Chapter 390 | Did You Miss My Voice?

Chapter 390: 390 | Did You Miss My Voice?

"Excuse me."

"Not like that. Or like that, sure, whatever, but I’m asking a real question."

There was a long pause, and in it he could hear her deciding whether to hang up, and he could hear her not hanging up, and the not-hanging-up was so loud it may as well have been a confession read into a microphone.

"Pajamas," she said.

"Uh huh."

"Silk."

"Uh huh."

"Fine."

"Alexis."

"Don’t."

"Did you miss my voice?"

He used the voice on purpose. Not the entire thing. He kept most of it leashed because she was on the other end of a phone in some gated Newport estate with her parents asleep down the hall, and full power through a speaker at midnight had the kind of consequences he wasn’t interested in dealing with. Not tonight. Not with anyone’s parents involved.

He heard the inhale.

Small. Sharp. She cut it off maybe half a second too late, which meant she hadn’t braced for it, which meant she’d walked right into it unprepared, and he was just enough of a bastard to file that away as a win.

"Hnn..." The sound escaped before she could stop it, more air than voice, barely there. Then, immediately after, with enough venom to kill a small dog, "No."

"Real convincing."

"I said no."

"Yeah, but your breathing disagreed."

"My breathing is not submissible in court." More fabric noise. She was moving around now, maybe sitting up, and he could make out the specific rustle of what had to be a duvet that cost more than his car, his tuition, and possibly his internal organs combined. "You are so unbelievably smug right now. I can actually hear it. You have a face. A specific face. I know the face. You are currently making that exact face at a telephone like an absolute psychopath."

"So you’ve been keeping track of my faces."

"Do not start with the tracking thing, that is Kumiko’s entire personality." A pause. Then, quieter, and all the ice had melted out of her voice now, and what was underneath sounded so exhausted it did something unfortunate to the general area of his chest. "You looked happy. In the photograph. That’s why I didn’t answer you for five hours."

He stopped moving entirely.

The faucet dripped once into the porcelain sink.

"Not because I was angry," she continued, faster now, like she was doing damage control in real time and losing. "I’m not angry. I genuinely do not care what you do on a Saturday, obviously you can do whatever you want with whoever you want and it is categorically not my concern in any way shape or form. I only mean that I looked at the picture, and you had those stupid ears on, and Chloe had her hand on your waist like she’d purchased the warranty, and Kumiko was practically welded to your arm looking at you like you’d personally invented fire, and you were smiling."

"Jesus Christ."

"I am simply providing an accurate description."

"You’re committing actual war crimes right now."

"I am being accurate," she said again, and then, slower, "and I sat there in the women’s restroom of a restaurant that has three Michelin stars, on the tile floor, still wearing my dress, staring at a photograph of you in cartoon mouse ears, and I thought, oh. That’s what it looks like."

"What does what look like."

"Don’t make me say it."

"I’m not making you do anything."

"You’re always doing this to me." Her voice started out thin before hardening, like something that could crack if you pressed too hard. "You call me princess in a lecture hall full of two hundred people and I completely forget how to type my own name. You drape your shirt over my shoulders outside a convenience store in Koreatown because I looked cold for five seconds and now I literally cannot fall asleep unless I’m wearing it. You send me a single photograph of your entire weekend with your actual life happening in it, no explanation, just six words, and I end up sitting on imported Italian tile in a three-star Michelin restroom having some kind of minor psychological event. You do all of that, constantly, and then you answer my phone call at one in the morning sounding like you think the whole situation is funny."

"It is funny."

"I’m aware."

"That’s sort of my defining flaw."

"Yes. I’ve noticed."

He studied himself in the lit mirror over the sink. The bruise blooming purple along his collarbone. The bite mark Kumiko had left on his shoulder blade that still looked angry and red. The towel hanging off his hips. One ridiculous foam Mickey Mouse ear headband abandoned on the counter next to the neatly folded guest towels, exactly where he’d dropped it three hours ago. And behind all of it, his own face staring back at him, the version he’d spent six weeks getting used to and still sometimes looked at like a stranger’s reflection.

"Where are you right now," he asked.

"In my room."

"What are you doing."

"Horizontal. Staring at my ceiling. Getting cross-examined by someone whose degree will be in profit margins and spreadsheets."

"Are your parents awake."

"They’re asleep. My father has a six AM flight to Singapore." Fabric rustled on her end. "Why are you asking me that."

"Because you need to stay quiet."

"Excuse me?"

He dropped it lower. Not the polite version this time. He let the whole thing out, the full frequency, the one Chloe had made him swear on a stack of lease documents that he would never use in a public place, and he said, "Alexis."

The sound she made was not a word.

"Ah . . . nnh . . ." It came through the speaker high and startled and completely without her permission, and then there was a scrambling noise, and then a muffled thump, and then her voice came back from underneath what he assumed was a pillow, absolutely shredded.

"You cannot. Do that. Over the phone."