The Score (Sequel to The Exchange)

Chapter 9- The Best Nightmare You'll Ever Have

He looked at me, his head tilted to the side. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Neither do I. Sometimes, you're pretty goddamn pathetic." I laughed. "But here I am, so clearly that's not that big of a problem to me."

"I really do love you."

I let out a sigh. "You've made that known, and you know exactly how I feel about you."

He frowned. "So nothing's changed?"

"Is there a problem with that?"

He shook his head. "No, but I just wish you'd give me a chance."

I knocked my knuckles against the table and bit my cheek.

"So that's a no?" he asked.

"For now, yes."

There were several reasons for that. I figured it would be easier to miss Blaine as just a friend, but even so, I missed him in a completely different way than I missed Matt, Arti, and everyone else. I didn't know what the difference was, and I wasn't going to allow myself to dwell on it enough for me to figure it out. Emotional Amanda was always a freaking mess.

Even Blaine's daily texts with a random story from his day weren't quite good enough. They could never compare to the way his face lit up when he thought something was funny, the way he ran his fingers across my skin while he was paying attention to something else.

I had never really paid attention to it, but he was one of the most sense-oriented people. Sight, sound, touch: they were how he kept up with what was happening around him, and even though I didn't let him get away with a lot of the romantic things he wanted at first in our relationship, he shut up about it. Just because I didn't care for it.

Blaine was pretty much the best thing ever.

And stupid Emotional Amanda crashed another party. She just loved to do that.

I looked over at Viktor. I loved him too, of course, but it was different. An "I want to see you be everything you can be, and I'll kill myself to get you there" type of love. Almost a low-level maternal love, I imagined.

And as long as he could live with that, then everything would be perfectly fine between Viktor and me.

***

The next morning, I woke up to two hundred and thirty-two texts.

Blaine made a group chat with Arti, him, and me. I wasn't sure how making one slipped my own mind, but those fucking idiots always brightened my day.

I scrolled through the messages, and most of them were just the words, "wake up, Amanda."

"Good morning, fuckers," I texted. It was seven in the morning, and Blaine was always one to get up early. Arti, on the other hand, was in a time zone two hours behind us, so I figured she'd enjoy my nice morning message.

I was a sweetheart like that.

I sat up in my bed, surprised to see that Jackie wasn't there. I didn't remember her even being in the room when I fell asleep.

Maybe she met a nice guy or something.

Or maybe she got kidnapped.

I picked up my phone from beside me and sent her a text. "You're not dead, right?"

Three little dots appeared on her side of the conversation. I smiled. She wasn't dead.

"I'm fine. Thanks for making sure I'm ok," she replied with a couple heart emojis.