“People still watch TV?” I tease.
“Haha! Yeah…I dunno. It was kinda like…fate. The timing was just a little too…perfect.” She sighs. There’s clearly something upsetting her, and although normally I’d do a 180 at the first sign of baggage in a woman, right now it’s nice to know I’m not the only one having a rough time.
“So signs are garbage, but fate is a thing?”
“Haha, I know. I’m a mess.” She tries to laugh again, but I hear a tremor in her voice.
“Maybe. Aren’t we all?”
“I don’t know. You sound like you’ve got it all figured out.”
“Believe me, I really don’t.” For some reason, being honest with her is coming to me easily. Partly it’s the whiskey, but she’s just shown me her vulnerability, too. Normally I’d put on my game face and flirt my way past anything heavy, but with the anonymity of this app I can actually just be…myself.
“Oh yeah?” Her voice is genuinely curious, coaxing more out of me. And I realize: I want to tell her more. Some part of me needs this.
“Yeah. Right now I’m all alone in a house that’s bigger than the neighborhood I grew up in, I’ve drunk an entire bottle of whiskey since I got up this morning, and if this bootycall app thing doesn’t work out, all that’s left for me to do is hit the gym for the sixth time today.”
“You still sound better off than me,” she says. “My roommate just kicked me out and I had to move into a studio apartment that’s about the size of my parents’ bathroom, I’m drinking something that’s supposed to be alcohol but which I’m sure is some kind of tractor fuel, and I don’t even know if I’ll have a job to go in to tomorrow. So…yeah.” Her voice catches on this last line, and then I hear her sniffle and take a sip of something.
“Sounds rough,” I say, meaning it. “But things could be worse.”
“How?”
“You could have been connected with somebody else, for one. Rather than this charming drunk Irishman with an absolutely out-of-this-world six pack that you’ll just have to take my word about, unless you’d care to see it for yourself.”
She laughs, and I can hear a rustling as she adjusts herself. The nerves are gone.
“Confident, aren’t you?” she says, a little sultriness entering her voice.
“You’ve got to be, in my line of work.”
“And what is that?” she asks.
Shit. If I blow my cover, the fun is over. Sure, being a celebrity has its perks, but I want to keep my anonymity intact. I just want to be a regular guy talking to a regular girl – a girl who’s turned on by the person I am, not the person she thinks I’m supposed to be.
“Um…animated chicken?” I blurt.
“Ha! Right. Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
I relax and don’t speak, letting the silence gather some weight. I listen to her breathing, until she breaks it.
“So you’re Irish, you said?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought this app was supposed to connect with local people?”
“Well, I’m in LA. They haven’t banned us from America. Not yet, anyway.”
She laughs again. “Sorry.”
“I can do an American accent, if it makes you more comfortable.”
“Ok. Sure.”
I put on my worst Southern impression.
“Gurns. Jayzus. Cowbuwoys.”
“Enough!” she says, laughing. “Now I’m the one who’s offended.”
“Welcome to my world.”
This time she’s the one who leaves the silence, and the tension that rises in it is starting to get me going. I’ve been trying to have a proper conversation with people all day and ended up feeling like a chump for it, but this girl has me feeling like I could spend the whole night just listening to her laugh. My mind races trying to put a face to that voice.
I don’t even realize it, but my hand is on my cock, massaging the increasing stiffness that’s responding to this girl’s voice even faster than my brain.
“I…oh Christ…I probably shouldn’t say this…” she says, after a while.
“Say it,” I say, softly.
“I…just got out of a relationship. I don’t know what I’m doing…”
“Why did you break up?”
She pauses, debating whether to reveal the reason. “He cheated on me.”
“Ouch.”
“With my roommate, my best friend – well, ex-best friend.” Her breath hitches.
“Fucking hell,” I say. “That’s cold.”
“Hence the lavish new apartment with a dripping sink you can probably hear in the background.”
“I thought that was you.”
She’s silent.
“Sorry, crass joke.” So much for trying to lighten the mood.
“No. I liked it. I’m smiling.”
“Good, ‘cause if that offends you then we may as well end the conversation now. It only gets dirtier.”
“Does it now?”
“It does if I have anything to do with it.” I set my empty glass on the table and exhale, slow and deep.
The breathing on the phone gets louder.