10. Giselle
Chapter 10
Giselle
H ightailing it away from Hudson, I flag down the first taxi I can find, taking a quick picture of the driver’s ID and car license plate to send to Rosie.
I fire off a pin showcasing my location too, my thumbs bouncing about the screen while I stare at the greyed-out dot beside her contact name. She isn’t even online.
I peer out the back window while I wait for her reply, staring out at the depths of London.
Even at night the city is still alive and pulsing, like a heartbeat.
We pass the Thames, the surface of the moving river aglow with light from the rows of streetlamps that ran along either side of the embankment. Out of the slightly cracked open back window, I hear somebody call to their friend. A quarter of a mile up the road, we drive by a high tower block of apartments, over half of which are pitch black through their windows, but some are awash with colour, the people inside still awake for one reason or another.
When I finally feel my phone buzz with an incoming call, I hardly check the ID before hitting accept.
I stare into the face of my best friend. “I’ve done something really stupid.”
“You? Do something stupid?” Rosie screws her face up in confusion, the pixels of our phones on our video call highlighting the laughter lines bracketing either side of her mouth. “I don’t believe it.”
Rosie listens as I tell her about accidentally bumping into Hudson at the tattoo shop, not even complaining about the sudden breaks in my story as I pay the taxi driver for my ride, ducking into my apartment complex and racing up the stairs to my home.
Once I’ve locked the door behind me, I rip open my refrigerator to grab my bottle of wine and fall onto the sofa cushions, picking up right where I left off, telling her about our flirting, which I couldn’t seem to stop myself from engaging in, and then finally my agreement to go and grab a drink with him at the local pub.
“So… a date.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, but rather a statement.
“It wasn’t a date!”
“Sure, sounds like one to me, Gee.” Rosie rolls her hand in the universal sign for ‘carry on’.
“We we’re just talking and laughing and… he mentioned how much he wanted to kiss me and my god all I could think was how much I wanted him to kiss me and touch me—”
“Because you want to ride him… understandable.”
“Rosie!”
“Why are you video calling me from your apartment if Hudson was all over you? Shouldn’t you be back at his, dimming the lights and getting all freaky beneath his sheets?”
Hudson Millen doesn’t strike me as the type of man who dims the lights at all or fucks a woman under his sheets. He’s probably an animal just like he is in the gym, pushing, pushing, pushing, until you’ve given him everything you have left to give.
Why does that thought turn me on?
“Because I freaked out.”
“You freaked out?” Rosie repeats.
I bob my head. “He just kept on talking about how there wasn’t any pressure and this and that—”
“That sounds like a good thing, Gee.”
“He said we didn’t have to make things complicated.”
Rosie falls silent, her lips pressing together into a straight line.
“Yep,” I continue. “When I asked him about all the other girls in his contact list, he said we didn’t have to make things complicated. That’s code for, I want to sleep with you, plus every other girl in the Southwest London borough and we both know it.”
“When you put it like that…” Rosie squints. “Gee, are you sure he meant it like that, and it wasn’t just because his words hit a trigger point?”
Ignoring Rosie’s question, I take a healthy gulp of wine. God, this wine is awful, it tastes the way paint stripper smells, but it was the cheapest bottle of wine on sale at the shop beside my apartment.
“Did I mention it’s his birthday tomorrow?”
Rosie’s mouth falls open. “Hudson’s?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you dumped the man on his birthday?”
“One, there was no dumping. You have to be in a relationship, with labels, to dump someone and second, it’s not his birthday for…” I click my screen to bring up the time. 9:07 p.m. “3 hours.”
“Rounding back to my previous question.” I swear in her past life Rosie could have been an attorney at law. She’s all rational and shit. A peacemaker through and through. “Both you and I know Giselle, that Hudson saying you don’t have to make things complicated is a trigger point for you. A big one at that. But does he know that?”
“Not unless he’s psychic,” I mutter, tongue fuzzy and heavy in my mouth. What the hell is in this wine ?
“There you go, then. You can’t blame him, Gee, he doesn’t have a clue about you or your past—”
“That’s my point exactly, though,” I hear myself argue. “We hardly know anything about each other. How can he know he wants me?”
