Page 55 of Way Down Deep

Tuesday

11.42am

Hello?

19

Wednesday

10.19am

That was a long night. Every time I reached over to wake my phone, I’d tell myself I ought to just switch it off. Leave it until the morning.

Of course I didn’t. Around four, I even got out of bed and stumbled around the kitchen, looking for the printout of my cell statement so I could double check the number. Even though I did that last night after dinner when I hadn’t heard from you.

I wonder, did you see Private Number or Unknown Sender and ignore it?

Maybe, for a text or two.

But I sent fifty-six.

Surely that would’ve piqued your curiosity.

So I’m not really sure where I stand. I can only guess, and believe me, I’ve done little else for every second I’ve been conscious.

I wish I could see our texts, remember exactly what it was I last said to you. I was drunk. But only a little. Not enough to fuck things up that badly, I don’t think. Though, then again, I’m not positive, either.

Did you text me after those final things we said? If it was all as perfect and sweet and horny and exhilarating as I think it was, you must have.

And I didn’t text back.

Did you think I got spooked?

Did you think I regretted what I nearly wrote? I didn’t. I only regret not writing it the moment I felt it.

Did you come to your senses, decide all of this was madness and pull the plug? Maybe you blocked my new number the same moment I reappeared.

Did none of this ever even happen at all? I could’ve dreamed it in the hospital, doped up on pain meds.

Except I’ve got that account statement, stranger. And you wouldn’t believe how long that fucker is, that itemized proof of every time we’ve needed each other.

Did you maybe think it had all only ever been a creepy game, its objective to get a stranger to fall in love with me? Me, some bored sociopath, tapping out a depressing yarn to a random number in the middle of the night?

Or maybe you were playing that game. Maybe you were some dirty old man this whole time, getting off on pretending to be an innocent, a shut-in, the sweetest girl, saddled with the most heinous damage.

I don’t think it’s the last one. Whether it makes me a romantic or a fool, I want to believe you’re exactly who you said you were. I want to believe that the woman I’ve fallen for is real, and that I played some small part in helping her find herself in that lonely flat, who knows where.

Because if she isn’t real, and none of what I’ve felt these past few weeks has been real … I don’t know where to go with that. I really don’t.

Except, I suppose, back to the States.

20

Thursday

10.03pm

I was playing by our old rule, waiting until after ten. I told myself if I just showed some self-control and didn’t check, I’d be rewarded. There you’d be, waiting, my message app stamped with a twelve or a thirty-two or a ninety-nine from all the messages you’d sent.

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