Dear Jason

Chapter 3

"Oh my god!" I semi-screamed, holding the cell phone I was gaping at in my right hand and smacking Katie's arm with the other. She didn't even acknowledge me until I eventually hit her hard enough to make her drop her phone.

"Oww! What, Lola?" She responded, minorly annoyed, as she bent down to pick up her phone.

"He. Texted. Me. Back."

That got her attention. She immediately sat up and turned to face me. "What!?" She repeated.

Instead of replying, I just held my phone in front of her so she could see for herself.

On my lock screen was a text Jason sent at 11:46 pm, saying "hey".

"What do I do?" I asked her, suddenly really nervous. I had been so cool with texting him because I was almost positive he wouldn't text me back. Now that he actually did reply to me, I didn't even know what to say, if I even had the guts to.

"Just text him back, Lola!" Katie urged me.

I nodded my head, realizing she was right. I could do this, I told myself. It's not big deal. You text guys all the time. But you haven't spoken to Jason in months, I reminded myself.

Forgetting the argument in my head, I slid my finger quickly across the glass, typed a casual "what's up", and was about to press send when Katie stopped me.

"Now what!?" I sighed, wanting to just send the message before I could chicken out.

"He only texted you three minutes ago. If you reply that quickly, it'll make you look too thirsty." She replied, like it was obvious.

I just rolled my eyes and turned back to watching Dance Moms. I put my phone down on the coffee table. "I'll just wait until this episode's over to text him. Make him wait, I guess." I said, acting like it was my plan all along.

Then Katie and I sat in silence next to each other, since there was really nothing to say. We just watched our favorite show together. I noticed that her phone had somehow ended up on the table next to mine. I guess her and Joe had stopped texting or something and I hadn't noticed. But I didn't want to bring it up, after spending so much time on the topics of Jason and Joe.

I had eventually become so into the show that it wasn't until a commercial break that I noticed Katie wasn't sitting next to me anymore. Figuring she had just gone upstairs to get a snack, I looked down at my phone to check the time. 12:28 am. I unlocked my phone and saw the unsent message to Jason staring back at me. I had completely forgotten about it. I didn't really have anything to lose and it had been almost an hour, so I pressed send.

While I waited for Katie to come back, I scrolled up through my old conversations with Jason. I had to scroll through quite a few "hey"s I sent him all those months ago that he never returned. Looking at them, I remembered why I didn't want myself to like him in the first place. He just cut us off, and it was like he flaunted Alyssa and her friends in our face. Almost as if he was showing us how much better they were.

I sighed and scrolled even further. I was back at the time when we actually had real conversations, when we were actually friends. I smiled at the memories. Realizing how stupid I was being for smiling at my phone I quickly locked it and focused back on the show. After only a couple minutes, Katie walked back downstairs with bags of chips and two bottles of diet coke.

We watched a couple episodes of modern family before deciding to finally go to sleep for the night. It didn't matter how late we went to bed because we finally would be able to sleep in as much we wanted the next day and we were excited.

I awoke to a slight buzzing noise. Lifting my head from my pillow, I squinted around the dark basement. My eyes landed on my phone a couple feet away from me, its screen was glowing. I stretched my arm out to unplug it and pull it over to myself. It was 3:54 am. I sighed, momentarily hating my phone for causing me to wake up so early. I looked over and saw Katie sleeping deeply on the other sofa. Silently groaning, I read the message from Jason; "nm. And sry bout today ;)"

Woah. He was definitely talking about grabbing my butt earlier. But why would he even bring it up? And the winky face? What's that supposed to mean? Is this his weird way of flirting or just some perverted joke? This is why I hated guys. They're so unpredictable and so confusing. How did he even expect me to reply to that? I knew he wasn't honestly sorry, because he wouldn't have done it if he was, or have sent that winky face. God, he is so annoying.

But then again, maybe he's actually flirting with me. Or maybe he just remembers how things used to be with us, and he misses it. Maybe the three of us can all be friends again and this is like his peace offering. I suddenly imagined Jason, Katie, and me all walking around the mall like we used to, always stopping in the food court for strawberry smoothies. Maybe we could all be best friends again, except everything will be way better now since it's summer vacation and all. Or maybe he's just using me to get back to Katie. I know that him and Alyssa ended a couple weeks ago, so he's probably still in that awkward post-breakup stage. He's probably going to ask for advice on how to get her back. He used to always come to me for girl advice.

I snapped out of my thoughts when I realized I was getting way too ahead of myself. I couldn't keep letting myself think so deeply about things. I decided it would be easiest to just assume he was flirting with me. That's normally what the wink means, anyway. And if he was going to play with me, who said I couldn't play with him either? I might as well have some fun. Stepping out of my comfort zone I texted back an "oh rly?" and pressed send before I could regret it.

I stared at the sent message, proud of myself. I knew Katie would be proud too. She's the flirt out of the both of us. Guys are always all over her, although she can never tell. I'm a lot more shy and reserved. Well, I can be loud and obnoxious and crazy at times, but it all depends on who I'm with. I normally don't flirt with guys unless I really like them and I'm pretty comfortable having actual conversations with them. Normally I probably wouldn't have even replied, but I'm taking more risks this summer.

I locked my phone and laid down again, getting ready to try and go back to sleep. I wasn't expecting him to reply any time soon since he took so long with the other messages. But I had already been awake for a couple minutes, which was long enough to wake myself up completely. So I just stared at the dark ceiling, thinking of him.

I wondered where he was right now. He was probably at a party. But I imagined him being at home, watching a movie or something. He's probably out having a good time with friends though, which would explain why he's been taking so long to text back. He used to reply almost instantly, which I always loved about him. He was one of those guys you could text for hours and hours, and never get bored. He'd always be interested in what you had to say (or at least pretended to be).

I wondered what he thought of me every time he saw his name come up on his phone. I wonder what my name even was in his phone. Back when we were friends, we put emojis in each other's names. But I changed it to just plain Jason after we stopped talking. Did he do the same? I wondered if he ever thought about me. Or Katie. All of us together, really. Did he ever regret cutting us off? Did he ever miss hanging out? I imagined him laying in bed, too busy caught up with his thoughts to sleep. I wondered what he thinks about when it's late at night and everybody else is sleep but him. Why am I even thinking of him now? Doe his last text make me like him more or annoyed at him?

I catch myself checking my phone to see if he replied yet. I convince myself it's just because I want to see how he replies to my text more than actually wanting to talk to him. I don't know why I'm so disappointed to see that I don't have any new texts...

And before I even knew it, I had fallen asleep thinking about Jason for the first time in what felt like too long.