“No. He’s fine,” he slurred. “I managed to keep him out of jail. Best best man ever.”
I lay on my side and tucked my pillow under my head. “Sloan’s freaking out, by the way. Neither of you answered her calls.”
The truth was I had been freaking out too. Sloan’s talk about Josh sleeping with other people had haunted me all night. And without Sloan knowing where Brandon was, I didn’t know where Josh was. I hated that.
“Shawn threw our phones in the lake in front of the Bellagio.”
I snorted. “What?”
“Yeah. We’re not even in our hotel. We’re at—hold on. The Twisted Palm Motel. We couldn’t make it back. Too drunk.”
“Well, I’m glad you called. At least I can tell Sloan where Brandon is in the morning. He should have gotten to a phone. She worries.” And so do I.
“He’s too fucked up. Shawn made him take a shot every time he said ‘Sloan.’ We had to carry him to the room.”
I cracked up and Josh chuckled with me, a leisurely, tired, intoxicated laugh.
It felt so good to talk to him. I’d missed him so much. I didn’t realize how much until he was on the phone. I wished he were here, in bed with me instead of three hundred miles away.
“I had to go to the business center to call you,” he continued. “I didn’t know your number, so I looked up your website. I’m not sorry I woke you up.”
I scoffed. “Oh, really? And why not? You should feel terrible. I need my beauty sleep.”
“No you don’t. You’re perfect.”
I smiled. “Why, thank you, Drunk Josh. That’s very nice of you to say.”
There was a hiccup in the pause. “What did you do today?”
I told him about the spa and the mud and the suck-for-a-buck shirt. “Sloan made sixty-seven dollars. She’s not speaking to me, but we sold all her Life Savers.”
He laughed. “Do you have pictures?”
“Yeah. I’d send you some, but you don’t have a phone. If you’re still in front of a computer, look me up on Instagram.”
Sloan’s insistence that I connect with him on Instagram finally made me fold. I didn’t have any pictures of him. At least I could cyberstalk him if I followed him on Instagram, look at him when I missed him—which was all the time.
The phone shuffled. “Okay. Hold on.”
I reached under the bed and pulled out my laptop. “Can I follow you too?”
“You can follow me anywhere.”
He was flirty when he was drunk. It was cute. He didn’t usually say things like this to me. I shut it down immediately when he did. But Drunk Josh wasn’t really Josh.
“How come Sober Josh doesn’t have all this swagger, huh?” I teased.
He snorted. “He does. He’s just trying to follow your many rules. Drunk Josh doesn’t live by rules. Drunk Josh does what Drunk Josh wants,” he said, stumbling over the words.
“And what does Drunk Josh want?” I smiled, tapping his name into the search bar on Instagram.
“You.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You’re lucky you’re not here. I’d take advantage of you. You sound too weak to fight me off.”
“I consent.”
I sent him a follow request, laughing at his comment. A second later I got his and approved it.
We got quiet as we looked at each other’s pictures.
“I didn’t know you rock climb,” I said. There was a picture of him hanging off the side of a seriously high cliff face. He had on a harness and helmet, and he looked, as always, so handsome. “And you water-ski.”
“Tyler,” he said dryly.
I forgot I had those pictures on there. Tyler and me at the Marine ball. A few more goofy selfies during his leaves. One of him kissing me.
“Celeste’s pretty,” I countered, looking at picture after picture of them smiling together. She was a Sloan. The kind of woman who doesn’t need makeup. The kind who glows when she smiles.
“You’re prettier,” he said.
“And your dick is bigger than Tyler’s.”
This garnered me a laugh. I could imagine the sparkle in his eyes and the dimples in his cheeks.
I missed him.
The ache ripped through me. I hadn’t seen him in so long, and somehow the separation didn’t lessen how I felt the way it had with Tyler.
Tyler faded. He always faded, even though we’d talk on the phone and Skype and write. But Josh just got brighter. The ache got deeper the longer I went without him.
Hopefully it was the opposite for Josh. I hoped the time away from me had cooled any feelings