Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Then a bunch of really shitty things happened, including puberty, and my brain was completely rewired.
That’s when I started to hate the phone.
Or more specifically, the feeling of dread I experienced when faced with being the sole focus of someone’s attention on the other end of the line. You were granted no time to think before you had to answer questions—it was like a fastball coming straight for your head. You couldn’t see their reactions to anything you said. You had no idea how they might be judging you. You had no opportunity to weigh the risk of any possible response. In contrast to a text or email, a phone conversation exposed you completely.
I avoided them at all costs.
So when my cell vibrated in my back pocket as I was about to leave the house, I almost ignored it. If it mattered, the caller would leave a voicemail. Then I’d listen to the message and decide if it actually mattered and merited a text from me or—even better—a response from my assistant back in San Francisco. There wasn’t much that could make me answer or make a call in real time.
But when I saw who was calling, I took it. “You know I hate the phone.”
“I do,” said Felicity, “and I’m sorry. But I didn’t think I could convey the urgency of this matter in a text.”
I headed from the kitchen into the garage, pulling the door shut behind me. “Are you okay? Is your nose bleeding?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Good. The memory of that last one still haunts me.” I slid behind the wheel of my SUV, recalling the way her nose had suddenly and violently started to bleed while we were out for dinner one night back when she lived in Chicago six years ago.
I’d been in town on business, and I’d been looking forward to catching up with her, since we really hadn’t seen each other much since going away to college—I’d spent my summers on campus at M.I.T. and Felicity had spent hers working for her family at Cloverleigh Farms. I knew she’d abandoned her pre-med studies at Brown to follow her heart and attend culinary school, but I wondered if she’d changed in other ways too.
Did she still love sci-fi? Did she still hate thunderstorms? Was she still close to her family? Did she still cut her hair when she was stressed? Would things still feel easy between us, or was she so different that I wouldn’t feel okay around her anymore? What if she felt like a stranger?
Thankfully, the moment I saw her enter the room and smile at me, I knew everything would be fine. She raced over to give me one of those hugs I’d never quite known how to return, and even the way she smelled was familiar—like summer at home. She still wore glasses. Her brown hair still looked like she might recently have trimmed it herself. I could still make her laugh.
And my heart still did that strange quickening thing when she got close to me, the thing that tied my tongue and heated my insides and put troubling questions in my head, like, What would it be like to kiss her? What would she do if I took her hand? Should I tell her I want to be more than friends? But my nerves had always been stronger than my attraction. I was positive she’d think I was crazy and look at me differently if I acted on those urges or spoke those words aloud.
See, I might not be magical anymore, but I have a horrible superpower that, when combined with my mathematical talent, allows me to enumerate any number of catastrophic outcomes for a given situation. And my brain loved listing all the possible ways things could veer off track if I made the wrong move with Felicity.
But I was hoping that night in Chicago would be different.
After all, I was older. I was more mature. I’d had some dating experience. I’d had sex with three different women in college, and one of them even said I was “surprisingly great” in bed for someone so quiet. (It wasn’t all that surprising to me, since I’d done extensive online research on how to please a woman. I was excellent at research.) I’d also been seeing a therapist for my anxiety, and he’d noticed how often I mentioned Felicity . . . was there something there? He’d challenged me to find out.
But I hadn’t gotten the chance. Felicity had some kind of blood vessel disorder that had always given her these fuck-awful bloody noses, and it was clear about thirty minutes into our dinner that she hadn’t outgrown them. We’d spent the rest of the evening in the Emergency Room.
I took it as a sign that reaching across the table would have been a disaster. That the universe had saved me from catastrophe while also protecting my friendship with Felicity. That was something I did not want to mess with.