Switch

abandoned in my sparkly purse under the pile of my

discarded clothes. I had to dig past my Steve Madden

pumps to reach it.

Five missed cals.

Five? Crap. I thumbed the keypad to check out the

numbers. I had voice mails, too, though without dialing in I

couldn't tel how many. Kira had caled me around 4:00

a.m. but hadn't left a message. That could be good or bad,

depending. One was an old cal from my mother I hadn't

deleted. The other three were from Austin.

Triple crap.

The voice mails were from him, too, half an hour apart.

The first two were brief 'when are you going to get here?'

messages. The last one had come in around six-fifteen,

after I'd already gone to bed. It turned the corners of my

mouth down.

'Look, I know I've been an asshole to you in the past.'

Then fifteen seconds of awkward silence, punctuated only

by the soft in-out of his breathing. 'I'm sorry. I just…I was

a fuckwad, and I'm sorry. Cal me, okay? Please.'

A few more seconds of silence and he added, 'Please.'

Is there anything more simultaneously pathetic and

arousing than a pleading man?

I couldn't bring myself to delete that message. I thought I

might want to listen to it a couple-twenty more times. I

thought I might want to get that statement, 'Sorry, I'm a

fuckwad.—Austin Miller' embroidered on a tea towel

and wipe my hands with it.

It was the only time Austin had ever apologized to me for

anything he'd ever done. I wasn't sure it meant anything

now. Not after al this time had passed.

I didn't delete the message, but I didn't cal him back,

either. Instead, I hauled my sorry ass out of bed and

stumbled to the bathroom where I peed for what felt like

an hour and brushed my teeth and puled my hair on top of

my head in a messy ponytail.

I wanted to go back to sleep, but I knew better than to

expect to be able to. I was up for the day now. My

stomach rumbled and I took my last two slices of wheat

bread from the fridge, where I kept it to prevent mold, and

popped them into my toaster oven. I needed to hit the

grocery store in the worst way, though the state of my

finances meant it would be another week of on-sale tuna

and ramen noodles rather than steak and lobster. Ah, wel.

There was nothing new about that. I'd grown up thinking

There was nothing new about that. I'd grown up thinking

Kraft shels and cheese was gourmet fare.

While my toast browned, I sifted through the pile of junk

mail I'd brought in the night before. I tossed aside a few