Full Exposure by Amy Jo Cousins

Author:Amy Jo Cousins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Amy Jo Cousins
Published: 2015-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Final Prints

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Going back home was like stepping out of the wardrobe and back into the real world after living forever and a day in Narnia. Never had Evan so clearly understood those Pevensie kids’ resentment of an entire world that refused to recognize how different they were from what they’d been before.

When he turned on his phone as soon as his plane landed in Norfolk, Riley had already texted him. Five times. The flight attendant at the exit laughed when she saw him, because Evan couldn’t smother his broad grin.

You’re an asshole for leaving without waking me. I hate you.

Then a dick pic.

Don’t sell this to tabloids. Jerkface.

Then a giant frowny face emoticon.

Miss you.

If Riley had wanted to hug his bowling shoes to his chest all night, that wasn’t anything to Evan’s brand new cell phone addiction.

For a couple of weeks, he checked his phone approximately seven hundred times a day, looking for new texts and finding them in furious bursts, between hours-long gaps when Riley was obviously busy. At first Evan responded immediately to every notification, if not any of the calls, needing some distance to hold the loneliness off. One of the perks of working for himself was not guilting out over texting Riley during conference calls. But when he caught himself sending Riley a picture of the osprey nest at the harbor where his dad volunteered with the ex–Coast Guard guys giving teen sailing lessons, he realized he’d sent three texts in a row to Riley without a reply.

Riley had done the same to him too at some points, if Evan was on a call that ran long, or out for a sail with their neighbors, but the thought floated through his brain nonetheless.

Ease up. You look like a stalker.

He started pacing his replies, always waiting for longer than the gap between his text and Riley’s reply to send another text. Until days at a time went by without their sharing any words at all.

It all unraveled exactly as he knew it was meant to, until there was only a thin string left connecting him to those days.

When his dad caught the flu over the holidays, Tommy came home after all, to alternate shifts in the hospital with Evan, who didn’t ask what projects had to be canceled to allow this. Somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas, he realized a week or more had passed without his remembering to respond to Riley’s last brief message. He walked through the quiet hospital corridors to the parking lot and turned on his phone again to answer.

He stood for a long time under the starlight, staring at the glowing screen of his phone, trying to do the math on how many weeks had passed since his time in Chicago. Lack of sleep made him stupid, because it seemed like more time must have passed than he could make work on the calendar. Those days felt so very far away. He swiped a few useless words and headed back inside.

Hope you’re well. Chaos here.

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