Chapter 203: A Cutie in My Stead
** Harper **
With Chelsea’s help, dinner ended successfully on a peaceful note, with no dramatic news-breaking other than the cooking challenge. At some point though, the incessant commentaries coming from the earbud did start to give Harper a hallucination of being in a werewolf novel, where her chatty wolf simply wouldn’t stop talking in her head and offering snarky remarks about her love life ... But considering that her wolf was indeed resourceful and reasonable, she had nothing to complain about.
If only she could do the same with Eli.
After returning home from the restaurant and hanging up on the chat, Harper sat down at her desk, staring thoughtfully at the airpod she had just taken off. Now that Tyler had gone to stay at Eli’s apartment, it was going to be a long four days ahead, without Eli by her side and without a way to hear his voice or feel his warmth ... Was there any way to make this work like she did with Chelsea? Could there be a different kind of medium that was quiet and tangible, something that they could use to pretend that they were still right next to each other?
She contemplated the question on and off for the rest of the night, all the while wondering how the dinner had turned out in Eli’s perspective or whether there had been any private conversations at his place involving her. For over a dozen times, her hand drifted to her phone, and she’d type up a longing text message to ask him how everything was, before remembering that she couldn’t really send it and risk Tyler discovering something at the worst time.
Ugh.
So she deleted it all and kept waiting patiently ... until a few minutes after she got in bed. Finally, her phone dinged with the message she had been waiting for all night.
[ Eli: Asleep yet? Sorry it took me so long to text. Tyler finally went to bed. ]
[ Eli: I miss you. Let’s play that airpod game at some point too so I can keep talking to you nonstop. ]