Page 23 of Don't Cross Mo Ellery

An athletic, blond, sexy doctor.

“Hey, I don’t judge,” Roy says, palms up. “Just don’t do it on company time. Take it from somebody who knows.”

I can’t believe it. I was so busy panic-spiraling that I didn’t think of the most obvious answer.

Chriswas here.

Panic evaporates and is replaced with pure love and light and rainbows and unicorns. Amazing how something I thought was horrific could turn out to be the best possible thing! Goodbye Roy and shitty apartment and angry men with fancy dogs! Hello, beautiful old life!

Roy keeps talking, but I don’t register what he’s saying, I just leave him in the doorway and float up the stairs, taking them three at a time as I whip out my phone and dial. It’s already ringing by the time I get to the top of the landing. I unlock the door, and I’ve just shouldered my way in when Chris picks up.

Through the phone, his voice is distant. “What’s up, Mo?”

Not the most romantic opener, but I’ll take what I can get.

“I’m so sorry,” I wheeze, trying to catch my breath. Maybe I should have given it a second.

“You’re sorry?” He sounds confused. “For the penis thing?”

“No, no. I mean, yes, absolutely,” I say, pacing from the fridge to the bed and back again. I’m too happy to stand still. “I’m sorry I missed you today. At my apartment. I heard you came by.”

Came by to say you were wrong. To try and win me back. To make this all okay again.

But I don’t say any of that. I want to hear him say it.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, like he’s vaguely distracted by some of the noises on his end of the line. “Yeah, it’s cool.”

“It’s cool?” I ask, stopping.

“Yeah, you got it, right?”

“Got what?”

“Your toothbrush,” he says. “The one you left at my place. I slipped it under the door.”

That’s when I see it.

I wasn’t looking for it, so I didn’t notice it, but there’s my toothbrush, on the floor, pushed up against the wall behind the door. Covered in old floor grime. I’d left that toothbrush at Chris’s condo on purpose. It was my toothbrush of hope, my just-in-case-I-end-up-sleeping-over-and-we-get-back-together toothbrush.

But now I understand. When I burst in, bracing for a murderous alderman, I must’ve kicked the toothbrush, and I was so focused on something big potentially hitting me in the head, I didn’t notice the tiny thing that could stab me in the heart.

“Yeah,” I say numbly, “I got it.”

When I wake up the next morning, my eyelids are puffed up and crusted shut and I feel like death after a quick thirty seconds in the microwave. I roll over and something pokes me in the sternum.

Oh, great, the toothbrush. Just who I wanted to see.

I grope around for my phone and when I find it, I send Hannah a text.

Devastating news. Not being stalked.

Hmm. That sounds weird.

Me:It was Chris returning my toothbrush ugh

Me:Plz don’t tell Eva

I wait for the inevitableyou’re too good for him, you can do so much better, to which I will obviously replyno no he’s too good forme, and then she’ll boost me up again, and I’ll argue again, and so on... because that’s what besties do.