A boy's 998 confessions were never meant to be taken seriously — they were part of a bet. But when the girl he was playing with kisses a new transfer student instead, the game he started turns into something far more complicated than he planned.
Ethan drew truthful dare-dare addition. Check your phone. In his contacts, who did he say, I like you to the most?
Olivia, three times. Me, 972 times. The whole room went dead silent. Olivia started crying.
Ethan deleted my contact info in front of everyone. That's not even worth crying over. You know, we only pretended to date for three months. None of it meant anything.
Those 900 plus. I like your texts were from a night Ethan got wasted. He crouched on the sidewalk and nobody could get him up. He just kept his head down,
sending me those three words over and over. Once I hit 999-I-like-yous, the wager's off. We're really together. Deal? Ethan didn't look at me once when he deleted my number from his phone. The private room went unnervingly quiet.
Everyone's expressions were complicated, glancing at me every so often. Did you really not feel anything for her at all? What are you even saying? I already told you it was fake. We were just pretending. Then why'd you send her hundreds of I-like-yous? Weren't you two only together for three months?
I was drunk. his tone flattened don't even remember it olivia was finally soothed i walked home thinking about those 972 i like yous two of them were sent early on right after we started dating the other were all from the same day that was the night ethan got drunk i didn't know yet that he was
only with me because of a bet a bet between him and olivia together childhood friends he'd liked her forever confessed to her more than once but olivia thought his face attracted too