Time And I

Twenty-Eight

"So he's trying to buy me a drink, and I keep telling him to fuck off since I'm with someone. And he asks where my boyfriend is, thinking I'm making him up. Then Franny shoved him away from me and tells him I like pussy more," Bella smirked as she stared at Francine, who smiled innocently beside her. "And he gets such a shock he leaves us alone."

"Only for another guy to walk up to us and ask for a threesome," Francine groaned. "The nerve of you men."

"I didn't do anything." Sylvester chuckled. "Blame Dave."

"Yeah, Dave, you suck," Francine cackled.

Dave walked up to the counter and said, "Fuck you," while laughing. Devon, who was helping bake pretzels, laughed beside him.

I never got around to telling him what happened. I didn't even get around to texting him. I spent the entire weekend in my room, only coming out to grab food before locking myself back in. I kept my phone off all day and watched YouTube. For the first time in months, I had an actual lazy day. And it was glorious.

On Monday, a few people walked up to me and told me they liked Darcy and mine's performance. A few guys even wound up checking me out, which was strange. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Buddy continued to ignore me. So rather than eat alone, I skipped lunch and studied in the library.

Callie wound up sitting across me. I glanced up from my book and asked if I could help her. "Devon texted me and asked to check on you. Something about you not answering your phone."

I did forget to turn it back on.

She reached out across the table and grabbed my hand. "Has he been stalking you or something? He mentioned you were upset. Is he too dense to realize that it's because of him?"

"What?" I chuckled. "No. I got in a fight with my sister. I kept my phone off yesterday to have a lazy day. A lot of shit's been going on, but it's not because of him."

She cooed. "He's really worried about you, isn't he?"

"Yeah. I'm surprised he texted you about it."

"We were talking about you yesterday at the meeting. He was worried about you since you never texted him. We were actually just texting about a poem I'm working on, and I told him I saw you, and he asked me to check and make sure you were okay. If I knew your phone was off, I wouldn't have thought those crude thoughts."

"He's a really nice person, isn't he?" I hummed.

"One of the sweetest," she smiled. "Is everything okay with you are your sister?"

"Not really. I don't mean to be rude, Callie, but we're not exactly close, so I'd feel weird talking about it with you."

She gasped and let go of my hand. "You're so right. My bad. I just wanted to make sure everything's okay."

"Thanks. Hey, why didn't you audition for variety show? You could have read one of your poems?"

"No way. I trust my group, but a bunch of strangers I go to school with? Yeah, right. I don't have the guts. They're too personal to share like that."

"I get that."

"See you later," she said before walking off.

After that, I finally turned my phone back on and saw that Rick texted me yesterday to subtly ask what was going on with Jeanie and me, to which I was sure she wound up filling him in on later. And I had three messages and one missed call from Devon. The call was from last night, and two texts were from last night. The other from this morning asking me to call him when I had the chance.