BREATHE by Sophia Soames

Author:Sophia Soames [Soames, Sophia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Joeyholeofficial BLANK SPACE.

RYAN

It had been Luke’s idea to post a picture of a blank piece of paper, and I liked his thinking. New beginnings. A fresh start. Trouble was, my body didn’t like it because I was back to feeling anxious, my leg bouncing around under the table, unable to stop…until he put his hand on my knee and made me stop. Then he apologised for touching me.

That made me need to fidget even more, and I bit my fingernails in frustration. Without a word, he pulled my hand away from my face and pressed it against the tabletop, giving me another one of his stern stares. He didn’t apologise again. He continued casually going through my private messages, hovering over the delete icon more times than I was comfortable with. I hadn’t read most of these messages, yet I was still comforted every time he opened a new one, then immediately clicked Block and Delete before I could see a thing.

“Those are private messages,” I huffed.

“You don’t know any of these people, so they’re not important. They’re not even private! They’re unsolicited messages to a guy who doesn’t exist. You don’t need this shit, and anyway, I’m saving you the nice ones. Awww, look. This guy is in love with Joey and wonders if you’ll wish him a happy birthday?”

“Happy fucking birthday,” I grunted out.

“That was back in February. You wanker, you never even replied! I’m saying sorry and wishing him happy birthday on your behalf. Look. Loads of balloon emojis and cake and shit. He’ll love that.”

I didn’t know why I was letting him do it, why I was letting him straight into the heart of my life, well, Joey’s life, without knowing for absolutely certain that I trust him. But I didn’t feel I had a choice anymore. The flight home from New York had been a shitshow, trying to read some stupid self-help book and crying under a blanket. All I remembered from the book was the advice to talk. I needed to talk about what had happened to me, get it out, make it less of monster. I had clung to that, but now that I had talked, the monster seemed even bigger. It was everywhere, threatening to overwhelm me, which was probably why my whole body was shaking and rattling the table.

Luke jabbed the keyboard in disgust, and some long-arse message disappeared from the screen. I looked away before he caught me staring because now I was staring at him. His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he tapped something out, hit enter and turned the screen so I could see.

“This one’s from your mum.”

“Who?”

“The username is Motheriswatching2. She DM’d you with a selfie. I mean. Your mum.”

He was laughing, and I laughed back because there was my mother in her apron, smiling sweetly into the camera.

“She usually does that. Thinks she’s all incognito like some undercover stalker, and then she gets antsy because she’s not supposed to know anything about my career, but she’ll comment on stuff and get excited over something she’s read and send me a DM.

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