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“I’d rather wait for Tess,” I typed.
There was a very long pause.
“Wait for her to do what?”
“Whatever she wants. Coffee. A walk. Nothing. I’m not paying Tess. I’ll wait for Tess.”
The dots appeared and disappeared six times.
“Okay,” she wrote at last. “That’s annoyingly lovely. Give me a while. I need to think about it, and I’m going to Lanzarote with Gemma for a week, and I can’t think about you while I’m lying next to your sister by a pool.”
“Fair.”
She went to Lanzarote. Gemma posted photos. Tess in a white bikini, laughing on a lilo. I looked at that photo far more than was reasonable.
On the last night of the holiday, at two in the morning, my phone buzzed. One photo, from Tess. Just her bare feet on a hotel balcony at sunset, and her painted toenails.
“Thinking,” she wrote.
The next night: a photo of a cocktail. “Still thinking.”
The night after that, back in Manchester: a photo of her front door, open. “Done thinking. Saturday. Bring wine. Do not bring an envelope.”
I read it twelve times.
I bought three bottles of wine, just in case. And on Saturday, at seven, I knocked on her door.
Ending 12 of 16: Rain Check. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.