“Yes! Do it!” Nita mirrored his excitement.
“No!” I shouted too loud, causing the few other patrons scattered throughout the corner bar to turn and stare. “No.” I lowered my voice.
“Why not?” Louie pouted. “What do you have to lose? Message him! Do it! Do it! Do it!” he chanted.
“Seriously, Ellie! Do it!” Nita joined in the cheer.
“No.” Shaking my head I pushed the phone away.
“Why not?” Louie asked, furrowing his brow. “Maybe you can reconnect, fall in love and it will be like a movie!” His eyes lit up.
“Because...” My voice trailed off, and I struggled to even process the consequences of sending that message.
“I don’t understand. Why not?” Nita asked again.
“Because. If I send it and he rejects me, it will ruin the one perfect man in my life. He’s the one thing I still cherish. The one man who’s never let me down. In my mind we are perfect. Happy. And I didn’t realize how much I tap into that memory to get through rough patches until just now. If he is a troll, or an asshole, or he tells me to get lost, it will tarnish every single memory I have of him, and I’m just not willing to take that risk. I can’t.”
I wasn’t one to take chances. Everything in my life was calculated, well-planned, and logical. When it came to contacting Liam, there was no need to write my usual pros and cons list I used when making big decisions. Finding out he wasn’t perfect or didn’t even remember me and potentially ruining my incredible memories of him was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
They answered me with silence, understanding looks passing between them. Knowing he was out there, that I was just a few buttons away from reconnecting with him after all these years, twisted my stomach into a knot only one thing could unravel.
“Bruce?” I called.
He just smiled and walked back, refilling our shot glasses once again. I downed mine without a cheers and set it back down. Pleading eyes begged him for another.
“How are you still standing?” He laughed, filling it up again.
I didn’t answer. I just slammed it down again.
Several cocktails later, Nita slurred and wobbled on her seat. “Ellie, seriously. We need to go. I’m going to be puking during my spinning class tomorrow.”
Louie hiccupped and looked at me, heavy lids blinking slowly over glassy eyes. Holding onto my bar stool for balance, I squinted to see the time. It was midnight. Another glance around the bar and I realized it was empty. Bruce yawned where he sat on the end stool, staring at the muted television while Here I Go Again on My Own blared out from the juke box speakers. It was the fourth time in a row I’d played it, and there were a few more rounds of my break-up anthem on the way.
“Sorry Bruce,” I said, struggling to form words. “We can go so you can get out of here. I’ll close out.”
“Sure thing, Ellie.” He stood and stretched, walking back behind the bar. The bottle of whiskey still sat in front of me from when he gave up and just left it alongside a napkin and a pen for me to keep track of my pours.
“I’ll get an Uber,” I said while he printed out our sizeable tab. Closing one eye, I looked at my phone, teetering while I unlocked it with my thumb. When it opened, the photo of Liam’s tattoo was the first thing I saw. My breath hitched at the sight of it, memories flooding back of squealing while he squeezed my hand as the tattoo gun dug into my skin.
“You’ve got this, baby,” he’d said, kissing my forehead while I’d struggled to stay still.
A warmth washed over me, and this time it wasn’t from the whiskey.
“Go big or go home,” I mumbled, clicking on the picture and going back to his profile.
“What?” Louie murmured before resting his chin on his hand, sleepy eyes threatening to close.
“Fuck it. I’m messaging him.”
“Yay,” Louie said half-heartedly. “Do it.”
“Do it!” Nita perked up for a moment before slumping forward again. “Do it. Do it.” Her earlier enthusiasm in the chant was now absent.
With one eye open and an unsteady hand, I opened a message and slowly typed one letter at a time. When I was done, I took a deep breath and stared at the string of eloquently crafted words that would possibly reconnect me to the one who had gotten away... The Big One.
“Do it,” Louie said, peeking at me with one open eye and seeing my hesitation. “No fear.”
“No fear,” I repeated my new life motto and pushed send.
