Benito scowled. “What?”
“I still have your phone.”
“Keep it,” Benito snapped tiredly. “The passcodeis your name, if you can figure it out.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“Don’t swear.”
Gianna held up Benito’s legitimate phone. The other felt like a brick in his pocket. “You got a bunch of messages,” she said. “I didn’t mean to read them, but they came up on the screen.”
“My messages don’t do that.”
“They do if you got the new WhatsApp update and didn’t reset all your notification settings.”
Benito frowned, his brain mush. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“Everyone knows unless they live in a cave.”
“Just give me my phone.”
Gianna grinned wider.
“Gianna.”
“What? Am I not supposed to know Mickey thinks you’re cute when you sleep?”
Burn.Benito froze, half relieved by the nonchalance in Gianna’s teasing and half mortified that she’d caught a glimpse of his sex life. He’d never hidden his bisexuality from her, but at the same time, they’d never come close to discussing it either. And he’d certainly never imagined himself confessing to fucking his mother’s housing officer.
Lie. Tell her it’s a different Mickey.But no words came to him. Benito could only stare while Gianna laughed.
“He wants to see you again, by the way,” she said. “On Monday. He has the day off.”
Benito rounded the car like a bullet and snatched the phone.
Gianna giggled and sensibly slid into her seat and shut the car door.
Benito turned his back to the window, blocking her out, and opened the message thread he shared with Mickey. Three messages came after the one Gianna had paraphrased.
Mickey:come out with me on monday? day off.
Mickey:fck. I spelt it all rigth
Mickey:2 soon oops mondy?
Monday. Somehow Benito had convinced himself it would be weeks and weeks before he saw Mickey again. Perhaps there was a part of him that had believed he never would. That his lie would burst free before he found a chance to make it the truth.
Heart full, he closed his eyes and made himself the same promise he had Gianna.
Just a little while longer.