Page 117 of Forced Into Your Arms
More importantly, I hadn’t thought about Evan once while I was doing it.
“How did it feel?” my sister asked.
“Good...”
“No. I mean kissing somebody who wasn’t Evan.”
I looked down at my hands, thinking about the question. “Different.”
“Bad different?”
“No.” A small smile returned to my face. “Not at all.”
“Then stop overthinking it.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I can hear you doing it.”
I laughed. “You cannot hear somebody thinking.”
“I can hear you.”
We talked for another twenty minutes before hanging up, and by the time I got into bed, I was tired enough that I didn’t spend the entire night replaying the kiss.
Only part of it.
The next morning, I woke up with Vice on my mind, which annoyed me more than it should have. I got ready for work and tried to push him to the back of my mind, but that became harder when we started texting.
We went back and forth on and off throughout the day. Nothing important, nothing I would remember word for wordlater, but enough to keep a smile threatening my face whenever his name appeared on my screen. Thankfully, Nia was too busy to notice, or at least she didn’t say anything.
By the end of my shift, I was exhausted and ready to go home. I changed out of my work shoes, grabbed my purse and headed toward the parking garage. The drive home was quiet, and somewhere along the way, I found myself thinking about how normal my life almost felt.
I worked. I had my own place. I had gone on a date with a man I liked, and for the first time since Evan, I had kissed somebody without immediately wondering whether I was making a mistake.
Maybe things were finally starting to settle down.
The security guard downstairs greeted me when I walked into the building. I spoke back, used my key fob to access the elevator and leaned against the wall as it carried me upstairs. Everything felt normal until the doors opened on my floor and I stepped into the hallway.
I was halfway to my apartment when I noticed something lying on the floor in front of my door.
At first, I thought it was a flyer somebody had slipped underneath the door and left sticking out. The closer I got, the more I realized it wasn’t.
It was a photograph lying directly in front of my apartment, and something about the way it had been placed there made my steps slow. The hallway was empty, but I looked behind me anyway before turning my attention back to the glossy paper.
I didn’t want to touch it.
Something in my stomach already told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw, but I forced myself to bend down and pick it up anyway.
The second I looked at the picture, my stomach dropped.
It was me.
Vice sat across from me at the restaurant where we’d had lunch the first time, his body turned slightly in my direction while I laughed at something he’d said. The picture had been taken from outside the restaurant, through the window, and neither one of us had known anyone was watching.
My hand started shaking as I turned it over.
The back was blank.