CHAPTER THREE
Ellie
“Ouch,” I groaned before I’d even opened my eyes. My mouth was so dry my lips stuck together during my pitiful moan. “Why....” I whispered, pain resonating through my head like a bass drum had set up shop in my skull.
“Why are you yelling?” Louie whined, and I turned over to see him sprawled across me.
“I hate you both so hard right now,” Nita added, her voice hoarse and raspy, and I saw her crumpled at the corner of the bed, her fully clothed body half on the floor.
“Your voice.” I started to laugh, but that only exasperated the pain now apparent in every inch of my body. “You sound like an old lady.”
“Shut up, so do you,” she responded with a gruff voice, and I noticed she was right. My voice had aged fifty years since I fell asleep last night.
“Why are you yelling?” Louie pulled a pillow over his head.
“We’re whispering, Louie. I couldn’t yell if I tried,” I said, forcing the words out, and it felt like each syllable was shredding my parched throat.
“Why, Ellie... why....” Nita moaned and pulled herself back onto the bed and piled on top of us. “I’m definitely not making it to spinning class today.”
Thank God it was Saturday and none of us had to work this morning. This one was going to be a Top Five hangover for me. I didn’t even need to stand up to realize the toll a night of drinking Jack from a bottle had taken on me. I wasn’t twenty-one anymore and this morning my body was making me extremely aware of that fact.
“Never again. I’m never drinking again,” Louie grumbled. “What time is it?”
I searched the bed through my swollen eyes and saw my iPhone propped on the pillow. After an agonizing reach, I got it into my grasp. Shaky hands held it while I unlocked the screen. My sleepy eyes snapped open when I saw the message on the screen, and a gasp ripped apart what was left of my throat.
“NO!” I screamed, shooting up to sitting. The sudden movement sent Louie and Nita tumbling off me into an awkward heap.
“Now you are yelling!” Louie struggled to right himself. “What the hell, woman?”
“NO!” I shouted again.
“Why so loud? What the hell is going on, Ellie?” Nita asked, peeking open an eye.
“Is it sent? Oh my God, it’s sent! Who sent this? Which one of you bastards messaged him?” I turned my phone around showing them the jumbled words that formed incoherent sentences in the message that was sent to Liam.
“You did. Remember?” Louie answered, taking the phone from my hand to examine the masterpiece.
“What? I did?” I asked. Flashes of the night started coming back to me. Laughing, crying, singing, more crying, dancing and... typing. Yep. It was me.
Holy mother of God, what have I done?
“Shit!” I ripped the phone back and looked again at the message. “No, no, no, no...”
Not only had I indulged in the cardinal sin of drunk IMs, it looked like a five-year-old had written it for me. I couldn’t even figure out what half the words were, whether that was auto-correct or me, I wasn’t sure.
“Has he seen it yet?” Nita asked, sitting up.
A quick glance and I saw the little check mark and not the circle showing his picture, meaning he hadn’t seen it yet. “No! He hasn’t! Can we retract it? Someone please tell me I can unsend this catastrophe! Oh my God, how could I have done this? You guys made me do it!”
“Jack. Jack made you do it. Blame him.” Louie shook his head, a
mocking smirk lifting his lips.
“Just help me! Seriously! Someone Google how to retract this message!”
“Hold on,” Nita groaned and leaned over the bed, pulling her phone off the floor. “Okay, let’s see...”
While she started Googling a way out of this mess, I went back and began reading the message I sent. Each word I read sent another wave of panic and embarrassment rushing through my veins.
“Anything?” I asked her, concern raising my voice yet another octave.
“Nothing yet. I’ll keep looking.”
“Isn’t there like an app that prevents us from drunk dialing and messaging? If there is, we all need that,” Louie said, the life in his voice finally starting to return. “What did you say? Is it bad?”
I turned the phone screen toward him, and he started reading it. The way his face twisted and turned, puckering and grimacing as he read on only caused my heart to pound harder.
