Fated To My Billionaire Call Boy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Couch

Hallie talks too much, falls asleep on her couch while Ephraim covers her, wakes sober and mortified, and gets a text from Lawson with a photo of the two of them.

Ephraim insisted on walking me to a cab, and I insisted on telling him my whole life in it.

"Five years," I said, with my forehead against the cold window. "He picked my coat, my friends, my schedule."

"Mm," said Ephraim.

"He said I was too sensitive to handle money, so he handled it."

"All of it. I had to ask for forty dollars once for a haircut."

His jaw moved.

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Sweet, you don't need a haircut to sit at home.'"

The driver glanced at us in the mirror.

Ephraim looked out the window for a while.

"He sounds like a very small man," he said.

I laughed so hard I had to hold my ribs.

My apartment in Somerville is on the third floor of a crooked house with a leaky radiator and a bathtub in the kitchen.

I'd lived there three weeks.

I had a mattress, a couch Wynn found on the curb, a drawing desk by the window, and about forty boxes I hadn't opened.

Ephraim looked at all of it.

He didn't say a word about the bathtub.

"Water," he said, and filled a glass at the sink.

"Is that in the rate?"

"It's free."

I drank it, and then I stood too close to him in my kitchen, in my one good dress, with wine making everything warm.

He was tall enough that I had to tip my head.

Up close he smelled like rain and cedar, and his eyes were a color I couldn't name.

"Ephraim," I said.

"Yes."

"I've been thinking for six minutes. I paid you. I'd like to know what I paid for."

He didn't move.

I put my hand flat on his chest, and I felt his heart going hard under my palm.

"I want you to kiss me," I said.

"And I'd like it to be good, because I haven't been kissed on purpose in a very long time."

His hand came up and covered mine.

He lifted it gently off his shirt.

"Not tonight," he said.

It stung more than it should have.

"Right," I said. "Of course. Is this where you say you're not allowed to?"

"It's where I say you've had four glasses of wine and a terrible day."

"I want you to remember all of it in the morning."

He said it very kindly.

"I'm not going anywhere, Hallie. If you still want it tomorrow, ask me again."

I was too tired to be embarrassed.

I told him he was the worst call boy in Massachusetts, and I flopped onto the couch with my shoes on.

I heard him laugh quietly.

I felt my shoes come off, one and then the other.

I felt a blanket settle over me that smelled like the dryer.

"Goodnight, fox," he said, so softly I might have dreamed it.

I woke at eight with a headache and the sun in my eyes.

I lay there with my face in a pillow, and the whole night came back in pieces.

The bar.

The envelope.

The man in the red pocket square, who was Ephraim Stanwick from the front row of Statistics 201.

My hand on his chest.

"Oh, no," I told the ceiling. "No, no, no."

I sat up too fast and the room spun.

On the coffee table stood a glass of water and two aspirin.

Under the glass was a yellow sticky note in neat, square handwriting.

"Saturday. I'll need the address and the time. Wear what you like, I'll match it. My number is below. Drink the water. E."

Below that was a phone number.

Under the number, in smaller letters, he'd written, "The couch is comfortable. Thank you."

I looked at the aspirin.

He had stayed.

He had sat up so that a woman who'd drunk too much wasn't alone in a flat with no curtains.

I didn't know what to do with that.

Wynn's text came in on top of my thoughts.

"WELL???" she'd written. "Did you get home okay? Call me NOW or I'm sending a search party."

I stared at it.

I had told her I was going home.

I hadn't told her anything else.

I opened my mouth to call her, and a different message slid down over the top of hers.

It was Lawson.

There was no text this time, only a picture.

It had been taken from across a wet street, last night, through a rainy windshield.

It showed me stumbling out of a cab in front of my building with my hand on a tall man's arm.

The man's face was turned away, but the red silk in his pocket was clear.

A second message followed.

"Cute. Who's he?"

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