A Watty Award winner and a featured Wattpad novel.
Five years ago, Maddie Hyun and her best friend Peter made a pact. Now it's time to follow through.
21.04.16 → 20.10.16
"Is that him?" Posy asked, leaning forward to try to see Maddie's phone and almost toppling off her chair in the process.
"Mmhmm."
Posy took the phone out of her hand to read the message, and she let out a whistle that was interrupted by her chuckle. "He's buttering you up," she said, a tipsy smile languishing on her lips. "He's trying to soften you before next week."
"No he isn't," Maddie scoffed, taking her phone back and trying to read between the lines, but she was fairly certain there was nothing there. He always messaged her to congratulate her on the things she infrequently posted to her timeline - the odd good grade on a paper - or sometimes just to ask how things were going. After firing off a quick response, a new message interrupted her train of thought before she could dwell on it.
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There was nothing to read into that, she thought. Peter always used both emoticons and punctuation with abandon and as if to signify the normalcy of her situation, she locked her phone and tucked it into her bra. When her heart tingled, she blamed it on the alcohol and took another sip.
*
By eight o'clock that evening, Maddie was alone in the house. Posy had headed home to celebrate her graduation with her parents and Nick had only come back to university for the celebration before he too had driven the two hours back to his home town. Without the hustle and bustle of her housemates, Maddie wasn't sure what to do with herself. Her father had had to head home as soon as the graduation ceremony had come to an end, and so as not to miss out on drinks with her friends, Maddie had booked a train home for the following day. That meant a solid ten hours alone, probably the longest she'd ever really been alone. Ordinarily, there was at least one other person in the house but now there was no reason for anyone to stay: classes were done; exams were over; university was finished.
She waited until she was sure Posy was home before she texted her, knowing that for all her sensibilities, her friend had an instinctive reaction of reaching for her phone when it buzzed, even if she was driving.
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Maddie instinctively blushed but a smile broke out on her lips as she lay stretched out on the sofa, her phone gripped in both hands over her face. She had dropped it from that position a few times before, and once it had been so painful that she could've sworn she had broken her nose. The bruise faded after a while, and Peter had mercilessly teased her about it for weeks. The memory lingered on her brain for a moment before her phone buzzed in her hand again and she almost dropped it.