“Okay, it’s bad,” he said, acknowledging the epic fail of my drunken debacle. “We need a redo. Any luck over there, Nita? We really need to get this thing back before he sees it and thinks she’s a complete... wait. Oh my God!” He shrieked and clasped a hand over his mouth, white eyes bulging from the screen to meet mine. “He saw it! The checkmark changed! He’s reading it! He’s READING IT!”
My own scream joined his as we bounced on the bed, screaming at each other first, and then the phone. “No! NO!” I ripped the phone from his hands and saw the little circle picture meaning Louie was right... Liam had seen the message and was reading it right now.
“It’s too late! We’re TOO LATE!” Louie shrieked again.
“What did I do?” I squealed, panic pushing my heart to a pace I knew it couldn’t sustain. The combination of the hangover and the panic churned in my stomach and making a beeline to the bathroom was going to be the next thing on the list.
“I can’t believe he saw it!” Nita joined in the panic party. “Are you sure he saw it? Let me see that.” After ripping the phone out of my hands she examined the screen. A moment later she looked up and handed it back to me. “Yep. He saw it.”
“I’m going to be sick,” I whispered, my head spinning like that time I rode the teacups and threw up on my Uncle Ron.
“BUBBLES!” Louie screamed, his voice hitting chords that would make an opera singer swoon with envy. “Bubbles! He’s typing! He’s TYPING!”
All three of our screams collided into one. The bedsprings squeaked while we bounced up and down, eyes closed and hands flailing as my terror reached a level I’d thought only possible if I’d done something like jumping out of an airplane.
“They stopped!” Nita said, and we all stopped screaming and stared at the screen. The typing had stopped. No air escaped a single lung while we stared at the message, waiting... watching.
“Bubbles!” Louie screamed when the little dots meaning he was typing reappeared on the screen. “BUBBLES!”
Our three screams reunited and rivaled the high-pitched squeaks of the bedspring when our bouncing resumed. Whoever invented those stupid bubbles clearly had a nasty sense of humor. Watching them start and stop was like riding a rollercoaster you weren’t sure was ever going to end. Now I wasn’t sure whether I wanted him to send a message, or if I wanted those bubbles to stop forever and we could all pretend this unfortunate incident never happened. However, now having seen the bubbles, having him decide not to respond after starting would likely be more painful than catching Jeff in bed with that ho yesterday.
Bloop. My phone dinged.
“Oh my God!” I shouted, wrestling the phone away from Louie who had started reading the words that replaced the bubbles. “Give me that! What did he say? What did he say?”
They leaned over my shoulder and I took a deep breath before accepting my fate and seeing the love of my life’s response to the gibberish I’d sent him after ten years apart and half a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Hello Ellie,
I cannot believe it is you. I speak English well, but it seems my writing English is not so good anymore, so I am not sure about everything you said. How are you?
“The language barrier!” Nita shouted triumphantly. “Thank God for the fucking language barrier! He thinks your drunk ass text is his inability to read English!”
“Thank God,” I finally exhaled a breath ripe with relief... as well as stale whiskey. My momentary reprieve from panic was short-lived when I noticed the little check mark next to the message he sent me was now the circle of my profile picture.
“Wait! He can see I saw it!”
“He knows! He KNOWS!” Louie screeched, and my scream joined his again.
“Calm down! Everyone calm down!” Nita, always the lawyerly voice of reason, shouted and shook us back to our senses. “There’s no time for panic! We need to respond! We need to respond now so it doesn’t look like we had to think too long about what to say! Quick!”
“What do I say? What? What?” My eyes darted between them while that wave of panic rose again and pulled me back under it.
“I don’t know! I don’t KNOW!” Louie, always the first to crumble under pressure, started to come undone again.
“Just say ‘Hi’ or something! But say something fast or he’ll think it’s weird you’re not responding! He knows you saw it!”
“He knows! He KNOWS!” Louie fell apart again, and I struggled not to join him.
