Which would only be possible from this distance if I were to phone him, and that wasn't going to happen, because we both went into this agreeing that it would be a one night stand and neither of us wanted anything else, and we'd both had recent break-ups and...
"And you're a fucking coward, Lombard." Usually I spoke to myself internally, but I had to give myself a telling-off out loud. No, I was a tough guy. I could forget this ever happened and not bother.
To prove it, I picked up the lighter and flicked it on and off a few times, trying to tell myself to get on with it, but I just couldn't.
"God." I screwed my eyes shut. "I am so going to regret this." Opened them. And dropped the lighter in the trashcan, instead of washing the burned remnants of the paper down the drain.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck..." My hand shook as I copied the number, tapped it into my phone.
And slid it shut before hitting the call button.
A process which only happened three or four times before I swallowed the bile back far enough to go through with it.
"Hello?"
I gulped. Said nothing. But I knew he knew it was me. And he was waiting for me to speak. "James?"
"That's me." He cleared his throat. "I was hoping you'd call, but didn't expect it to be quite this soon."
I mouthed the words shit, fuck, shit to myself, wondering if I'd fucked up already. It was a habit of mine to stress out over this sort of thing, to take that stress to insane levels, but too late now. I'd already called him and the fucking lighter was in the trashcan. Nothing was going to get burned today.
"Can't believe out of all the names possible, I guessed correctly. Is that definitely your name?"
"Definitely definitely my name."
"I must be psychic. Or lucky."
The pause before he spoke again lasted for hours, somehow crammed into a matter of seconds and I prayed I hadn't said something stupid, or made myself sound like an idiot.
"Yeah," he said, with a light laugh that set my adrenaline to rest. Maybe this hadn't been a big mistake after all. "It's like you knew me all along."
About the Author
Scarlett Parrish is allegedly human and lives somewhere in this dimension. In between feeding her insatiable appetite for James Purefoy DVDs, smut-reading and chocolate biscuits, she wonders if she'll ever get a good night's sleep.
At the moment, she's probably writing another dirty book. Or thinking about Michael Fassbender. Or both.
Blog: http://scarlettparrish.blogspot.com/
