Page 105 of Heart Strings & Hotlines
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“Lottie?”Rowan’s face enters the frame, but everything else is dark around her.
“Hey, Row. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
She peers over her shoulder, then back at me. “No, just give me a minute.”
It’s only ten, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I woke her up—and that she wasn’t alone.
A moment later, her phone jostles as she moves through the house, then she flips on a light, illuminating kitchen cabinets behind her.
“Are you okay?”
I must look worse than I thought if Rowan’s asking me if I’m okay. She’s not really a girly girl.
“Yeah, it’s just…life. You know?”
“Your dad again?”
Rowan’s been in my life long enough to know that every bad thing in my life usually points back to my father.
“Yeah.” Sort of.
“Why haven’t you cut him out already, Lottie? You know he doesn’t deserve you.”
“Peach?” My friend’s eyes grow comically wide when the male voice calls for her in the background.
“Hold on, Lottie.”
She puts the phone face down so the screen falls black while a hushed conversation carries on in the background. When she returns to the phone, her cheeks are flushed and she’s doing everything she can not to stare straight at me through the screen.
“Anything you want to tell me?” I’m teasing, but her flush deepens to an even darker shade of red.
“We’ve got a lot to catch up on when you come back to Sailport Bay.” She’s always been masterful in her evasion techniques. “What about you? How’s the South treating you?”
“It’s…”
She brings the phone so close to her face I’m practically staring straight up her nose. “What’s changed?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. Do you ever wonder…what life would be like if you made other choices? If you, if it had been easier to let people in and to trust them?”
She’s silent long enough that if I hadn’t seen her lashes blink, I would be convinced the phone froze on me. It isn’t a fair question, not after everything she went through in college, but I don’t take it back.
We bonded over our shitty childhoods, even if we never shared all the gory details. If there’s anyone who gets me, it’s Rowan.
“I don’t know, Lottie. Sometimes I’m tired of running, if that’s what you mean. There’s been a lot of people in my life who have taken my choices away from me, and I’ve worked damn hard to make sure no one can ever do that again. But I think that maybe by running, I’m also evading something potentially really stinking amazing, you know?” She’s nodding her head as she speaks, her gaze far away from our phone conversation.
“Yeah. I do.”
“What’s making you ask all these illuminating questions in the middle of the night?”
“I—I might be tired too.” The admission triggers my fears of allowing anyone in, but I tamp them down. “I’ve been spinning my wheels for so long, working so hard to do everything myself, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life by not taking a hand when it’s offered. But then, trust. How do you trust blindly after a lifetime of being let down? Does that make any sense at all?”
“More than you could possibly understand. But if this is about the hotline, you know your brother has been trying to get involved for years. He’s someone you can trust, and he only wants to help you. Me too. I’m always here for you.”
I swallow hard.
“This is about the hotline, right?” She cocks her head to the side as she stares at me.
