Crash Into Me | ✓

four

KEVIN ROSSI: Can you answer your phone please?

After rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I nearly dropped my phone on my face as the text message came into blaring view.

Kevin had mostly kept his word and left me alone when I moved out of Georgia, but boys have "you thought so" radar. Finally done thinking about them? Assured that they've gone away, never to return? You thought so. They pop out of the ground like whack-a-moles the second they're out of your head. Gone forever? You thought so.

My thumb hovered over the "reply" button for a split second, but I fought the urge and pressed my phone face down into my chest. I didn't need the guilt he was going to throw at me.

I rolled over in bed and felt a knot twist and turn in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes I woke up and thought I was back in my room in Coatesville, with the sound of the horses and chickens from the farm down the road carrying through my open window. Nikki being sick and moving to this tiny speck of a town on the coast had all just been one bad dream. But then the empty, eggshell white walls of my new bedroom and my dull, threadbare high school comforter from Pottery Barn brought me back to reality. It was still a bad dream, I was just very much awake.

My phone buzzed again, and Kevin's name popped back up on the screen.

KEVIN ROSSI: Please don't ignore me. You're breaking my heart Natalie.

I let out an aggravated groan and chucked my phone across the room, hitting a picture frame on my dresser and sending it clattering to the floor.

"Woah there, girlfriend."

Nikki stood in the doorway to my room, her eyes wide at my sudden outburst, and arms shot up in an "I come in peace" fashion. She padded across the shag carpet and gingerly picked up my phone.

"Is Kevin still texting you?" She shook the phone at me. "Don't entertain him Nat, you can't give that idiot any more attention."

I rubbed my hand along the side of my face. "I'm not, I'm not."

"He has some nerve still messaging you like this," she continued. "I have half a mind to go back to Coatesville and knock his head clear off."

I rolled my eyes. "How? You're about as threatening as a Chihuahua."

Nikki scrunched her face up and looked like she was ready to hit me back with another stinger, but she slumped her shoulders and let out a sigh. She walked over and sat down on the edge of my bed, running her hands along the fuzzy blanket I had kicked aside.

"I just want you to move on from all this, Nat." She kept her head down when she spoke. "We're here now. It's time to leave all that shit behind."

I groaned and rubbed my temples with my fingers. "I have moved on, Nikki."

"Lying in bed until noon every day is not moving on."

I gave her a sideways glance before snatching my phone out of her hands and deleting Kevin's text.

"There. See? It's gone. Moving on." I flopped back onto the bed and pulled my comforter over my face, but Nikki yanked it back immediately.

"No way," she huffed and aggressively shook my shoulders. "Get up. Get yourself together. We have an hour until my appointment. You should use that time for something other than wallowing in self-pity."

She turned and waltzed out before I had a chance to snap back at her.

I was not wallowing in self-pity. I was simply assessing my current life situation. The fact that the highlights of my day were watching reruns of Law & Order SVU and going to the barren Northwoods Mall for Chick-Fil-A was somewhere in between dismal and pathetic. Even on days when sunlight snuck through the blinds on my windows, I still felt like a cloud followed me everywhere. Dark, heavy, and ready to burst. The absolute last thing I needed was to drag myself to a stuffy hospital room that smelled like death and Pine Sol.