Night Owl(25)

"Hey Pam." I paced through the kitchen. "Look, I need a favor. I need you to swing by and pick something up."

"You have new pages for me?"

Poor Pam, she sounded ridiculously excited. I smirked at the gridlock of Tupperware in my freezer. Pam was the only person I knew who would store and return these without asking any questions. To her, I was simply M. Pierce, eccentric writer extraordinaire.

"New pages?" I said, closing the freezer. "Mm... not quite..."

After Pam left with three grocery bags of frozen meals (and assurances to restore them when I asked), I began to comb my apartment and remove all traces of Bethany.

I thought listening to hiphop would help distract me from the scumbagginess of my task, but after "99 Problems" and "Heartless" I flung my iPod away.

Everything went into duffel bags: pictures of Bethany and I, all my photo albums, her razors, makeup, shampoo, and other toiletries, her jewelry and clothes, my books, manuscripts, files with documents pertaining to royalties and film deals—shit, I even threw my tax stuff in the bag. Yeah, like Hannah would look in my file cabinet. I was getting paranoid.

I locked the stuff in the trunk of my Lincoln.

Damn, I felt like a gangster closing a trunk on a body. This was getting seriously f*cked up. Another surge of guilt went through me as I made my way back up to my apartment.

I felt like I'd taken a ten-mile run, minus the stress relief. I also didn't have a thing left to eat besides a few cans of soup, pasta, and cereal. Awesome.

It was 7:00 p.m.

It took me all day to transform my apartment into a bachelor pad, and the exercise left me feeling dirty and hollow. Plus, I missed Hannah. I missed her voice and the candied scent of her shampoo. I missed her open thighs. I missed her furious blushing, her wet cunt...

I checked my email.

She sent a post for our story yesterday, nothing else.

I added a couple paragraphs to The Surrogate. They were dry and plodding compared to my racing fantasies of Hannah.

I could call her, but I'd already blown her off for the day. Besides, I didn't want to come off as some loser with no life.

Was I a loser with no life? I needed to schedule an appointment with my psychiatrist. He always helped me think my way out of corners, and he was one of a handful of people who knew that Matthew Sky was M. Pierce.

He didn't spare me hard truths, either. I just wasn't sure I wanted to hear the hard truths about Hannah.

I already knew that the price of great pleasure is great pain.

I also knew that this thing with Hannah would hit the ground sooner or later and she would be hurt, god help me, and I wouldn't be able to protect her—to protect her from my own stupid, selfish choices.

Finally these thoughts became too much. I showered and resigned myself to a date with my hand and my poor sketch of Hannah (and the memory of her hot mouth making me come against my will), but when I got out of the shower I saw I'd missed two calls.

Both from Hannah.

I pulled on a pair of boxers and called her back.

"Matt?"

"Hey." I smiled compulsively at the sound of her voice. My cock perked up, too. Perfect, just call me Pavlov's dog. "You called?"

"Yeah. Matt, I..."

Maybe it was because I'd just been knee deep in my girlfriend's stuff, but I had a sudden gaping sense of dread.

"Go on," I said quietly.

"Well, first off, are you busy? I know you said you'd be busy. I don't want to—"

"No! No." I ruffled my damp hair. "I got done with my obligations sooner than expected. I'm home, just kind of dicking around."

Okay, could have phrased that better.

"Oh." Hannah sounded distant. "If you were bored, you could have called me."

"Hm? No, um... I do have stuff to do."

"So do you need to go?"

"No!" Geez, I was starting to feel exasperated. Lies on top of lies on top of lies. "Please, just... talk," I stammered.

"Okay. Okay. So." Hannah gathered a shaky breath. "Did I make some epic mistake last night? At the club?"

"What?" I flopped onto the couch in shock. "God, no. No."

"No?"

"No! No no no. I loved it, Hannah. Fuck, I've thought about little else besides repaying you for that sassy display." I chuckled. "Mm, I almost invited you over last night, except my apartment... was wicked dirty." Another lie on the heap. I probably owned the cleanest apartment in Denver. "I didn't want you to see the sloppy side of Matt."

"I think I've already seen the sloppy side of Matt." Hannah giggled. Her relief was palpable. I laughed with her. Maybe my relief was palpable, too.

"God, little bird. Trust me, your mouth on my cock, god damn..."

I trailed off. My dick was already far too interested in this conversation.

"Okay," Hannah said, "so the next thing. Matt, I can't... accept these." She cleared her throat. I heard a door close. "I mean, my god. I went online, so I know how much they cost. And you obviously had them overnighted. Are you insane? We're going to have to figure out..."

Hannah rambled on about returns and money and paying me back.

For a beat, I was in the dark. Accept these? How much they cost?

Then I remembered. The LELO toys. I jumped up and began pacing around my living room excitedly. Laurence pricked an ear in my direction.