Say Hello For Me

t w o || you again

Dedicated to @GeolaReader because Chance and Farah never failed to make me laugh and smile.

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Stormy, gray clouds scatter the entire sky and rain drops are pattering against the window on another rainy day in Seattle when the phone rings at AskAway.

"Hello, thank you so much for calling AskAway. We are here to advise you on all your questions, concerns, and problems related to relation-"

"Do you have this imprinted on your forehead or something?" he interrupts her with a hint of a chuckle under the deep tone of his voice.

"I don't understand what you're asking. I think you called the wrong number."

"No, I didn't call the wrong number." He sounds confident as he speaks.

"This is a relationship hot-"

"Hotline," he finishes the sentence for her. "I know."

The line drops silent again. As she twirls a pencil in and out of her fingers, she can hear the trains coming and going in the background on his side of the call.

"You don't remember me, do you? I called here last week."

"I'm afraid I don't remember." She pauses, trying to figure out how to explain herself. "We get a lot of calls in one week, you know? People call to talk about divorces, their kids. One lady even called about her dying cat Ferdinand."

"Poor lady."

"Poor Ferdinand."

"What about people calling about the song 'Hey There Delilah'?"

That's all it takes her for to remember the boy who sounded like he was madly in love. "Thanks to you, that song has been stuck in my head for the last week."

"A song stuck in your head is better than having a girl mess with your head."

"Touché, but . . . it's probably not as bad as having boys mess with your heart."

"Let's call it even then. I'm stuck in the rain waiting for a delayed train and you have to answer stupid questions from pathetic people like me."

"You're not pathetic and these aren't stupid questions."

"But I am," he says with conviction and then pauses. "I did what you told me to. I asked Delilah what she was doing that night."

"And?"

"And she told me she stayed in her dorm that night studying for her organic chemistry exam."

"What's wrong with that excuse?"

"She dropped out of organic chemistry two weeks into the semester."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," is her initial response. She's speechless because comfort has never been her forte. "I was hoping that you just mistook the girl at the restaurant for her."

"I was too," he says. "That's not the worst part, though."

"What happened?"

There's a long pause before he speaks again. "We spent the night together afterwards."

"Why didn't you..." She doesn't quite know how to phrase exactly what she means to say, so she lets her voice falter off into silence.

"Why didn't I leave her?"

"I'm sorry, forget I even started to ask that," she mumbles, embarrassed for intruding on personal matters past her expertise.

"No, don't worry about it. I called you asking for help, didn't I?"

"I guess so," she says, but she feels like she isn't doing her job properly.

"I want to know who he is. I want to know who she is cheating on me with. I need to know if I'm ever going to let go."

Before she can respond, the line goes silent and she knows that his delayed train finally came.