus the new dog her younger sister had brought home, and Cami had been AWOL since Cloudy's. Curiosity was eating up Gio, so she decided to pick up the phone and call: Cami was prone to read text messages and forget to reply, but she almost always answered her calls.
"Your call has been forwarded to an automatic," the machine at the other end started, but as soon as Gio heard those words she hung up. Voicemails were useless when it came to Cami, and she could still not help but wonder what had happened to her friend. Maybe she would take a short drive to Flora, the sector of Manatí where Cami lived with her grandparents, and ask, but she took the risk of being offline if Taehyung decided to message.
As early as five in the morning on Monday, Taehyung sent Gio a "good morning" text. At the time, she was asleep but as any reasonable fool with a huge crush, she leapt out of bed as soon as she felt her phone vibrate on the desk.
"Morning! How are you doing today?" she replied, recalling he had been feeling tired after their night out. She hoped that feeling would pass soon, so they could finally have a proper date but between all the music-video shooting and fooling around with his group, he was not bound to get a reasonable amount of rest, thus exacerbating his condition.
"I'm god," Taehyung replied. Seconds after he corrected "god" for "good," but Gio thought the original message was more fitting: she had not seen him with his shirt off, but after dancing close enough to him, she could tell he was built like an Olympian god.
"You?" Taehyung added after that last message.
Truth be told, she was a bit of a contained mess. She had hardly gotten any sleep, fantasizing about all sorts of things involving Taehyung, and since Saturday, she had not changed out of her pajamas. Gio's mom was starting to get concerned, suspecting her daughter should be sick, or God forbid, falling for some insignificant boy. Before sending her off to college, her mom had given her the whole "studies before boys" speech, but did that mean that summer flings were also off-limits? Either way, her mom didn't have to find out, and if anything, she could just claim she was just being friendly.
"I'm fine, don't want to work today ugh," Gio complained.
"You can do this ;)"
Her heart. Things were going unexpectedly well with Taehyung: compared to the horror stories Gio had heard from her friends regarding boys and dancefloor makeouts, she felt blessed to have stumbled upon someone like him. Granted, the trashy frat boys and washed-out ex-high school popular guys her friends usually encountered were nothing like him; but Taehyung was in a band and he was bound to have girls pining for him. As soon as thoughts like those began to form in Gio's mind, she decided it was better to shake them off and focus on the present matter: she was texting a pretty cute guy who was also apparently into her.
