DRUNK CALL RELOADED

ENOCH

Enoch Wade ran on six hours of sleep and had done so since university, a discipline he had developed not from necessity but from the understanding that the hours between midnight and six belonged to no one and were therefore the most productive ones available. 

Tonight, he had used them well: two reports reviewed, one board memo drafted, a contract flagged for legalities that would have sat until Monday if he hadn't caught it.

His phone lit up at 2:17 in the morning and he looked at it the way he barely spared it a glance. He had trained himself never to react before he processed.

The name on the screen was one he had assigned a ringtone to, so when he heard it, he reached for the phone before his brain caught up with his hands.

Anna.

He picked up on the third ring because he was a man with some discipline left.

"Anna," he said carefully, worried about her and excited to hear her voice all at once

What followed was "Cousiiiiin," stretched and warm. He sat back in his chair and listened to her ramble on.

He could tell she was drunk; that much was clear in the looseness of her words, the way her thoughts moved sideways. 

"You are so beautiful. Did anyone ever tell you that?"

He closed his eyes briefly. "No," he said, because lying was beneath him. 

She pivoted before he could examine the moment. Her good news announcement made him go still. His mind went where it had been quietly dreading for two years.

She's engaged.

The thought arrived with the clarity that Enoch had been waiting for, with the slow dread of a prisoner watching a door close.

Then she went quiet.

He waited. 

"Anna." He kept his voice even, though he feared the answer he said. "Talk."

He heard her exhale, and then she told him everything. He did not need to hear all of it to understand.

Am I also on the list? He couldn't stop himself from asking; her voice had been twisting his insides every minute they spent on the call, her teasing also didn't help matters. 

"Yes, dearest cousin, you are the number—"

Number what Anna. Did he dare to dream that he was her number one and probably only? 

He sat with the phone to his ear and listened to her fall asleep mid-sentence, and he did not move for a long moment after the line went fully quiet. Just sat in the dark of his study with London spread below and the weight of an unanswered question sitting in his chest.

Then he put the phone down and got to work.

He called Ben at 2:47; he answered with the muffled alarm of someone yanked from sleep into the assumption of catastrophe. Enoch did not apologize for the hour. That was not the relationship they had.

"Draft an employment letter," he said. "Head of Brand Communications. Full package, signing bonus, competitive salary. Make it an offer someone would be stupid to turn down. I want it in my inbox before six."

Ben paused, Enoch also kept quiet to see if he'd ask prying questions or not. Ben was good at his job precisely because he decided against it. "Name?"

"Annabelle Wade."

"I'll have it by five."

He ended the call.

Enoch stood at his window for a moment contemplating how he's life is about to change. He no longer wished to stay on the sidelines. 

Fate had given him a second chance when that call came in, and he would grab it by the bull. If Anna refuses to take the offer, he would go bring her back home himself. Home to him. 

He went to the bathroom and turned the shower cold. It helped less than he needed it to.

Enoch decided on booking her flight himself.

He chose three days out. Direct. First class, because Anna was particular about flying even though she pretended not to be. He knew this from a conversation two years ago that she had probably forgotten and he had not.

He was giving her three days. This was generous enough, he thought. He stared at the confirmation for a moment.

She was coming to London.

After six years of gifts, brief chats and calculated distance and family gatherings he had found reasons to miss, he was going to see her again. 

When it's daylight, he'd make the call to have the top floor unit prepared.

Enoch opened his laptop and drafted the cover email for her employment letter; keeping it precise, he wrote till the bottom of it and added,

I can't wait to see you, my dearest cousin.

He left them on purpose, wanting her to read them and remember their incomplete conversation. He sent it. 

Then he closed the laptop and spent the rest of the ruminating on her drunk call. Suffice to say, he did not sleep a wink.