37. Wrong Number
37
Wrong Number
Evan
I spend Valentine’s Day with Matt.
This isn’t a development either of us saw coming.
Earlier this week, a shipment of books that was supposed to be on its way to major university bookstores vanished from the distributor’s tracking system.
This means me and Matt are spending our evening calling up warehouses and combing through shipping manifests.
Since we’re the only two people without Valentine’s Day plans, we were both pretty quickly volunteered up for overtime.
Neither of us kicked up a fuss, and I’m pretty sure that we both notice that about each other, and we must both come to the same conclusion about each other’s love lives because this is the first time Matt’s gone more than one hour without making a jab at me, my work or what I’m wearing.
We’re working in silence and picking at slices of pizza that have long gone cold when my phone buzzes.
I pick it up, expecting something from a warehouse or distributor, and I freeze.
Matt looks up, frowning, and asks through a mouthful of pizza.
“What’s that look for? Did your stocks crash or something? ”
My phone drops from my frozen fingers, clatters to the table.
Matt picks it up, eyes wide.
“Oh shit. What now?” He glares at me.
“I can’t take more bad news, man. Not tonight.”
And then he looks at my phone.
For a second, we both just stare at my screen in stunned silence.
At the photo of Sophie, braced against curly iron railings, head tilted slightly back.
She’s wearing the tiniest dress imaginable, the outline of her waist, hip and thigh visible beneath the sheer lace at the sides.
Her hair is in a severe ponytail, and she’s wearing her thick-framed glasses, her black blazer, heels and lipstick the colour of crushed ripe cherries.
“What the fuck,” Matt whispers finally.
“You’re really sitting here on Valentine’s Day when this is your girl?”
“She’s not my girl,” I say quietly, eyes still on the photo, on Sophie’s expression, commanding and a little wicked, the flush in her cheeks and the dull spark in her eyes that tells me she’s been drinking.
“Can’t you read?” He lifts the phone up to my face so I can look close, as if my eyes aren’t already glued to the screen.
“She’s literally telling you to c ome get her .”
I shake my head slowly.
“She’s just drunk.”
“So what? Nobody ever got drunk and decided to eat their least favourite food is all I’m saying.”
He’s still holding my own phone up inches from my face.
I grab it out of his hands and roll my eyes.
“What does that even mean?”
“This girl clearly wants you. Don’t be an idiot. Go get her. If a woman like that was texting me , I’d be breaking the fucking sound barrier getting to her door. ”
It’s a difficult conversation because for the first time since I’ve met him, Matt is telling me exactly what I want to hear, and it’s taking every atom of self-control I have at my disposal to resist the urge to get in my car and floor it to Boston without stopping for a single red light on the way.
“It’s complicated,” I say with a sigh.
“Trust me. Anyway, we told Inés we wouldn’t leave until we’ve figured out where the hell our books are.”
Matt swipes a hand through his already messy hair and glares at the spreadsheet on his laptop.
“Warehouse 17 says they never got the shipment, but the distributor swears it left their facility three days ago. So where the fuck did it go?”
“We’re supposed to get an update from freight logistics before eleven,” I mutter, glancing at the time.
10:47 p.m. “If they don’t get back to us in the next ten minutes, I’m going to pull another Illinois and fly there myself.”
Matt groans a laugh.
“Nothing like harassing third-party logistics on Valentine’s Day. Love is truly in the air.”
I check my phone again: Sophie’s message is still open, her eyes and words a challenge.
Come get me .
Ten months of silence, ten months of nothing, ten months of sticking to the plan, of being good, of resisting every impulse to call her, to look her up, to go to Cambridge and crush the breath out of her lungs with a kiss.
Ten months of constantly fighting temptation—and she’s the one who broke first.
What does that mean?
It’s got to mean something.
But she’s drunk. So it probably means less than nothing.
Right?
I look up and meet Matt’s eyes without meaning to.
For a moment, we’re both totally silent.
And then Matt slams his fist on the table and jumps to his feet .
“Fuck this. I’m calling them again.” He points an aggressive finger at me.
“We’re finding these books and you will go get your girl.” He pulls his cross out of the collar of his shirt and kisses it.
“A-fucking-men.”
