Resurgence

5. Relapse

“Hello?”

He didn’t respond, yet.

“Hello?” There was more emphasis and stress, on the second syllable of the word. “Tari, is that you?”

His heartbeat quickened at the pronouncement of his name on her lips. There was a certain detail she put in spelling out the vowels, in a very sensual way that always heightened his senses.

“I see you saved my number.” He smirked, grateful that the android hadn’t yet an inbuilt facility to enable minds be read during phone calls via electromagnetic waves and scientific enchantments. Otherwise, Lani would’ve stole a hint on his pathetic situation and felt just as sorry for himself as he was. Then again, would her empathy really be a bad thing? Wasn’t that what he wanted?

There was a pause, before her next reply and he was terrified for a moment that she was going to hang up.

“I didn’t actually save it. I can just recall it had a lot of zeros in it.” She didn’t sound as hostile as he’d have predicted due to the nature of the sudden call, like she was on Tuesday. “So, what’s your reason for calling this time? Is there any other thing you need to confirm that you can’t wait for until next week?”

“No, not really.” He drawled. Okay, this was it. What angle was he going to go with to construct a believable lie? “I just—I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

“Really? You’re asking me that when you’re calling me in the evening of a Friday? And you think I would be idle and wouldn’t actually be doing something else? Well, since you asked―I’m simply watching TV, nothing more. You?”

“Just sitting down,” There was a certain calm that was in place that he so much enjoyed, unlike their previous interactions characterized by heavy, disorienting remarks. “What happened to your much acclaimed social life? Aren’t you supposed to be doing something more fun than watching TV on Friday evenings?”

“Guy, those days are gone.” He could detect a reminisce smile on her face. “Plus, I’m at home not at school. I might have exaggerated the details of my social life before. It isn’t all that great, if I’m not in a bubbly atmosphere. Not that the neighborhood I stay in isn’t lively and all, but well, it’s not like when you’re in school and you’re surrounded with so much energy. Plus, work leaves me too drained to take my social life seriously anyway. So these days, I’m indoors for most of the time. I’m not even going to bother to ask about your social life, because you didn’t even have one back then. So I’m just going to go on to ask how you survive?”

She was being quite unrelenting in a way that he found unsettling. Her demeanor to him had being mostly cold, but tonight she was being all warm and pleasant. Whatever the reason was, he figured he didn’t care much for it. He could only live in the moment, and enjoy it for as long as it’d last.

“I really don’t know, to be honest.” He replied. “I just live each day as it comes, and not worry about tomorrow until it becomes the present day. And like you also, work leaves me pretty much exhausted―”

“Nah, don’t try to steal my lines. It doesn’t apply to you. Workaholics like you are actually the ones who leave work exhausted.” She said wittily, making him laugh. “So how’s the building construction coming? Making any progress?”

“Progress? What do you think it is, building a castle with sand at the beach?” He laughed. “It takes a really long amount of time, and you were there just Tuesday. Although, in the next few weeks, we should be moving on to the next phase of work.”

“My bad then. So what do you do all day? You just go there and supervise and give directions right?”

“I wish.” Tari groaned. “You think if that was all I did―I’d be this exhausted? I take part in the manual work also, with the builders and engineers. It’s not compulsory though, as some architects don’t like getting their hands dirty but not me. It’s always been one of the things I loved most about it from the start. Plus, I love being engaged with every detail and the people  under you are more motivated to work when they see you giving a good example.”