Nostalgia was potent, filling my lungs and plastering a reflective smile on my face. So much in my life had changed from the day I’d grabbed my last suitcase and headed to college. I had a great job, amazing friends, and now…Kline. It was funny how two years ago, I’d thought of him only as my boss, refusing to see him as anything else, and now, he had become this fixture in my life, one I was starting to hope would be permanent.
The sound of a phone vibrating across the surface of my nightstand caught my attention. I picked it up, tapping the screen, wondering if Cass was getting ready to harass me about using the last of the coffee creamer and leaving a sink full of dishes before heading to my parents’.
The screen lit up with a TapNext notification.
TAPRoseNEXT: Hey you, how’s your day going?
I tilted my head, confused. Why was I getting messages from my account? The one I’d told Cassie to take over?
Turning over the phone, my mind registered the case. Not the glittery sparkle one I’d bought a few weeks ago, but plain, old, simple black.
Kline’s phone case.
Not mine.
Kline’s.
I dropped the phone like it had caught fire. It hit the hardwood floor with an awful thud and I cringed, wondering for a brief second if I had broken his phone.
But then the shock of the entire situation took over.
If he…
Wait a minute…
Is this?
No way.
NO WAY.
I just stood there, staring down at the screen and the profile name TAPRoseNEXT glaring back at me. If he was getting messages from my TapNext account, then that meant…
I gaped, my eyes popping wide. Jesus Christ in a peach tree, did this mean that when I had been messaging Ruck, I had really been messaging Kline?
My heart pounded in my chest, erratically enough that I was a little concerned I might go into cardiac arrest.
Slowly, I bent down and picked up the phone. My mind warred between my options. I could either do the right thing and set the phone back down and act like I had never seen it, or I could swipe the screen, put in his passcode, and see if it was really what I thought it was.
The only reason I knew his passcode was because I’d had to retrieve a few emails for him while we were in the Hamptons. He had remembered he needed to check on a time-sensitive contract and just so happened to be elbow deep in soapy water and dishes. So, he’d told me the passcode, and I just so happened to still remember said passcode.
I scrubbed my left hand down my face while my right white-knuckled his phone. I was sure the correct choice was to act like I had never seen it, set his phone down, and walk away, but I needed to know if what I was seeing was real.
Which was why my fingers slid across the screen and pulled up the TapNext icon. I took one glance at his profile, and when the username BAD_Ruck met my confused gaze, I refused to invade any more of his privacy and immediately locked his phone, setting it facedown on the nightstand.
He. Was. Ruck.
My hands went into my hair, resting on top of my head, as I paced my bedroom. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, the four walls closing in on me. I had been messaging Kline the entire time, without even knowing it. And he had been messaging me, but he didn’t know it was me.
But wait, he had met my best friend. He knew her face was Rose’s profile picture, but he hadn’t known I was the one to put it there.
Irrational jealousy and anger started to build inside of my chest.
Had he still been chatting with Rose after meeting Cassie?
Fuck.
I picked his phone back up and quickly unlocked the screen again, pulling up the TapNext app within seconds. My heart threatened to thrash its way out of my body as I found the lone conversation in Ruck’s message box.
I felt insane, completely off my rocker, as I found the last few messages and scrutinized the timestamps.
Relief robbed the breath from my lungs as I met the realization that the last message Ruck sent Rose had been before we had met up at The Raines Law Room.
Before he had met my best friend.
The edges of my anger, my jealousy, still shook my hands. I couldn’t deny I felt betrayed over the fact that he had been chatting with another woman, while dating me.
But I breathed through it, slowly talking myself off the illogical ledge as I set Kline’s phone back on the nightstand.
How could I be mad at him when I had been doing the exact same thing?
Of course, I was upset he had been chatting with another woman, not really knowing that woman was me. It hurt. A lot. But I couldn’t deny it made sense. It made sense why we would continue to talk, even though we were dating other people. We were drawn to each other, in every possible way.
I was filled with this odd feeling of relief, but it was quickly pushed aside when I started to realize the consequences of my decisions.
My world had officially turned on its axis. I was in the Twilight Zone and playing the star role in a weird, modern remake of You’ve Got Mail. The only difference was that I wasn’t Kathleen Kelly in this scenario. I was Joe Fox.
Holy. Fox.
And I had gone off script. I hadn’t planned a big grand gesture where I would unveil it had been me the whole time.
No.
Not only had I given my best friend free rein to message my boyfriend, I had all but forced her to do it.
Holy. Foxing. Shit.