The text was from Greta: can’t say i’ve gone there (lezbian) but lemme know?

Confused, Truman looked at the message above it. He’d apparently sent it at 11:12 p.m. and had no memory of doing so.

To his utter, stomach-churning horror, it read, Is ash a good kiss? Lookslike he would be bc of his mouth right>?@!

“Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

He squeezed his eyes shut tight and sent up a prayer to that same, unbelieved-in god: please let that have been the only text.

He opened his eyes just enough to see the screen and saw that it was definitely not the only text.

“Oh, kill me.”

11:02: hi greta! We’re gona save thorn! For ash

Greta had replied, that’s great!

He’d responded with a GIF of a little girl crushing a soda can in her hand. Then he’d written, Ash is so nice but mean.

Greta had sent a question mark and said, elaborate pls.

He had written Exactly.

Clearly realizing he was intoxicated, she’d just sent a laughing emoji and apparently put her phone aside before she had seen his final message. About kissing. Ash.

“Kill. My. Soul.”

Truman collapsed onto the couch and quickly replied, LOL a drunken imp stole my phone and texted totally unrelated-to-life things apparently pls ignore everything.

Then he pulled the blanket over his head. Only it wasn’t a blanket; it was Ash’s sweater.

Feeling extremely fail, he added, The plants are doing great btw!

generally i find when drunken imps steal yr phone they tell the truth, Greta replied, devastating any remaining shred of Truman’s dignity. yay plants! the flora here is outrageous and dreamy, ps. horse is also great—i’ll send pics later :)

Truman walked into the carnivorous plants room and saw another one had turned brownish gray. He prayed that it was one of the ones that went dormant in winter.

“Either that or I ruin everything I touch, sooo.”

He went through the routine for the rest of the plants and, satisfied he didn’t seem to have killed any of the others, checked them off on the spreadsheet.

He dragged himself through a few hours of work, but his mind was ticking away in the background. He’d come to Owl Island to get away from New Orleans and the shame and heartbreak he’d experienced there. His feelings about Ash weren’t really about Ash, right? They were about Guy. Guy, who had been dazzling and intimidating and hot and unattainable and, finally, a bad guy.

But it hadn’t just been to get away from Guy and memories of him. Or to avoid the people who might have witnessed his mortification. Was it? Truman liked New Orleans. But he’d just kind of…stayed there after college.