Page 23 of Love Me Boldly

My phone rang again, and I went to hit End, but it wasn’t a blocked call.

It was Graham.

I debated. Thumb poised over the red circle.

And then… I answered instead. “Hey.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Graham said in lieu of the appropriate greeting. Like hello or hey, back. “You’ve gotta be pissed, and I wish you would have texted me when it happened.”

I had to give him credit for not hesitating to jump right in. “I didn’t think your friend would tell you, and I didn’t want to cause problems.”

“You wouldn’t cause a problem.Elicaused a problem, and it was ridiculous because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“No? Because he seemed pretty certain he did.”

You’re not the only one with a closet full of secrets…

I’ve had a bad year…

“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly an open book either. Did you consider I needed time to warm up to tell you stuff, too?”

“So this ismyfault?” Oh, that was definite sass in my tone and not the fun kind. But if he thought for a second that I could be approached by a strange guy on campus warning me away from his friend and then blame me for it…

“No. Sorry. That’s not what I meant. I’m ticked at Eli and had a crap night because of it. So I’m sorry. Really. I just…I don’t talk about it, but I know I haven’t been honest with you about things.”

“Like how you got my schedule?”

It seemed easier to tease him about something trivial. If he started being honest, he might demand the same from me, and all of a sudden, with thoughts of my dad and his phone call on my mind, I was staring at a door I was asking him to open, but I wasn’t ready to give the same back.

“My aunt Denise works in the campus career center. I told her if she gave me your schedule, I’d commit to having six Sunday dinners with her.”

The truth spilled from him so easily, I wished we were on a FaceTime call so I could see his face. Sure, he could be lying, but…why?

“Denise?” I asked.

“Denise Campbell. My mom’s sister. It’s only one of the reasons I chose NCWU, because I like being close to family. You can go say hi to her if you want. I’m sure she’s curious to know why I asked her for it.”

“Well, aren’t you just turning into being super honest tonight, but I think I’ll pass.” I tried to laugh it off, but a heavy sigh came from his side of the phone.

All the secrets of my own I was hiding came back to me, and now that we were talking, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know his.

My phone buzzed, and before I could look, Graham asked, “Need to take that?”

He’d clearly heard the pause through the phone.

“No.”

I didn’t bother peeking. Dad’s habit was to call at least three times before giving up on me. If he paid for the call himself withmymoney instead of expecting me to pay more than double for it to call collect, he’d be able to leave a voicemail.

“Iamsorry about Eli, Holly. He spoke when he shouldn’t have.”

“He sounded like a friend concerned, that’s not a bad thing to have.”

There was the heavy beat of silence before he cleared his throat. “I went through a hard year. Last spring was especially tough.”

We actually had that in common. We also both had aunts we liked. And we both had secrets.

Maybe we had more in common than I originally thought.

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