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“No need to be sorry. Go get on your computer, so I can see you. See for myself that you’re fine.”
I scoffed. “I don’t see how an orgasm would make me feel any better.”
“Did I say anything about that? Come on. Don’t even change, just show me you’re alive and well… not hurting yourself. Nothing like that.”
Inaudibly, I sucked in a breath.
“Okay.”
A glance at the side of the bed told me my bag from work was still there, so instead of trekking down to my office, where I usually went, I got up and retrieved my laptop. It took me a second, since that specific computer was one I used for work, and had never connected to my home network before. But after a few minutes, I was on-screen from the chin down, looking at a similar view of Wick.
“Hey,” he chuckled. “Blakewood is my alma mater. Not telling what year though, you already tease me about being old.”
Even though he couldn’t see me, I grinned at the screen, about to retort that I’d graduated from there over a decade ago too, but my screen name in the corner halted my tongue.
SleeplessInSanDiegohad been created in the wee hours of the morning, after a particularly grueling thirty-two hours without sleep. I was, indeed, in San Diego at the time, on a trip, but I certainly didn’t live there.
That was the impression Wick had though.
An impression that I let stand, in the same way I let him call me Sandy, and I called him Wick. Those weren’t our names, and San Diego wasn’t my city. We were friends, but we’d never seen each other’s faces. He didn’t know the name of my company or what I did, only that I was an entrepreneur. I’d never even mentioned Kellen’s name either, as much as I’d revealed otherwise about that situation. It was all an effort to maintain anonymity – something that honestly helped me value him even more as a friend.
He knew the real me, without knowing the real me.
It was refreshing.
“No, I’m not doing any teasing today. I might drink a whole bottle of bourbon though,” I said, deflecting the possibility he might want to dig further into my Blakewood shirt. It was a popular enough HBCU that tons of people, not just alumni, wore them.
Wick chuckled. “Whew. Trust me, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for at the bottom of a bottle of brown liquor. Wick did that so you wouldn’t have to go through that.”
“Okay, because I was going to say, that sounds like experience talking.”
“Too much experience,” he confirmed. “Ten years sober.”
My eyes went wide. “Wow. You’ve never told me that before.”
“Never had cause. But, if you’re thinking about hard liquor to self-medicate, beyond a couple of glasses… please allow me to steer you in a different direction. I started drinking to forget what I’d lost, and almost ended up losing the things I had left. That’s not what you want. You’re smart, successful, funny, beautiful. Don’t let him make you lose sight of that.”
I smiled again. “There you go with that again, calling me beautiful like you’re so sure.”
“Because Iam,” he insisted, swiping his chin. “I told you a while ago, a voice like that…”
“Oh whatever. You’re just saying it… because it’s true.”
“Finally, she confirms it,” Wick laughed, and I couldn’t help joining in, before a bittersweet feeling settled in my chest. In another world, another place, another time… I could’ve married a man likethis. Someone who made me laugh, and feel good about myself. Someone who wasstillthe man that Kellenusedto be.
“Hey, Sandy… are you… are you trying to access my computer?”
Wick’s tone shifted, from laughing to something serious that made an uneasy feeling wash over me.
“What? I don’t even know what that means.”
“Hold on…”
My heart started beating a little faster as I heard the furious tapping of a keyboard from the other end of the line, punctuated every now and then by a low,“what the fuck?”
“Your computer,” he said out loud, to me. “You have some type of hyper-aggressive security on it or something?”
I frowned. “Huh? This is my work computer, not the one I usually use, in my office. So… it has whatever my assistant put on there, I guess. Why?”
