Exotic

~ inching the mile ~

I woke up semi-hard, semi-hungover, and fumbling for my mobile phone.

Caleb had not texted me.

I dropped it back onto the bedside table with a clatter and groan. There was no moment of temporary amnesia. I remembered every excruciating moment of the night before, in vivid technicolour.

I lifted a heavy hand to my mouth, running a thumb along my bottom lip. I couldn't feel Caleb there, but my brain was very capable of providing flashbacks to the night before, namely, how it had ended.

Caleb had given me an inch, and I'd taken a mile. He was never going to speak to me again.

Downstairs, Reece was cooking up a greasy breakfast for one. I salivated at the mere scent but made do with an apple and a glass of juice. Reece didn't try and make me sit at the dining table, while was a small blessing. He seemed intent on ignoring me completely this time, and I had absolutely no problem with facing that consequence.

I sank into the sofa, which smelt of Reece. I opened Sephora's Instagram and was immediately greeted by an hour old direct message from @themagnificent_zsazsa. My stomach sank at the directness of the message, with no emojis or exclamation points. He'd posted his number and simply written, call me.

I walked out of the front door and dialled the number on the porch. After two rings, Zsa Zsa picked up with a wary. "Hello?"

"It's Seph," I replied, keeping my tone light. "Morning."

"Oh. Morning," Zsa Zsa's tone was flat. The pause lasted the time it took for Mrs. Dodie to cross in front of the house on her morning walk. "This is weird. Why have we never done this before?"

"What?"

"Talked over the phone," he replied, and I heard running water through the speaker. "I've known you for a year and I don't really know you, you know? I don't know anything about you. You could disappear off the face of the earth and I wouldn't know the first place to start looking for you."

I dropped down onto the porch steps, my legs covered in goosebumps under my pyjama pants. "Why would you need to know where to look for me?"

"Because we're friends, you bitch," Zsa Zsa snapped, harsher than I thought possible. The running water stopped.

I waited.

"So, Peter came over early this morning" he breathed, and my blood went cold. "And he had a story to tell. Very scathing. He told me he dropped by Crescendo last night before work and you were all over him from the door. Practically tearing his clothes off him and kept telling him that I wouldn't mind. He told me he had to yell at you to get you to back off."

I took a deep breath. "Zsa..."

"Grayson."

I felt my brow furrow. "What?"

"My name is Grayson," Zsa Zsa repeated, the name foreign on his lips. "We're having a serious conversation and it's weird having you call me by my stage name."

"Oh," I was stunned. The name didn't feel right to say, so I continued without it. "I should have called you last night. I didn't know how to talk to you about it, because you guys were doing so great and I didn't know if I had a leg to stand on..."

"Fuck!" Zsa Zsa – Grayson – shouted into the phone.

"What?"

"Sorry. I'm making herbal tea. I burned myself," he held the phone away from his mouth as he blew on his finger. "Seph, please do not tell me he was actually telling the truth."