Such a Pretty Face by Annabelle Costa
Chapter 28
On nights we don’t see each other, Brody always calls me between nine and ten o’clock. In fact, there was one night when he drifted off and didn’t call, and I panicked. I ended up calling him myself at around eleven, and a very sleepy Brody apologized to me about ten times. Even though I was the one overreacting. Sometimes it feels like I can do no wrong in his eyes.
So when my phone rings at nine o’clock, I answer in my most sensual voice: “Hello there.”
“Hello yourself.”
I stare at my phone in surprise and realize that the number is not Brody’s. It’s a vaguely familiar number, one I haven’t seen in a very long time. And the voice on the other line is oddly familiar as well. Who is that?
Then it hits me. It’s Norm. Oh my God, it’s Norm. My internet boyfriend who I haven’t spoken to in months. The guy who I promised I’d fly out to see on the west coast, then backed out at the last minute. Before he could find out what I really look like. And now he’s been texting me intermittently and I’ve been telling him to get lost.
“Hi,” I cough into the phone. “Norm, um, hey…”
“I take it that sexy greeting wasn’t meant for me then,” Norm says.
“Well,” I mumble. “Not really. No.”
“Then I’m not calling a minute too late.” I hear him take a breath on the other line. “Emily, I’m going to be straight with you. I made a huge mistake. I’ve been beating myself up over it since we broke up. And… I want you back. I want to continue with you where we left off.”
“Oh,” is all I can manage to say.
“I was angry for a long time that you didn’t come here,” Norm says. No kidding. “I thought maybe you were making up some story to get out of it, which, in retrospect, is ridiculous.” Yep, totally ridiculous. What kind of horrible person would do that? “Your grandmother died and I was an insensitive prick. No wonder you didn’t want to come here.”
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“I love you, Emily.” And now he has one-upped Brody, who has not yet said those words to me. “You were, like, my whole world for a year, and then I completely blew it. I can’t live with myself. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I hear his words echoing in my head. I remember how much I used to like him, how I used to stare at the photos of himself that he sent me, how we used to talk on the phone for hours the way I do with Brody now. And he, unlike Brody, is whole. He can actually do all the things we talked about when we had incredible phone sex.
But Brody is the one I’m in love with now. And besides, Norm doesn’t even know who I am. My relationship with Norm isn’t real. It never was.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “There’s someone else now.”
“Look,” he says. “I’m going to be coming to New York soon. On business. I signed up for this meeting because I want to see you. Please, Emily. Give me one more chance. I’m begging you.”
Oh shit. Norm is coming to New York? That’s not good. He has my address because he wanted to send me flowers a few times. Oh God, what if he shows up here? That would be… really, really bad. No, worse than bad. It would be horrible. Monstrous. Cataclysmic. You get the idea.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “If you care about me, you’ll respect my feelings and leave me alone. I’m seeing someone else now, and… it just isn’t meant to be between you and me.”
“I think it is meant to be,” Norm says.
“It really isn’t.”
“I think it is.”
I hear a beep on my phone. Brody is trying to call me. I need to end this conversation right now. “Norm, please… don’t call me again.”
And then I hang up on him. And block the number, like I should have done in the first place.