Accidental Tryst (Charleston #1)(48)

Shit. "Emmy?"





23





Trystan





The phone tries to reconnect the video signal to no avail.

"I have poor internet connection in the bedroom, sorry." I hear Emmy walking around.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Going to brush my teeth. Don't worry, I'm taking you with me." Her voice becomes echoey as she goes into the bathroom.

I grin and get up to go brush my teeth too. "Wait, do you have any mouthwash?" I ask when I'm done. "I didn't pack mine."

"Right below the sink."

I squat and open the cabinet. All I see are—

"Behind the new toilet paper rolls and next to the tampons," she says. "Sorry."

I reach forward, blindly feeling my way, and my hand grabs the top of a plastic bottle. "We're rapidly discovering all of each other’s secrets, finding out you use tampons is not a shock, Emmy. Why are you hiding the mouthwash though?"

"I hate the look of the bottle."

I look down with an amused frown. "It looks pretty normal to me. Lots of big writing, but nothing offensive."

"I don't know what to say. I find it ugly. Okay, I'm putting you outside for a second. Actually can I call you back?"

I look at the phone as if I can see her. "Sure," I say, hoping she won't second-guess herself or feel weird and not call back. I realize out of the two of us, I've already done that to her. "Talk to you in a minute." I take the opportunity to grab the charger and plug the phone in by the bed since her battery is low again. Then I take my jeans off and slide into her bed. Onto her sheets. Normally I sleep naked, but I keep my boxers on.

The phone rings. "Hey," I greet her. We're just talking, no video call this time.

"Hey," she says and I hear the smile in her voice. "Are you in bed?"

"I am."

"Me too."

"What side do you sleep on?" I ask, looking at the bedside tables on either side of the bed. The table nearest me has books piled up versus the other. I'm assuming I'm on her side.

"The left," she says. "Closest to the bathroom. I mean who wants to walk farther than they have to, right?"

"True."

"You? What side?"

"At this moment, the left." I imagine the bed in my own room at my apartment. "But at home, the right side for the same reason."

"Where's home?" she asks. "Now you know so much about where I sleep, and I know nothing about where you usually sleep."

Thinking about my apartment in New York makes me feel lonely, cold. "I have a condo on Fifty-first."

"Central Park?"

"Nearby." Actually overlooking it. I picked it up from a day trader who'd lost his entire life savings in the crash.

"Wow. David lived in Manhattan. Not too far from this hotel actually. I loved to come and visit him here."

"It's a great area." I don't say that I actually spend more time there than at home because that would beg the question as to why. "Do you miss visiting New York City?"

"I miss David. But I love Charleston. I've . . . been happy there."

There's so much she's not saying between the gaps in her words. Earlier she mentioned David was all she had left, which begs the question of what happened to her parents. I know I could ask and based on the fact I poured my soul out to her, she'd probably answer.

But I don't want her sad. Not now while she's alone and after the day she had. I want her happy, sleepy, relaxed. I want her falling asleep with me with a smile on her face.

We talk for hours.

We talk about everything and nothing.

"Like Japanese haiku poetry," I say at one point after we've both agreed to turn off our bedside lights. We're on speaker phone, and her voice emanates from the phone that I've laid face-up on the bedside table.

"What about it?"

"What's the point? I mean, I don't get it."

"There's nothing to get." She laughs. "They're little vignettes of everyday things meant to be observed for just what they are."

"It's a big joke propagated on the literary community, is what it is."

She giggles. "Go downstairs and get my book of Japanese haiku, it's sitting on the small desk in the corner by the book shelves. There's an art to it. I'll prove you wrong."

"You want me to go downstairs in the dark, with a beast on the loose who could leap out at me any moment?"

"He's not a beast."

"You were there, you saw the whole thing!" I fire off indignantly.

"Fine. Well, he likes you or you wouldn't have seen him at all."

"Likes me? He farted in my face."

"Exactly. He feels comfortable around you. He'll probably come visit you in the night."

I sit bolt upright in the dark. "Emmy, you better be fucking kidding." I look toward the shadowy opening of the stairwell.

"Oh, and I also have a ghost. But I don't hear from it much."

My skin goes cold and clammy. I can do pretty much anything. But I don't do ghosts. "You what?" It comes out as a whisper. "Are you serious?"