Page 183 of One Wild Wish

It was also because you started dating Kayla.

I stared at my sent message and smacked my forehead with the heel of my hand. What the hell is wrong with me? There was no ctrl-alt-deleting that horrifying confession. My stomach twisted, courtesy of the Jäger and my stupid fingers.

Kayla Morgan was still his girlfriend. Facebook reminded me of that painful fact daily. And I just kind of admitted I’d had the hots for him.

August didn’t post much, but Kayla loved tagging him at every opportunity: selfies with her arm around his waist, candids of him studying or sleeping, captioned with things like: I tuckered him out. I would then “caption” my rude gestures with colorful expletives, all shouted at the screen. (Proof of Facebook’s torture potential.) My roommate, Clean Your Damn Area Claire, would make a throaty sound and roll her eyes, then tell me to clean my damn area .

I stared at my silent phone, bouncing my heel, chewing my lip, wishing I could reverse time and suck that message back into my traitorous fingers.

His eventual reply didn’t help: What does Kayla have to do with this?

Now he wanted me to bleed for him, eviscerate the guts of my hidden affections. All I managed was a partial truth.

I was jealous of her too. Because of her, we spent less time together. It wasn’t rational. I’m sorry and I miss you.

I should have been more honest, admitted the depths of my feelings for him back then. My feelings for him now. Regret knotted my noodley insides as I waited for his reply. I contemplated moving to Mars or the jungles of Africa, a place where Facebook and stupid crushes wouldn’t derail my life. My phone vibrated with August’s reply.

You should never have dated Jared. Things would be very different now.

Holy hell.

Did that mean he’d wanted me in high school, too? Had we both read each other wrong? Jared and his leather jacket had been a distraction and nothing else, even though he’d barely kept me from fantasizing about August. The effort had been so dismal I’d broken up with Jared during prom.

Could I have spent that time kissing August’s perfect lips instead of inhaling Jared’s Axe Body Spray?

I typed a frantic reply, then deleted each letter. This was big. Huge. Like “winning all the blue jelly beans in a blue jelly bean counting competition” huge.

I’d been in Intro to Psychology with August’s twin brother, Finch, all semester, staring at him with unhealthy longing. Aside from sharing August’s dark hair, ridiculous bone structure, and gold-flecked hazel eyes, my belly had never flipped around him. The hairs on my neck had never shivered. That hadn’t stopped me from ogling Finch, pretending and wishing he were August—the only man I’d ever truly wanted .

Up until one minute ago, I was sure my August ship had sailed, any chance with him destroyed by my childish behavior, but he was staring at his phone now, somewhere in San Francisco, not far from me, waiting on my reply.

This was do or die. This was the shot I never took.

This was my perfect birthday wish come true.

Holding my breath, I wrote out a careful reply, ensuring no typos waylaid my intentions. Brutal honesty was what this called for. Jäger honesty.

I dated Jared because you hooked up with Kayla. I had feelings for you back then and couldn’t be around you guys.

I reread my reply. It didn’t say how I still had feelings for him. Massive, crushing feelings. But it was more than I’d ever admitted. I swallowed hard and sent my heart through cyberspace.

One second passed. Two lumbered by. Five, ten, fifteen seconds dragged.

Heart pummeling my chest, I shot to my feet and paced. My eyes darted wildly, unable to focus on the guitar neck protruding from under my bed or my overflowing laundry basket or my King Kong Green Day poster. I felt like a science experiment, all vibrating molecules and firing synapses, a cataclysmic event away from full meltdown.

No message answered me. Not a one. The air in my lungs turned to glue. If I had a paper bag, I’d breathe into it.

Unsure what to do, I plunked down on my chair and scrolled through Facebook, a futile attempt to distract myself. It was either that or fill my bathtub with Jäger and go for a swim. The flipping images blurred, one annoying smiling face after another, until one particular face had my mouse stilling and my eyes bugging.

Kayla. Kayla tagging August in one of her flirty posts.

I wanted to slap my laptop shut and forget I’d ever sent that text or opened this Pandora’s Box of awful, but I couldn’t stop from leaning closer and studying the image. The glue in my lungs hardened into cement. I blinked several times, but Kayla still filled the screen. Her hand faced me, a band on her wedding finger.

The comment above read: Guess who got a promise ring?

* * *

Dazed and confused (not in the good way), I pushed into The Barking Owl. The student bar was jam-packed, sweaty bodies abundant, heat and pop tunes stuffing the pulsating room. An elbow jabbed me. Someone used my shoulders to keep from falling. Even in the oppressive space, I was relieved to be away from my computer and treasonous phone.