With shaky hands, I pushed the buttons on the screen. I wanted more time. Time to come up with the perfect thing to say. Sexy, confident, witty, and just the right thing to make him remember how amazing I was. The thing I thought I typed last night only to find out it was pretty much Pig Latin. But there was no time. He knows.
“Done!” I shouted as I pushed the send button.
“What did you say?” They grabbed my hand and pulled the phone over to the center of our huddle, all three of us reading the message.
Long time no see. I’m really good. How are you? Found our old picture last night and thought I’d say hi.
“Okay, okay... not bad,” Nita said, nodding her approval.
“Is it okay?” I asked, trying to slow the pounding in my heart. “I had no time! I wanted it to be so much better. I can’t believe I’m messaging Liam right now.”
In my hungover stupor, it finally sunk in that this was Liam. My Liam. I was messaging with my Liam. Twenty-four hours ago, I was in a relationship with Allen. Now this morning I was single and reconnecting with the man who changed my life... and ruined any chance another man had of winning my heart.
“Bubbles!” Louie shrieked again, and we all pushed our heads together and stared at the screen.
Bloop. The phone beeped and his message appeared.
I’m good. I can’t believe it’s you. I’ve thought about you so often, but I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again. I’m so glad you found me. I looked for you on here once, but I couldn’t find you. I’ve missed you, Ellie.
Three gasps filled the deafening silence in the room.
“He missed me?” I whispered, barely able to form those words. All these years I figured he’d forgotten about me, but he missed me?
“Oh my God,” Louie sighed, clutching his chest. “He missed you. And I told you you should use your real last name when you set up your social profiles! He was looking for you, but you’ve got Ellie Butternuts as your screen name, dumbass!”
“What do I say?” My worried eyes looked back to them for direction.
“The truth,” Nita said, meeting my searching gaze. “That you miss him, too.”
With a deep breath, I took back the phone and typed the truest words I knew.
I miss you, too.
When I pressed send, my stomach fluttered the same way it did every time he used to flash that smile at me. Like a thousand butterflies lived inside and only awakened under the heat of his stare, falling asleep again only when his eyes would drift away. I’d missed their presence and closed my eyes to relish the feeling that only Liam could e
voke in me.
“Bubbles!” Louie shouted, bouncing beside me and my eyes snapped back open.
Bloop. The message reappeared.
Good. :) Now tell me everything. Where are you now? What are you up to? It has been ten years too long.
Even though it was just a smiley face, I felt like I could see his real smile, and those butterflies rose up once again for a flight around my stomach before fluttering back down to rest.
The panic subsided now, and excitement took its place. Settling back down onto my back, confidence took control of my fingers and I started messaging him back, telling him about my life in Chicago and asking him about his. I barely noticed Louie and Nita staring at me expectantly while I giggled at his messages and chuckled at my own clever responses.
“It looks like you have this under control?” Nita asked, quirking a brow.
“I think so.” I looked up and grinned wider than I knew my face could stretch. “You guys. This is him. The big one. I can’t believe I’m messaging Liam right now.”
“If you two fall in love, get married and have babies, I fully expect the first one to be named Louie, since I’m the one who made this happen,” Louie said.
“Jack,” I responded.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m naming our child Jack since just a few minutes ago you said this was Jack’s fault, right?” I teased, waggling my brows.
He scoffed before bursting into laughter. “Touché. But it was me who found him, so I still get a baby named after me.”
“Deal.” We exchanged a smile and then my phone beeped again.
“It’s a friend request!” I gasped and Louie turned and flew across the bed, landing beside me.
“Accept it! Can we see pictures?”
“Ooh! Pictures!” Nita flopped onto my other side.
After clicking the “accept” button we stared at the screen and I pushed the button to go to his profile.
“Just prepare yourself. It’s been ten years. A lot can happen in ten years,” Louie said, a look of concern twisting his face.
The Big One (Second Chance Romantic Comedy) Page 3