Free Pulse by Liv Hayes Page A

something, too .
    After
staring at the text until the words started to blur, still awake after having
completed a mess of paperwork, I ended up dozing off at my desk. Head against
the glass, lamp still on, my glasses (which, while I preferred contacts, I
still wore on occasion), making small red dents on the sides of my nose.
    It was
almost noon when I woke up, on one of the few scant, God forsaken Saturdays
that I actually managed to have off.
    My phone
rang, paused, then rang again.
    On the
third call, I finally sat up, rubbed my eyes, then remembered Mia. Mia, awake
early in the morning, probably laying in bed while she stared at the screen of
her phone, waiting for me to respond.
    Fuck.
Fuck. I hadn't meant to ignore her. I had just fallen asleep.
    But since
when did I care so much about a fucking text message? A text message directed
to a twenty-something-year-old college student, of all things.
    I grabbed
my phone, looked at it, and my heart sank.
    I
contemplated not picking up. I contemplated, as the phone hummed for the third
time, letting it go straight to voicemail, then maybe chucking it off the
balcony.
    A heavy
sigh, the eventual cave.
    “Cait,” I
mumbled. “Why are you calling me?”
    “Alex?”
she seemed surprised, as if hearing my voice for the first time in six months
had made her suddenly forget what I ever sounded like. “Were you in the
shower?”
    “I
was...” Jesus, why even bother making something up? “I was asleep.”
    “Asleep?
It's past noon.”
    “Paperwork,”
I said, clipped. “It was a late night. Do you need something?”
    I didn't
really want to talk to her. Actually, I amend that: I wished, as I stood there
in the cold expanse of my office, that I had never picked up the phone.
    It wasn't
because she had broken my heart – she hadn't. It wasn't because she got under
my skin – she never even scratched the surface. I was just the kind of guy that
grew unreasonably irate when my train of thought went interrupted. It's like,
Christ, can a man get a moment of silence with his own internal fucking
dialogue?
    God, I
needed to get over myself.
    “I was
wondering if we could meet,” she said. A man's voice echoed in the background,
and she drew away, replying to him. She then added: “Sorry. I've been trying to
get myself out the house unscathed. Mason is having the time of his life
throwing all of my things into trash bags...”
    She
trailed off. And I should have cared a little more, perhaps. But Mason was the
guy she had been fucking before she left me, because a break-up over my
calloused, over-worked demeanor simply wasn't cliché or typical enough. Sure,
it's pretty obvious that I shouldn't have cared terribly. We weren't in love,
and I suppose I never truly deserved her as she never truly deserved me. But
I'm a man, and blunt enough to say that I'm not averse to the occasional bout
of pitiful pride.
    So I
nodded, as if she could see me, and just said: “Yeah. I'm sorry you're having a
hard time.”
    “Do you
think we could meet up this afternoon, Alex? It's important.”
    “Is it?”
    “Alex...”
she paused. A door closed. I could hear the click, the tell-tale roar of
Orlando traffic telling me that she had stepped outside. “I really need to see
you.”
    “What
about Mason?” I asked. “It seems you have your plate full already.”
    Cait went
quiet for a second. I listened as a horn blared, a shrill yell grew distant,
and she returned.
    “It's
important,” she repeated. “So, could we? I'm having a hard time enough as it
is.”
    “Hm.”
    “Alex,”
she stressed. “ Please .”
    I drudged
up a long, exacerbated sigh. Combing a hand through my hair, I glanced out the
window – midday sunlight streamed through the glass, glazing the hard-wood floors.
    “Fine,” I
said. “I'll meet you at Flamingo's in about an hour. We'll have a cup of
coffee. You'll tell me whatever it is you'd like to tell me, then you'll
politely leave me alone for the rest of my life,