Chapter 7: Ms. Bean
I stare at Sabrina's text, the casual "Uhhhh heyy... you haha..." glowing on my screen like some alien hieroglyphic I'm supposed to decipher. My brain, still spinning from the nuclear bomb that just went off in my life, can't process something so mundane as a girl texting me. It's like getting a paper cut while your leg's being amputated, technically it's still pain, but the scale is so wildly different it's almost laughable.
My hands are still shaking on the steering wheel, but somehow, this absurdly awkward text message is like a splash of cold water, pulling me back from the edge of total meltdown.
I type back a simple "hey" because what else can I possibly say? My life is imploding, I just found out my mother is an escort, I had sex with her last night, and oh yeah, I came inside her. But sure, let's chat about whatever normal college shit Sabrina wants to discuss.
My phone buzzes almost immediately. She's sent a gif of an Eevee sitting up, panting with its tongue out.
"What the fuck?" I text back, genuinely confused.
"fuck no, sorry, I misclicked," comes her rapid reply, followed immediately by... the exact same Eevee gif again.
Despite everything, despite the fact that my world is crumbling around me, I actually laugh. It's a broken, slightly manic sound that echoes in my car, but it's still laughter. For a second, I'm not the guy who fucked his mom, I'm just some dude getting weird texts from a cute girl.
"Oh Jesus Christ," Sabrina texts, and I can practically see her mortified face. "do you have classes today?"
I glance at the time. Even if I did have class, there's no way in hell I could sit through a lecture right now. "no."
"do you want to grab grub," she asks, and something in my chest loosens just a fraction.
"yes, please," I type back, surprising myself with how desperately I mean it. Food, normalcy, a person who doesn't know my fucked-up secret, I've never wanted anything more in my life.