Got a Text

I got a text this morning which said: “Please, please tell me there is a chance for us to be together again.” It was from an unknown number. I thought who it could be from, but there were no dramatic love stories in my past. I was in a hurry to leave for work, so I decided it was a wrong number and got on with my day.

During the lunch break, when everybody else was was busy eating and talking about their shows, I read the text again. There were some girls in my life before my wife Karen, but only two. One in junior high, and we were never really together, just kind of hung out, and one in high school, Audrey.

Audrey was something. I remember this one time after school, at the back of the library. We were smoking and then started making out. My hands migrated from her waist to her hips, and then one of them ended up between her thighs.

Audrey stopped me and those dark eyes lit up with mischief. “If you want it, you have to punch Bobby Carlson,” she said, “I don’t care if you get punched back, if you get beat up to a pulp. I will let you touch me there if you throw the first punch. Will you do that for me?”

I remember thinking about it for the following few days, but I never went through with it. That summer I met Karen, and Audrey and I never got together. I fantasized about her from time to time, about the things she would make me do and the sex we would have afterwards. But that was all.

Back at the restaurant, I answered the text: “Yes, there is. Do you want to meet?”

There was no response until that evening. I was sitting in the living room, my sons were playing a video game and my wife was working on her laptop at the kitchen table. The phone vibrated, unknown number.

I went to the bathroom and locked the door to read it. “He just killed himself, I hope you are happy. Don’t call this number and don’t contact us ever again, understood?”

So it was a wrong number after all.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk