I shot her what must have been the twentieth text of the night, checking in to see if she was okay and waited for her answer to come in and soothe my concerns.
Tatum:
*squid emoji*
Saint looked up as the messages came through on the group text for him too and he slammed his palm down on the table with enough force to make his laptop leap off of it for a second before clattering back down.
“I swear to Christ, if someone doesn’t tell me what the fucking squid emoji means soon, I’m going to lose my shit.”
“You lost it a long time ago, bro,” I joked, trying to shrug it off, but I had to admit, the damn squids had me stumped too.
The most infuriating thing about them was the fact that Kyan seemed to know exactly what she meant by them as well. But he wouldn’t fucking tell us. Just smirked like a knowing little dickhead whenever she sent one and told us that we really needed to work on keeping up to date with the kids. Fucking asshole.
Blake:
Be serious, a minute. We just wanna know you’re alright.
Tatum:
Gah, wasn’t my last message clear enough? *squid emoji* *otter emoji* ¿
Saint:
No, it isn’t clear enough and if you don’t explain your answer, I’ll be punishing you for it later tonight.
Tatum:
I don’t know why you’re getting so angry at me. I answered the question. You can’t punish me for shit. Unless you found out about the thing I did to your cufflinks. In which case, I’m sure you’ll find a suitable way to make me pay, master ;)
Saint slapped his phone down on the table and got to his feet suddenly. He stalked away from me and headed up to his room to check the truth of that. I relaxed a little as I waited for him to return. Clearly she was fine if she was wasting time baiting the demon in him, but I still felt uneasy about her being way over on the other side of campus.
I shot a quick message to Danny, telling him to come meet me outside ASAP. I needed something to do to pass the time and I wanted to be closer to her too.
Saint stomped back down the stairs with his fists tight, but there was an excited light in his eyes which seemed to counter his rage.
“What did she do?” I asked curiously.
“She replaced a set of my cufflinks with two raisins,” he explained, his teeth gritting around the word. I knew well how he felt about dehydrated fruit, but I wondered if Tatum had known that she was striking him with a double blow when she’d selected the raisins as her weapon of choice.
“Who the fuck ever thought it was a good idea to su-”
“Suck all of the vitamin C out of a perfectly good grape and make it look like a shrivelled old ball sack to boot?” I finished for him with a grin. The raisin rant was a classic.
Saint smirked at me as he acknowledged his OCD was showing and adjusted his belt buckle thoughtfully before heading back to his laptop.
“Why don’t you seem all that pissed about this?” I asked him curiously. When Kyan fucked with his shit like that, he always lost the plot.
“Because she knows she’s been bad and is willing to accept her punishment.”
“Which will be…?”
His dark eyes flicked up to meet mine again and the hint of a smile toyed around his lips. “Utterly satisfactory for both of us,” he said cryptically.
I opened my mouth to ask him what the hell that meant, but the group text sounded again as another message came through.
Kyan:
We need to *onion emoji* tomorrow like you promised, baby. Don’t forget.
Tatum:
*squid emoji*
Kyan:
*octopus emoji*
“This shit has to stop,” Saint snarled.
Saint:
I’ll fucking *squid emoji* you until you’re begging me to stop, unless you quit it with this bullshit.
Tatum:
What?
Kyan:
That makes, literally no sense, dude…
“Gah.” Saint slammed his fist down on the table again and started frantically typing something on his laptop.
A horn blasted outside somewhere beyond The Temple and a message came through on my phone from Danny a beat later, telling me he was waiting for me.
“I’m going out,” I said, grabbing my letterman jacket and shrugging it on as I headed for the door.
Saint didn’t reply but I caught sight of his Google results as he scanned responses for what the squid emoji meant in current culture. His jaw was tight and his eyes narrowed and I was willing to bet Tatum’s punishment for riling him up was going to be pretty savage unless he managed to figure it out.
He didn’t even say goodbye to me as I walked out and I rolled my eyes at him. He was going to sit there trying to figure out that squid emoji right up until he had to go get Tatum from the library.
I tossed the door closed behind me and rubbed my hands together as the icy bite of winter nipped at my exposed skin. My breath billowed between my lips and the frost
