"Why do you always avoid my questions?"
"I'm not, it's just that there's nothing to say. Who would ever want to date someone they can't even talk to? It's not rocket science. My eyes are weird, and people get tired of me eventually. There's your on...
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IT WASN'T LIKE DALLAS TO SKIP SCHOOL.
She passed the entirety of the morning snuggled beneath her blankets. She set her phone on airplane mode, forcing herself to watch To All The Boys I Loved Before on her laptop.It helped to clear her head and get her mind off things to a great extent, but every time the WIFI fluttered a bit or just at random intervals, Dallas's mind receded from the present, diving into a gully of thoughts.
Why did she have to ruin a perfectly good night?
What was wrong with her?
She was blessed enough to be in a perfect, loving relationship with Sebastian, yet she innately tried to jeopardize that because of her own insecurities, stupid feelings, and her typical way of 'overreacting' to everything.
Dallas could fix their relationship.
She would fix their relationship.
The ball rolled in her court last night, and for the first time, she realized that everyone was right; sex wasn't a big deal. They advised her to just do it and get it over with, but something held her back all along, an inexplicable, unpalpable force that grounded her in tricking her into not feeling ready. What was the point? She planned to be with Sebastian in the future anyway, so losing her virginity now wasn't a big deal, right?
Right.
Dallas forgot to power off her laptop as she sluggishly dragged herself out of bed and to the bathroom. She nimbly made her way around the bathroom, brushing her teeth, washing her face, and taking a cold shower that seemed to breathe life into her. Afterward, she made her way downstairs and reheated leftover beef stew, still ruminating over everything.
Her appetite was non-existent as she plopped down on the island, rolling morsels of the half-warmed food around her mouth. The jitters in her stomach seemed to worsen by the second, and taking deep breaths only seemed to aggrandize the unsettling feeling.
She needed someone to talk to.
As if on cue, her phone chimed with a notification. Her fingers slid across the cold granite countertop towards the device, and she clicked on the screen to see the ASL app's 9:30 a.m. notification, informing her that it was time to practice, with that day's lesson being emotions and commonly used words. The mere sight of it prodded Dallas to the Yoohoo app, where she scrolled past all her unread chats as she drew up her list of contacts and scrolled down to 'M'.
Tapping 'Martha' opened an empty chat space. It felt like ages since they randomly chatted about nonsense, and how could she forget the fact that he had Penelope for three days now? She glanced up at the icon next to his unchanged Squirtle display picture to see his status. A tiny gray bubble sat next to his picture, a sign he was offline.
Or rather, a sign that Dallas didn't turn on her phone WIFI yet.
Just before she opened the setting to turn on the data connection, a thought struck her; Mathias, of all people? Was it a wise idea to text him, especially when he was the source of some of the conflicted emotions and thoughts bubbling up within her?
