We’re doing the interviews over the weekend.
We can pencil you in for the beginning
of next week, though.
The beginning of next wee—
Oh, so they wanted to flirt? I could flirt! I grabbed the phone immediately, my fingers flying:
Fuck that. Pencil me in before the others!
I chuckled. Then, as an afterthought:
I won’t be sent to the end of some
line of gold-digging skanks.
I set the phone down with a smug, satisfactory grin. For someone who sucked at texting, I was especially proud of the gold-digging skanks line.
I grabbed the remote, and was about to un-pause my unnecessarily dramatic, over-the-top reality show when the phone sounded off again:
Okay, done.
Friday night. Eight o’clock.
I noticed this last message was a little different. It was within the same conversation, only this one came from Burke.
That part sent a couple of butterflies fluttering through my stomach.
Yeah, right.
I clicked a few buttons and looked up the laughing emojee. God, I hated emojees. But I used it anyway:
::laughing::
Yeah, sure! See you there.
It was still fun, still flirty. Right? Only now, for some reason, my heart was beating a lot faster.
Hey — you were the one who teased them, Kayleen.
I guess I had. In retrospect I’d even started it. Now they’d gotten the best of me, teasing me right back. One-upping me on my own dumb flirty bullshit, which only—
We’re serious.
The message stopped me in my tracks. Two little words. Two tiny words with all the impact of a runaway freight train.
I went to type again, then stopped. Hesitated. Sat there for another minute, with the phone in my lap. Then, after another half-minute of silence, another message appeared:
Are you?
Serious? Serious? Of course I wasn’t serious! I was just playing along, doing the text-message thing. Flirting and laughing and having some sexy little fun, only maybe the guys had taken me a little more seriously than I was taking myself.
Or maybe…
Or maybe they were only bluffing. Having some fun with me.
Do you call them out on it?