©Megan Hart, may not be reproduced without permission

When the phone rang, I didn’t leap to answer it. The movie on the television and the popcorn on my lap were more interesting. My mother could talk to the answering machine.

When the machine clicked on and a male voice began speaking, though, I dumped my popcorn on the floor and grabbed up the phone. I had a moment to realize I was acting like a girl who’d been waiting for that special boy to call. Probably because that’s exactly what I was.

“Hello?” I made my voice sound casual, though I felt anything but.

It had been a week since I’d shown up at his door in my underwear. A week since I’d left him sleeping. He hadn’t called. I hadn’t, either, though I’d dialed a number of times and hung up, like a school girl.

“What are you wearing?”

I looked down at my soft flannel pajamas. I’d washed them so many times the plaid pattern had faded mostly to grays and whites. “What do you want me to be wearing?”

Dan’s voice shifted a little. I imagined a smile. “Nothing.”

Such a small thing, that little bit of flirting, but all at once I felt like air had rushed into my lungs, and I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. “Nothing but a smile.”

“Do you often sit around your apartment wearing nothing?”

“Do you often call up women out of the blue without identifying yourself and ask them what they’re wearing?”

“No.” I heard shuffling, as though he were switching the phone to the opposite ear. “But you knew who I was. Didn’t you?”

“You mean this isn’t Brad Pitt? I’m so disappointed.”

“Are you really wearing nothing, Elle?”

I laughed. “No. Why?”

“Why did you leave without saying goodbye?”

I looked at the mess of popcorn on my floor, my laugh fading away. “It seemed easier, at the time.”

He made a noise of disbelief. “For you.”

“Yes, Dan.” I sighed. “For me.”

He was silent for a while, but he didn’t hang up. Neither did I. It would have been rude. The irony of that didn’t escape me; that I could leave without saying goodbye but not hang up the phone on him without doing the same.

“I want to take you someplace,” he said finally. “I need a date.”

I considered a moment before answering. “Is this an emergency?”

“Sort of. Yes.”

I started to clean up the popcorn as I spoke to him. “And you think I’ll…suit?”

“Elle,” Dan said. “You’ll be perfect.”

“Flattery doesn’t always get you everywhere, you know.”

“It’s a good start.” He shuffled some more, enough to make me wonder what he was doing. I could easily imagine him running his hand through his hair, his habits already familiar though I barely knew him. “You want to do this for me.”

I paused in gathering the kernels from my rug. “Do I?”

His voice shifted again, a little lower, a little huskier. “I think you do. Yes.”

“What, exactly, do I want to do?”

“You want to put on something stunning and come with me tomorrow night.”

“Where?” I had nothing stunning. I also had no plans for tomorrow night.

“A place I have to go. Dinner. Formal.”

“And you want to take me? In something…stunning.” I thought about it. “What do you consider stunning? I don’t have anything formal.”

“I’ll have it delivered to your office. You’ll wear what I choose. You’ll come with me to this dinner.”

He’d provide the dress and the dinner. I’d provide my company. There had to be a catch.

“And if I do this for you,” I asked, not because I necessarily wanted anything else but because the question seemed logical to ask, “what’s in it for me?”

“If you do this for me,” he said, “I’ll fuck you again.”

Crude. Yet it made stomach drop to hit my toes and a little gasp eeked out of me. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“You said you’d go as far as I’d take you. Did you change your mind?”

As far as he’d take me. “No.”

“I thought you might have. When you left like you did.”

“No, I…” I wasn’t sure what to say. “I didn’t think…”

“Didn’t think what, Elle? That I’d give you what you want? That I’d take you where you want to go? Did you think I’d let you go after that night, just because you keep making it so hard for me?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t know, that was the truth. I didn’t know what I wanted from him, only what I didn’t. What I couldn’t want.

“How many times have you touched yourself this week, thinking about me?”

Again, he made me gasp. The heat in my face made me glad for the anonymity of phone conversation rather than face to face. “Every night.”

I heard the grin in his voice. “You thought about me, then.”

“Yes!” I swept popcorn back into the bowl. “I did.”

“Don’t frown. You’re prettier when you smile.”

“You can’t see my face, how do you now I’m frowning?”

“I can hear it in your voice,” he said. “You’re not as much of an enigma as you’d like to be, Elle.”

That annoyed me, and I stood with the full-again bowl to dump the poor wasted treat into the trash. “Are you always this arrogant?”

“Always,” Dan said. “I’ll send the dress tomorrow.”

“Maybe I don’t want to go with you tomorrow night.”

“You want to,” was all he said, and then he hung up.