When my cell vibrates exactly two days later in the middle of the night, I wake up with a start and try to clear my head.
It’s him an excited little voice in my head sings, and I’m trying to guess in those few seconds how he’s going to react to seeing the pictures. Pissed because they’re too hot and he thinks I’m too young and maybe a total slut? Or blown away and turned on because he gets to stare at half of my naked body in the privacy of his own home?
Based on what I know about Michael, I decide that nothing is simple and that he’ll probably be feeling a freakin’ combo of the two and he won’t know what to say or feel or do, but just the fact that he’s calling…
I answer then wait for him to talk because for once in his life maybe he’ll say hello and start a conversation the way nine-tenths of the people on the planet do.
But he doesn’t know hello. Or even hi.
“Gia?”
“Mmm.”
“Who took these pictures?”
“Why?”
“Tell me.”
“Vogue. A photographer for Vogue.”
“You’re going to be in the magazine?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus.”
“Do you like them?”
He exhales. “Yeah.”
“Just yeah?”
“No, not just yeah.”
The wattage rises without him even being in the same room. I smile. “I’m glad. I wanted them to blow you away.”
His half laugh.
“God, Michael, you’re so impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because you hold back, you’re so afraid or whatever.”
“Yeah, or whatever.”
I yawn. I can’t help it. Only it’s not exhaustion—it’s not enough oxygen to the brain from speed breathing because he called.
“Go back to sleep, baby,” he says, maybe because he can’t think of anything else after that, otherwise he’s afraid of where the conversation will go with the pictures and all, but then again, I don’t imagine phone sex is exactly his thing. “You have school tomorrow.”
“So now you’re playing like my dad?”
“No, like your law enforcement officer.”
“Then fuck you…Officer Hottie.”
“Hang up,” he says, a smile in his voice.
“You hang up.”
“Resisting,” he says, getting into the game.
“Take me in,” I say back.
“Is that your idea of fun?”
“Definitely,” I answer. Then I press end and leave him hanging.