If you are worried that texting me would be too soon, it isn't
John was greeted by this message from Riley when he went to shut off his phone's alarm on Monday morning.
Shucks, wanted to appear cool and aloof
he texted back, rolled out of bed and started his day. The first order of business was starting the coffee maker. There had to be a way, he figured, of setting it to go automatically, but he had come to the conclusion that he and technology were never going to see eye to eye. Having pressed the button, he set off to the shower while it started percolating noisily.
As undressed for the shower, he took another look at his phone. No reply, but he did check the timestamp on the last one. Past midnight the previous night.
Hopefully a reasonable sleep schedule was a suitable excuse for the late reply.
The phone buzzed while he was just finishing up the shower and he nearly tripped in his hurry to towel off and look at it.
Don't fall for this girl,
he told himself.
Literally, don't fall over and break your neck in the bathroom in your rush to see whatever meaningless thing she has sent. That's not how you want to die. Not after just one date, anyway.
He was disappointed, to say the least, to see that the buzzing was caused not by a message from Riley, but rather one from Carrie, his recent ex with whom his "friendship," more in the "let's just be friends" sense than in the actual, genuine sense of the word, was rocky, at best.
you still have my stuff
He was uncertain what "stuff" she was referring to, but whatever it was, she could have it. While they were together, they had never officially moved in together, but she'd spent more and more time at his place, which meant that he had gradually accumulated any number of items which she had brought over either for the night and then abandoned or to align his house more with her tastes.
He hadn't minded at the time and, if he was being honest, didn't mind it now. She had never been, for whatever other flaws she had had as a girlfriend, one of those annoying types who constantly pushed to make him or his domicile over in her image, just tweak it here and there, and besides, her tastes were never the problem. Outside of an errant toothbrush or other odd hygienic necessity, they had come to a point of being comfortable enough with most of the items just being "theirs" rather than "hers" or "his" and so he couldn't tell what it was she could possibly want to retrieve, but he also couldn't care.
Whenever
he texted back.
Pretty sure you still have a key. Just don't forget to lock up if I'm not here.
Surely that was agreeable enough and would not start another pointless ex post facto fight about nothing.
not going to just walk in to your house like a creep
will u be there saturn day
???
Autocomplete was never her friend,
he mused. He found her objection bizarre, thinking she should prefer to avoid contact if possible, but for all he knew she was using this as a pretext for another fight.
Whatever.
Sure, not busy.
He decided to ignore any further texts until he was not only toweled off but had ingested sufficient caffeine. It was not until then that he had even remembered he should at least figure out where he was supposed to be going to work this morning. John was what was termed a "consultant," a vaguely important enough nomenclature for what he actually did to pay the bills, which largely entailed reporting to a different company every few weeks or months to listen to one idiot middle manager's plan to screw over some other, equally idiotic middle manager of a different department, then sign off on it.
One might imagine that this type of "work" would be so obviously pointless that no one would ever hire a "consultant" for any reason, but one would be wrong. John was, while certainly not rich, able to make a decent enough living bouncing from company to company, none of which he ever had any insight into the actual workings of, signing off on plans, the success or failure of which never seemed to have any impact on himself, and telling human embodiments of the Peter Principle whatever they wanted to hear. Dumb work, but well-enough paid, and it kept him moving around. He even sometimes got to "consult" in foreign countries, although that particular type of "work" was not the norm.
In any case, his calendar dutifully told him where he needed to be in the next hour or so and so he finished up his coffee. As if by some cosmic coincidence, an apropos message from Riley popped up on his phone just as he closed the calendar app.
I guess you are at work?
don't know where that is. forgot to ask.
guess you aren't the only one bad at first dates
The first three messages had come in rapid succession, but the next did not arrive till he was finished brushing his teeth.
I will be much better on the second one :P
He texted back,
seemed pretty good at it to me
, considered for a moment, and then added
pretty good at Mario Kart, too :P
by mario kart you mean anal, I hope
the memory alone was enough to start his dick hardening.
that and mario kart
He quickly added
off to my mysterious work :-P
The morning's work was unremarkable beyond having to force himself not to check his phone repeatedly while some vaguely-titled executive droned on about "synergy" and "streamlining." The job was an easy one, but one had to remember that what this type found most compelling an in underling, even a temporary one, was his ability to at least appear focused on whatever the boss was going on about, and texting away during an "important" meeting would be frowned upon. He felt he had shown admirable restraint by making it to lunch without checking for Riley texts. He even managed to order himself a light lunch at a cafe near work and find a table in the corner before whipping out his phone, embarrassingly anxious to hear from her again.
...but first he had to deal with more Carrie texts:
will come by
do u have boxes
where do you get boxes for stuff
He could feel his face involuntarily twist itself up into an expression of annoyance.
I don't think I have boxes. Try a grocery store? They usually give them away
