“Hello,” I sleepily said into the phone.
“Did I wake you?”
I lifted the phone from my ear and read the caller ID. It was Stellan. “What time is it?”
“Ten.”
“At night?”
He chuckled. “No. In the morning.”
“What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
I rubbed at my eyes and rolled over to look at my clock. He wasn’t lying about the time. “It is,” I replied.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I must have fallen asleep while writing. I never sleep past eight thirty.”
“You were probably exhausted. You didn’t get a lot of sleep on Friday night.”
I smiled into the phone. “Neither did you.”
“How was hanging with the guys?”
“Good. Lots of sports. Lots of crappy food and beer. The same thing we do every Saturday.”
“At least you know what to expect.”
“That I do. They had lots of questions about you too.”
I felt my heart stop. I didn’t want to know the questions they were asking about me. In fact, I’d just assume they didn’t know I was even real, but they had met me and they knew I existed. I also didn’t want to know the answers Stellan may or may not have given either. “I hope they were nice questions.”
“They were. They wanted to know more about you. I told them to go to your bio on your website.”
“You did not?”
“I did. It’s a funny bio.”
I covered my head with my pillow. “You’ve been to my website?”
“Of course. Why are you embarrassed by that?”
“Most of it is crap, but don’t you dare repeat that to Mika. She spent days on writing that bio because I wouldn’t write one.”
“Again, that woman scares me. I don’t think I’d want on her bad side. I’m not even sure I want on her good side.”
“She thinks you’re good looking, you’re safe.”
“Since you are just now awake, I am assuming you didn’t get my message about not coming to see you last night.”
“Your assumption is correct.” I was impressed that I wasn’t over analyzing things. I was also impressed with my restraint in not checking my phone yesterday.
“Then I will apologize once again but to you and not a voicemail black hole. I did have one too many beers yesterday and by the time the day ended, I just wanted to sleep.”
“Understood. Did you sleep well?”
“I did and you?”
“Same here.”
“Do you have plans for today?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Can I steal you away from the world then?”
“I don’t see a problem with that at all.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’ll grab lunch and then see where the day leads us.”
I hung up the phone and squealed into my pillow. I was overwhelmed with excitement.
This page copyright © 2009 Shelia Taylor
All rights reserved | This is an excerpt of the rough draft and not the final version
