Text From the Future: Dump Your Girlfriend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Room 9

Behind the motel door Malcolm records Chelsea and Toby, walks away without a sound, and the unknown number tells him what she will book next.

Toby's voice came through the door first, low and slow, in a tone I had never heard from him.

"Chelsea."

Then Chelsea laughed, the same laugh that made people turn around in the cafeteria.

"Stop it. You're so bad."

I stood in the breezeway with my phone in my hand.

My ears were ringing.

The bed frame knocked against the wall once, and then again.

I didn't need to see anything.

I switched my phone on, opened the voice memo and pressed record, because I knew I would need someone besides me to believe it.

"He's going to feel so sorry for me when I tell him I bombed it," Chelsea said, a little out of breath.

"Does he really do it?" Toby asked. "Leave the whole last section blank? Just because you asked?"

"He does anything I ask."

"That's kind of cold, Chels."

"It's not cold. It's a plan." She said it evenly, like something she had said before. "He's Malcolm. He's solid. He's the one I marry."

Toby laughed.

"And me?"

"You're the fun part."

I heard the mattress shift.

"Malcolm is so careful," Chelsea said. "He holds my hand like he's signing a form. He kisses me like he's checking the time."

"Then why keep him?"

"Because I need him. I can't explain it to you."

There was a pause long enough that I heard a truck go by on Dunmore Road.

"You wouldn't get it," she said. "I just know he has to be my husband. And I know you can't be, so don't make that face."

"I'm not making a face."

"You are. I can hear it."

She laughed again, softer.

"Come here."

I stopped the recording.

The timer said it was a little under a minute long.

I looked at it for a while.

I wanted to kick the door in.

I could see exactly how it would go. I would break the latch and stand in the doorway, and Chelsea would pull the sheet to her chin and say my name in that wounded voice.

Toby would sit up and spread his hands and say, "Dude, let me explain."

They would cry. They would both say it was a mistake, and that they had been about to tell me.

By dinner tomorrow my mother would be hearing it from Chelsea's mother, and the story would already be that I had overreacted.

I took a step back from the door.

A housekeeper was coming along the corridor with a cart, humming, and she gave me a polite nod.

I nodded back.

Then I went down the stairs, one at a time, and sat on the curb beside the vending machine.

My hands were shaking, so I held them between my knees.

I played the recording once through the phone speaker with the volume low.

It was her voice, and his, and nobody could say it was anyone else.

She had given me eleven years of birthday cards and I had never once doubted her handwriting.

I put the phone to my ear and listened to the part where she said, He does anything I ask.

She was right. That was the worst part.

Yesterday I would have done anything she asked.

I would have turned in a blank page. I would have enrolled at Ashford State, and every night for four years I would have carried her bags and paid for Toby's gas.

The phone buzzed in my hand.

The same unknown number.

I knew you'd sit there. Don't knock.

I typed with both thumbs: Who are you?

You. I'm twenty-five. Keep the recording. Back it up tonight, two places.

I sat and stared at that for a long time.

A message from myself, seven years away.

Then another.

She will book three plane tickets for a trip next month. A graduation present, she'll say. Let her book them.

Why?

You'll want an audience.

I read it a third time.

Across the lot, a car started and pulled away from the Starlite. It was a gray sedan, nobody I knew.

I didn't go back upstairs.

I walked home along the fence line, past the high school, past the gas station where Toby and I had once spent a whole afternoon seeing how many hot dogs we could eat.

At home I plugged in my phone and emailed the file to myself, and then I saved it to the cloud, and then I copied it to the old laptop in my closet.

Mom called up from the kitchen to ask how it went.

"Fine," I called back.

"Fine good, or fine so-so?"

"Fine good."

I heard her put a spoon in the sink.

On my desk the Kingswell University folder sat where I had left it, with a red crest on the cover.

Under it was the deposit form I hadn't dared sign.

That night my phone lit up on the nightstand.

Chelsea: Sleep tight, babe. I'm so proud of you. Can't wait to see you tomorrow! XOXO

She had sent a heart too.

I didn't text back.

A minute later the unknown number wrote again.

Check your bank app. She has your card number.

I opened it in the dark.

There was one pending charge, made at 11:12 that morning, while I was still in the exam room.

Skyline Travel, $1,386.00.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend