“Your phone was going off in your pocket while you were in the shower.”
I rolled my eyes as I considered the possibility of it being my parents. They were the last people I wanted to talk to, especially daddy. I retrieved my phone and returned to AJ’s side before flipping it open to check my call log. Antonio? I immediately regretted laying so close to AJ because I was almost positive that he’d seen who it was. Now, there wasn’t any point in hiding it, so I pushed send and returned the call.
It only rang once before Antonio picked up.
“Hello?” He answered eagerly.
“Hey. I was in the shower when you called. What’s up?” I asked unenthusiastically.
He seemed to notice that I was being a little short. “I was just callin’ to see how your birthday was.”
I was in no mood to talk about it, so I just made my answer brief and nondescript. “Thanks for asking. It was fine.”
He apparently misinterpreted my tone for anger. “I would’ve called yesterday, but I figured you’d be with…..him, so I decided to wait until today to call.” He paused. “Is everything Ok?”
I sighed aloud. “Yeah, everything’s fine. It was just a long night.” I glanced over at AJ who stared up at the ceiling expressionless. Could he hear everything Antonio was saying?
“Well, it sounds like you’re busy, so I guess I’ll just talk to you later,” he said abruptly with a hint of irritation in his tone. He ended our conversation after that. Later, when there were no spectators, I decided that I’d call him back and explain everything to him.
When I turned back over, AJ lifted my chin and stared at my face. I saw sorrow fill his eyes as he gently rubbed my bruised cheek.
“I still can’t believe he hit you,” he said in a low voice.
“That makes two of us.”
We laid there for a while, holding one another while we thought of the night before, but dared not speak of it. When he got up to leave so that he could go running and shower I could see that he was still thoughtful. My misconstrued conversation with Antonio came back to me and I reached for my phone and dialed his number shortly after AJ left. I wanted to clear things up with him right away.
“Yeah?” He answered.
I could hear in his voice that I’d definitely pissed him off. “Sorry about that. I had a really difficult night.”
He sighed. “It’s cool, but how did you manage to have a bad day on your birthday?”
“My father has the ability to turn any day into a bad day,” I sighed.
“You two got into it again?”
“Something like that,” I replied flatly.
“Are you sure you’re ok?” I could hear in his tone that he was genuinely concerned.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t really wanna get into it right now; it was pretty bad. Maybe we’ll talk about it later.”
“How about over dinner? It’s about time we hung out again anyway,” he suggested, completely catching me off guard. “Don’t worry, I mean as friends, Sam.” His words reminded me of the last time we’d ‘hung out’. There was no way I was going to fall into that again.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Last time…”
Antonio interrupted. “It doesn’t have to be like last time. I just wanna do something nice for you for your birthday.” He laughed a little. “Unless you want it to be like last time, then it’s whatever.” I found myself immediately uncomfortable discussing our kiss. This was the first time it had ever come up since it happened.
“Give me some time to think about it. I’ll let you know.”