“Hi, Nick. How are you?”
“I’m pretty good. How are you?”
“I’m uh,” she began. “I’m sort of wondering if I owe you an apology or need to be embarrassed for anything.”
He crinkled his brow and chuckled. “No, not that I’m aware of. Why?”
“Well, I noticed that I sent you a totally incoherent text message late last night, and also that I, uh … called you at around two thirty in the morning, and we spoke for almost fifteen minutes.”
He blinked as he racked his brain for information about the night before.
“Oh!” he suddenly exclaimed. He only vaguely remembered it himself, but he remembered that it started out casual, and eventually she’d cried and he’d cried, and the whole thing left him feeling hopeful. “Yeah. Yeah, we had a nice little talk.”
“It was nice?” she asked sounding doubtful. “I didn’t say anything, you know, inappropriate?”
He bit his lip, not wanting to lie, but also not wanting to make her feel weird since she clearly didn’t remember any of it.
“Well, I didn’t think it was inappropriate,” he assured her. That was the truth, although, she and he had slightly differing views on propriety.
“You didn’t?”
“No, not at all.”
She paused. “So what did we talk about?”
“Um, well, you said you’d been watching the news and saw that there was an accident downtown sort of near where Chase and I were so you wanted to make sure we were safe,” he explained, hitting only the appropriate points of conversation. “And I said we were fine, and that was pretty much it.”
“And that took fifteen minutes?”
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Hm.” She paused again, then laughed. “So could you tell I was totally smashed?”
“Yeah, I could. But don’t feel bad. I was too.”
“You were?”
“Well, you know, what’s New Year’s Eve without basically reliving every drunken college party you’ve ever been to?”
They both laughed again until she let out a small sigh. “I haven’t been drunk like that since that one date we went on.”
He smiled softly at the memory as he let himself sink down into his couch. “Oh yeah. Yeah, you kind of cut loose that night.”
She scoffed. “Made a fool of myself, you mean.”
“Nah, you were a delight.”
She laughed seemingly in spite of herself. “Well, I just wanted to see if I needed to apologize. I have no business calling you at such an inconsiderate hour.”
“It wasn’t inconsiderate in the least,” he insisted. “You were looking out for Chase and me. It was actually quite considerate of you.”
She chuckled.
“And,” he added, in a small effort to encourage any thoughts she may be having about them.“You’re more than welcome to call me anytime, even if it’s not work related.”
“And even if I’m drunk as a skunk, right?”
“Of course,” he assured her, causing her to laugh again.
