The Rebound Agreement ✔

eighteen

[unedited;
please leave a few comments as you read!! thanks!]

There's no better way to start out your weekend than with another double shift at work and a strong sense of denial regarding your feelings for your boyfriend. I'd say that I'm not in denial, and that I really do only have friendly feelings for him, but I'm pretty sure being in denial of denial isn't healthy.

But apparently I'm not in a healthy mood based off that said denial and the strawberry ice cream that I scoop for myself and hurriedly eat following the end of my second shift. If Owen wasn't so busy worrying about Amanda as he talked to her in hushed tones on the phone, he might have noticed my hearty serving of ice cream, but I quietly pay for it and slip out without saying goodbye.

I start walking home, the path so familiar to me that I don't even have to think about it. The pleasant thing about eating ice cream outside while it's cold is that it doesn't melt. But that's the only positive side effect of eating the freezing ice cream in freezing weather, unless you count my stomach getting a little bit rounder than it already is.

Just as I'm shoving the last bite of ice cream into my mouth, my phone rings, alerting me of Liam calling me.

"Hello?"

"Katie!" he answers enthusiastically. "I'm surprised that you picked up."

I adjust the phone to sit between my ear and my shoulder as I dump the styrofoam bowl that was holding my ice cream into the nearest dumpster.

"Why are you surprised?"

"Oh, you've only answered once out of a million times I've called you in the last couple of weeks. That's not such a great track record, but I'll let it pass," he not so subtlety brings up my avoidance of him following watching The Princess Bride with him sleeping in my lap while I read his text messages. I didn't want to avoid him, but something about those texts made me uneasy.

He hurries to change the subject. "But that's not what I called to talk about. What are you doing right now?"

///

"So," he begins as he plops down on my bed next to me. My roommates, especially Hannah, had given me some suggestive looks behind Liam's back when I lead him to my room and shut the door firmly behind us, but I decided that them assuming things was marginally better than them eavesdropping.

"So?" I ask, tucking my hair behind my ear.

"I've done some intense stalking, and I can't find you on social media anywhere. We need to fix that." Liam meets my gaze and gives me a challenging look as if he expects me to disagree.

I don't disappoint him. "I don't want to be on social media. I don't need to share everything with the world," I defend myself, grabbing a pillow off of the floor and hugging it against my chest.

"You don't have to share everything. And if being on social media is out of your comfort zone, then we're doing it." He holds his hand out for my phone, staring at me with his right brow raised.

I sigh. "Fine," I give in without much of a fight, and Liam does a dorky fist pump, a smile lighting up his face.

"But don't expect me to ever post anything," I warn him, handing him my phone. "And I don't want to be the one who has to make all those accounts, so you have to do it."

Liam accepts my terms without comment and gets to work, his forehead scrunched up and his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth in concentration.