Page 75 of The Other Guy

I actually smile because if she’d have said anything else, I’d have been a bit disappointed.

Me: That you stole my t-shirt. What else could I be talking about?

I actually have no idea if she did, but I did see a bulge in her coat that I thought was a bit mysterious.

Sierra: Oh, right! That just slipped into my hands and under my coat while you weren’t looking. Completely innocent.

Me: Here I thought you wanted to keep sleeping in it.

Sierra: You caught me. I’m actually wearing it right now.

Given the fact that I texted her to get her to admit she’s been lying to me, imagining her in my clothes is not good.

Me: Aside from clothing theft, anything else?

Sierra: ***taps chin*** Nope. I think I’m all out of confessions.

Me: Are we really gonna do this? Unknown… 19 I think?

Sierra: ***sighs*** Okay. Okay. I confess.

Me: What is it you’re confessing?

I sit comfortably as I imagine her rolling her eyes and squirming. Then I’m startled when my phone starts ringing with a FaceTime call.

I press connect and laugh when a close-up vision of Sierra’s face making a puffer fish face fills my tiny screen.

I pull my phone right next to my face and pull the funniest face I can muster, eyes crossed and cheeks sucked in.

We both laugh.

When we look normal again, phones at an appropriate distance from our faces, I take her in and am a little disappointed that she was lying earlier about wearing my shirt. Not that I expected her to be, but it would have been an awesome surprise.

“I should have told you,” she blurts out and winces.

“Right.”

“I just… was embarrassed.”

“About what?” I ask but have a feeling I know the answer. And it honestly pisses me off a little bit. She has nothing to be embarrassed about. Just because the guy she was with is a cheating asshole doesn’t mean anything about her. That’s all on him.

“The guy I was living with was sleeping with pretty much the entire town, sending his girls your number so you would have to deal with them.”

“I think that conversation is for another day, when I can show you how asinine that is.”

“Huh?”

I sigh. “Sierra, you have nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s on him, not you. Well, the not telling me part is on you but him cheating? He’s an idiot and that has nothing to do with you.”

“Hard to believe it can’t be.”

“Put it out of your mind, okay?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

She looks away and murmurs for me to hang on. The phone jostles around a little bit, the screen swaying this way and the next before her face appears once again.

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