Rosie shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe because you’re a knockout? And you’re funny and kind and you give him as much shit back as he doles out? You don’t just stand around and titter at every little thing he says, practically hanging on his off arm like a rabid dog in heat, waiting for him to notice you?”
I sigh. “I just don’t know when this happened.”
“When what happened?”
“All of it. This whole situation. This isn’t—it isn’t—” Why are my eyes watering?
“Don’t cry,” Rosie coos.
I slide the nearly empty glass of wine onto my bedside table and furiously wipe at my eyes with the heel of my free hand. “This isn’t what I wanted to happen tonight, Ro.”
“I know.”
“This isn’t what I wanted to happen in general. I didn’t mean to feel this attraction and these… these jealousy feelings when I think about him with other girls…”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“No fucking clue.”
Rosie chuckles. “I guess you could always—Oh my god.”
I wipe my eyes again, but more pointless tears just keep on coming. “What?”
“You’ll never guess who just messaged me.”
“Who?” I ask, standing to pour the rest of my wine into the sink.
I glance down to make sure Rosie’s still there as I pad along my small hallway and into the kitchen – the WIFI in my apartment can be iffy and unreliable in spots – and then I look away. The connection between the two of us bounces about as she quickly thumbs out a reply to whoever is texting her, making me feel a little bit motion sick.
“Hudson.”
Blood rushes loudly between my ears.
“What? Hudson? Hudson’s texted you?”
Rosie nods quickly.
“How did he even get your number?”
“Rex, maybe?” She shrugs. “I know those two are pretty close and Rex has my number in case of emergencies.”
I lick my lips. “What did he say?”
“He wants your number.”
“Mine?” I squawk, the sound loud in my otherwise silent apartment.
“Yep.” Rosie pops the ‘p’ and then giggles gleefully.
“What are you laughing at? Rosie—”
My words die on my lips as my phone begins to vibrate in my hand, an unknown eleven-digit mobile number lighting up my screen. The bright red decline button and the bright green accept button taunt me forming into a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.
I bounce the pad of my thumb over accept and then decline, accept and then decline.
“Rosie?”
“Yeah?”
“I have to go,” I say, my goodbye becoming drowned out by her laughter and then I stab the green accept button.
“Hello?” I peer down at my fingers, watching as I spin the plain gold band of my ring around and around the circumference of my digit.
“Are you back at your apartment?” Those are the first words out of Hudson’s mouth, not “Hi” or “Hello” or “It’s me Hudson, Rosie gave me your number so I could call you”.
“Mhm. Where are you?”
He ignores my question. “Do you know how shit scared I am right now, thinking something might have happened to you, Giselle!”
Oh.
He’s not a happy bunny. Not in the slightest.
And it’s all my doing.
I stumble over to my sofa, falling back into the soft cushions when my knees begin to feel weak beneath me. “Why would you be worried?”
“Why am I worried?” he scoffs. In the background I hear the sound of a passing police car siren. “Why the fuck am I worried?! Maybe because you ran out on me, clearly upset, and just fucking disappeared into the night? Anything could have happened to you, and I wouldn’t have had a fucking clue!”
“Hudson—”
“I had no idea if you’d gotten into a taxi or walked or was standing somewhere, on the side of the road, waiting for a godforsaken bus! I don’t even know how far it would take you to get home! And you’re asking me why I’m walking the streets fucking worried.”
My heart settles somewhere in the base of my throat.
I inhale jerkily, skin clammy and prickly all of a sudden.
“Hudson, I’m sorry, I—”
“I don’t want you to be fucking sorry,” he utters. “I want you to tell me where the fuck you live so I can make sure you’re safe.”
“I am safe, I promise, I—”
“Your address, Giselle.”
“Hudson,” I try again. “You really don’t need to—”
“I’m not asking again. Text me your address, Giselle.” And with that, he hangs up, leaving me to hear the loud thrum of my blood coasting through my veins.
Pulling my mobile phone away from my ear, I save Hudson’s phone number into my contacts list and then key my address into the blank text message box. I wait for the two ticks beside my name to appear, grey for only a millisecond before they turn blue, and I know Hudson has read my message. He must have been on the other side waiting, phone in hand.
His reply comes through instantly.
Hudson: I’ll be there in 10.