hasn’t asked. Speaking of…” I pulled up my phone and selected everyone in my contacts. Quickly deselecting the guys and my family members, I typed out a short text. “Send.”
“What did you just do?” Otis asked, grabbing my phone and scrolling to the message section.
“What? What’d he do?” Bryan questioned.
Eric grabbed the phone from Otis and looked up. “Holy Shit, A.”
25
Jurnee
Anderson - Please delete my number from your contact information. I am no longer interested in any communication with you. Thanks for the memories. Best of luck.
I reread the text for the fifth time. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared down at my phone. We had had such an amazing weekend together. Could not letting him take me home piss him off that much? How did I misread him this badly?
Sadness rolled down my back like a storm coming into the plain. We hadn’t declared we were in love with each other or anything dramatic, but I was really starting to like him a lot. What a colossal misread. Jesus, Jurnee.
Derrick answered on the first ring. “Great! You’re not dead then.”
“There is no one on Earth with worse judgment than me. I just got the fuck off text from Anderson.”
“You did not. I saw the way he looked at you when you were here. There is zero chance he is breaking up with you.”
“You can’t break up with someone you’re not with.” I reread the text for a second time.
“Whatever. You are terrible at interpreting what someone is saying. Read me the text.”
“Please delete my number from your contact information. I am no longer interested in any communication with you. Thanks for the memories. Best of luck.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. Huh.” I flopped back on my bed. “Derrick, I want to cry.”
“I know you do.”
“For real. If you hadn’t picked up the phone, I might be ugly crying in a fetal position on the bathroom floor.” I combed my hair over my eyes with my fingers in an effort to hide from the unexpected direction the day had gone.
“Jurnee, you can always ugly cry with me.” He sighed. “The ‘thanks for the memories’ was a major asshole thing to say.”
“Do you mean because I bought him a plane ticket with all of my extra money?” I sat up and gathered my hair, draping it all over my left shoulder. “Or because I introduced him to my favorite places and people?”
“Well, yeah. For starters. Did you have sex with him?”
Flipping the ends of my hair up, I examined them. “I mean… no.”
“What the hell does ‘I mean… no’ even mean?” He gasped, “Oh my God! Please tell me it didn’t fit. I need to hear this right now.”
A much-needed smile spread across my face, and it reminded me how much I needed my best friend. “What am I even doing here?”
“Sowing your oats and not falling in love because that would just be a horrible turn of events. Oh, and you’re going into business with one of the most successful under 35s in New York City.”
“I don’t think I belong here.” A hair with a split end stood out, and I gave it a forceful yank. “I definitely didn’t belong with Anderson Douglas. So, maybe he was just ending it before I got too into him. Did I tell you he has a one-hour window every day that he accepts texts from women?”
“Accepts them for what?”
“They’re applications for spending the evening with him. Apparently, he selects the one that grabs his attention. And, by attention–”
“Jurnee. I get it. Are you sure about that? He told this, or you just heard about it?”
“Guess it doesn’t matter much now, does it?” I declared as I made my way to the bathroom.
“Hold on. Haven’t you spent almost every day with him for like the two weeks?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“So, what changed?” Derrick was asking the Universe, but I knew the answer.
“He started to let me in.” I closed the toilet lid and plopped down on the seat.
“Explain.”
I shrugged my shoulders and picked at the nonexistent lint on my jeans. “Well, I met his best friends last night. We played poker together…”
“You cleaned them out, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t take the money. I swear I didn’t.”
“Jurnee, you have to tell people you went out with a world champion poker player in college.”
I rolled my eyes. “No one asked.”
“Because that’s something that everyone asks when they sit at a poker table. How much did you take them for?”
“Fifty.”
“Not bad. They can’t be mad about fifty dollars.”
“Thousand.” I