Night Owl(8)

I frowned at the portrait.

Not bad, but not quite right. I closed my eyes. I struggled to remember the picture. I remembered her voice on the phone. Not too high, not too low, velvety and feminine. What's so f*cking funny? God, she was adorable in her anger. And she was sexy beyond belief...

Do it with me. Matt, please.

I drifted awake at noon. I was sprawled on the couch, my sketchbook open across my thighs and my dick hard. Of course.

I stared at the lemon tree until my wood relaxed.

Then I called Hannah.

She picked up after two rings.

"Hello?" she said. Her voice sounded a little huskier.

"Hey little bird."

"Bird?" She giggled. "Sorry babe, this is Hannah's sister. Hannah's driving."

I glowered at my sketch and considered hanging up.

"Maybe you should take a turn driving," I muttered, "or not answer your sister's phone."

"She gave it to me Mr. Frostypants."

I heard Hannah's voice in the background. She sounded annoyed, but I couldn't make out what she was saying.

"What did she say?" I demanded.

"She said I should stop trolling you. She also said hi. Hey, are you Hannah's new guy?"

"Excuse me?"

I sat up. My sketchbook flopped onto the floor. New guy? Hannah had a new guy? Anger—and rash jealousy—tightened around my chest.

"Yeah. New guy. Are you the new guy?"

"No, I..." My mouth worked speechlessly. Hannah told me she was leaving her boyfriend. She neglected to mention she was leaving him for another guy. I guess that made us both faithless *s. Perfect.

So why did this hurt? Why did I feel used? It wasn't like I could have Hannah. I couldn't even meet her—couldn't risk my little obsession morphing into full-blown infidelity. I wasn't that kind of guy. Was I? I felt sick to my stomach.

"Earth to Mr. Frostypants!" Hannah's sister shouted.

"Fuck off," I said, ending the call.

CHAPTER 4

Hannah

"FUCK OFF?" I stuck my hand on my hip and glared at Chrissy. "Just wait a minute. He said 'f*ck off' and hung up?"

"Uh-huh. Yup. Unless it was an epically well-timed call drop. But um, Hannah, not sure about that guy. He was a liiittle bit of an *." My sister squinted as she emphasized the word little. I couldn't help but laugh. "A little bit of an *" was putting Matt lightly. Still, I had to figure out why he got so mad.

My sister and I were stopped at a motel in Billings, Montana. It was 2:00 a.m. I had another hour of driving in me, but I wanted to search for something in the U-Haul, and I wanted to talk to Matt.

I blamed being on the road for thinking about Matt constantly. The endless highway, the repetitive scenery, tuning out my sister's bad music—oh, and our explosive phone sex last night.

God, ridiculous! I was infatuated with a guy I knew nothing about.

"One more time," I said, yanking open the back of the trailer. It rolled up with a clatter. "You called him... Mr. Frostypants." My mouth twitched. "And he immediately said 'f*ck you' and hung up?"

"Ohhh my god, yes! That is what happened Hannah. What is your deal with this asshat?"

"He's a good friend," I lied, "and I think he's actually pissed. I texted him from Perkins and called and got nothing."

"Maybe he was out. I don't know. What are you looking for in there?"

"Oh, um... I wanted some clothes." I rubbed my neck. My sister stared at me. I got the sense that she had seen through both of my lies and possibly even heard me in the bathroom last night. "So. Yeah. I don't need any help. Gotta rummage, that's all. You can check us in."

"Mhmmm." Chrissy spun and headed into the motel.

Thank god.

At this point, I knew I would spill if she grilled me. I felt like a thirteen-year-old girl, bubbly with excitement and desperate to gab about my latest crush. He said this, he did that. Spare me. I was so much cooler than this.

I boosted myself onto the edge of the U-Haul and turned on my keychain flashlight, peering into the jam of boxes and furniture. After fifteen minutes of struggling, I managed to shift out the box I was looking for. It had the word BOOKS in black Sharpie on the side.

I dug out my worn copy of Ten Thousand Nights by M. Pierce. I flipped through its dog-eared and highlighted pages until I found the lines Matt quoted.

There is no such thing as loneliness. There is only the idea of loneliness.

I sighed and swung my legs from the edge of the U-Haul. God, what lines, and what a strange concept—that the fear of loneliness is the fear of a phantom.

In the back of the book I had printouts from the LA Times book blog and clippings from The New York Times Book Review. I flipped one open and perused the first few lines.

M. Pierce remains a mystery, tops charts with Harm's Way

November 13, 2009

Almost two years after the appearance of national bestseller Ten Thousand Nights, Harm's Way, the new hardcover fiction from M. Pierce, has reached the top of the bestseller list. Like its predecessor, Harm's Way straddles (or obliterates) the boundary between genre fiction and literary fiction. Part thriller, part Kunderian inquiry and all page-turner, Harm's Way has critics going to bat...