Matt’s prayers are answered, but it’s long past midnight when we finally step out of the office.
It’s stopped snowing, the night is quiet, trees shivering in the wind.
Matt rummages in his pocket for his car keys, then claps a hand against my back.
“You did good, kid.”
“You did most of the work.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ll be telling Inés, but just between us—you did good.”
I laugh, breath misting in the cold dark.
“Thanks.”
Matt studies me for a moment, his eyes narrowed against the sharp wind.
“Look, I’ll say this. You’re young, and you’ve got a hell of a lot to learn, but you have good instincts—for such a clueless rich kid, anyway.” He waves a vague hand at my phone, which I’m still gripping in my fingers.
“So whatever your gut is telling you to do, I’d say listen to it.”
My gut’s been telling me to get to my knees in front of Sophie Sutton for years now.
I don’t say that to Matt.
I point at the office over my shoulder.
“You know we have to be back here in six hours, right?”
Matt scoffs, rolling his eyes.
“So? Aren’t you rich or something? Charter a private fucking jet, I don’ t know.”
He doesn’t wait for a response, just pulls open his car door and drops into the driver’s seat, shutting himself off from further argument before peeling out of the lot.
I don’t charter a jet.
I don’t head for the airport, or scroll for last-minute flights, or check departures boards to see if there’s anything leaving for Boston tonight.
I don’t do what every impulse inside of me is demanding I do.
Instead, I stand in the middle of the quiet street, staring down at my phone.
Sophie’s message is still there, waiting for me every time I unlock my screen.
Sophie out on Valentine’s Day, drunk, messy, unbearably gorgeous.
She’s dressed like that, she’s out at some Boston club with that deadly combination of dark beauty and those haughty, commanding eyes.
I’m not stupid. Sophie could have anybody she wanted.
She could snap her fingers and any man or woman with a pair of eyes would follow her home on their hands and knees if she wanted them to.
But that’s not what she wants.
Because if that’s what she wanted, Sophie would never have texted me.
She’d never have allowed the wound to her pride dealt by being the first one to text the other after almost a year of silence.
If she texted me, then it’s because she wants me.
And fuck if I don’t want her.
And it would be so fucking easy .
I could be at the airport in twenty minutes, on a plane in an hour, in her bed before dawn.
I could give her exactly what she wanted, what she always wants from me, my needy, gorgeous girl.
I could make her squirm and whimper and beg with all the ways she likes being made to submit, with her hand still firmly around my leash because she knows she only needed to send me one text for me to come running.
And in the morning, nothing would have changed.
She’d wake up, sober and untouchable, peeling herself off my heart to retreat behind an iron fortress of composure, the careful distance that only ever means one thing: I want you, but not enough .
I shake my head, lock my phone, and climb into my car.
I’m going home. It’s the right decision—it’s the smart decision.
Sophie and I have spent years orbiting each other, crashing and burning and trying again, and every single time, we’ve only ended up more ruined than before.
I’m not going to allow it to happen again, not when I know how it ends.
My phone buzzes just as I’m starting my car, as if it knows.
I know it’s her before I even look.
My fingers, stiff from the cold, shake as I unlock my screen and open the text.
Sophie : Sorry. Wrong number.
I pull up outside Sophie’s apartment building several hours later, still in my work clothes, sleeves rolled back, car full of empty cups of gas station coffee.
I’ve been keeping an eye on her location since I left Inkspill.
She’s been home for about an hour.
She’s probably in bed, asleep, blacked out after a night of partying in Boston.
My heart is an erratic fucking mess in my chest when I walk up to the door.
I push my hair nervously back, swallow hard before raising my hand to knock.
I hear a feminine voice I don’t recognise—the door opens.
A girl stands in the doorway, wrapped in a fluffy white bathrobe, blonde hair gathered on top of her head in a massive red scrunchy.
She looks me up and down, eyes wide, mouth open, and then she finally focuses on my face.
“Evan?” she says.
I nod.
She lets out a small giggle.
“You know what? I get it now.”
And then she holds the door open, and I step inside, and the first thing I notice is a sweet perfume, caramel and vanilla, drifting in the air like the shimmering trail in a video game that leads you to the magical item at the end of a quest.