What Do I Call You?

Chapter Fourteen

I had stayed awake for a whole day after that late-night drive.

It was only so I could take my mind off from Nari and this whole town’s strangeness. I just felt like things were kind of happening pretty fast and too sudden so I had decided to finish all of the pending reports and project proposals dumped on me at once in the meantime. But what I didn’t really expect about the whole thing was for it to be such a great deal of stress to do too. I holed up inside my motel room like a prisoner, and I almost forgot the time that had passed on. I was just too occupied and persistently immersed to finish everything right away so that I could finally spend the remaining time of my vacation to enjoy my temporary independence before I was doomed to return back to my reality next month.

Soon after, throughout the whole chore of reading and referencing, I found myself getting buried under the antagonizing page by page of documents to documents that had me feeling dizzy for hours. I could not even barely get out of my room the whole time. It was really the busiest day I’ve had in the past week. And as soon as I had sent everything to my lawyer for the final review, I was already dead asleep on top of my desk. I just woke up the noon after with a strained neck and a painful headache.

“So you’ve finally come back from the dead?”

This was the very first greeting that had welcomed me the moment I had stepped out of my room and went downstairs. I had previously thought that it would be a very good idea to exercise my legs for a brief stroll since they had been cramped and numbed out from a whole day’s worth of sitting in front of my laptop. I was also feeling like talking to somebody. But Henry’s stoic face looked at me from across the counter with nothing but an unbothered expression, and I could already read his thoughts as he took notice of the thick beard I was sporting at the moment. I didn’t really have the time to groom myself when I woke up that noon, but I have been already planning to shave them all clean later on.

“Hello to you, too.” I greeted in distress, sighing heavily.

“I heard you’ve managed to gain a little progress with Miss Hiden the other night,” Henry remarked wittingly, and a sly smirk stretched across his face. I snorted, looking back at him with a smug smile.

“Hearing gossips lately, are we? I didn’t expect you to be the nosey type, kid.”

But then this town was too small to even hide anything from anyone.

“Well the news has its mouth and ears, and wings… you know the saying?”

“No, I don’t.” I bluntly denied, staring blankly at his face. I had figured that I was actually still not in the complete mood to be receiving jokes at the moment because I was still nursing a headache after being sleep deprived the whole day before.

“Well, your loss.” Henry pitied back, his mouth curved up into a mocking smirk. And feeling like I was being looked down on, I tried to redeem myself to him by looking tough and unbothered. It was such a childish act but I was still not fully awake to even think about what I was really doing.

“I’ve finally asked her out on a date.”

I adamantly leaned on the counter and gave Henry the same smug smirk that I could muster with my tired state. Henry did not even bat an eye to that as he just looked over to me with impassive regard.

“Congratulations,” he said back in a dull note, sounding like he never really mean it, “But did she even agree to one?”

That somehow backfired and I felt my body froze with startling rage.

“I’m working on it,’ I grumblingly refuted but it sounded more like I was just forcing myself to think that way, “She’ll come around anytime soon, you just wait and see.”

My voice slightly wavered with uncertainty as Henry just stared back at me with dead eyes.

“Hmn.”

“You could even ask tips from me, kid,” I told him on a defensive note, “It’s hard to deal with women because they change their mood quicker than a day. It’s exhausting when that happens… But you’ve just got to work hard with your patience. They might deny you on the first few attempts but give them time and they would soon change their minds. That’s how it usually happened to me. And I can give you a lot of advice if you want.”

I tried to act dumbly and wriggled my brows at him, giving Henry a silly grin. But the inherent worry about my failed attempt for a date was still very apparent on my face.

“No, thanks,” Henry quickly rejected with a placid demeanor and I was kind of offended at how he didn’t even miss a beat saying that back, “I’m too busy with manning the motel and reading. I don’t have time for flirting around.”

I snorted.

“You serious?” I squinted my eyes at him in suspicion, “But you don’t even really get any guests in town, right?”

“Hmn.”

Henry just shrugged with a bored expression and I still mulled over that hummed response. What was he even trying to say when he does that?

“So, when do you suppose she’d finally come around to you?” Henry asked after a moment. And I frowned at his words.

“Why are you asking?”

“Just curious.” He replied.

“Well, I’m working on it,” I said in a grumpy voice and looked away, puffing out an air of annoyance through my nose. I really don’t know what I was going to do next, to be honest. Nari and I had sort of separated that night in a vague note and she had been angry with me too. So, at this point, I was at a dead-end.

“Hmn.” I heard Henry responding that nondescript sound back to me again and I quickly turned to face him with a scowl.

“You don’t have to believe me, anyway.” I defiantly told him, feeling irritated all of a sudden. “You’ll just hear about it soon.”

“Hmn.”

My nose flared.

“Fine,” I raised my hand, sighing in surrender, “Forget about it all. I’d go back to my room.”

And with that, I angrily walked away and took the stairs with a scowl. Then I quickly entered my room, groaning in anger as I closed the door behind me. Feeling like I had nothing left to do by myself, I finally sauntered straight towards the bathroom to shave the itchy beard on my face. And maybe a long shower could suffice too. It might actually give me some good sense of relief for a change.

For all I care, the world didn't even bat an eye on me.

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I eventually resorted to staying inside the motel room again that night since Nari was not scheduled for any gig at the pub for the next three days. After I had already shaved my jaw clean that afternoon and ate at a diner outside the town because no one seemed to take me warmly into the cafes or bistros in Avian Hills (the pub near the motel was only opened at nights), I realized that I really had nothing else to do. So when the evening came, I found myself lying on my bed, thinking of anything to work on for a while. But as the minutes slowly went by in a blur, I was soon got bristled with boredom and eagerly tried to come up with something. Before I knew it, I had already picked up my phone from the bedside table and dialed a number, calling my personal lawyer for a quick chat about business matters—just to relieve myself of the restlessness.

"Taiyo Takagi. It’s nice hearing from you again,” his deep mellow voice immediately answered the call on the first ring. “It has been so long."

"Hudson,” I greeted back warmly, feeling more at ease now upon hearing the familiar friendly voice of my colleague, “Yeah, it's been a while, huh?"

Hudson Porter has been my business confidante and best friend for over five years now. We had first met in college after being seatmates in Philosophy class. He has been one of the very few people I trusted with my life because he just had a way of making you feel like he would never betray you. He is cordially honest and frank and he never tried to question my decisions no matter how irrational and absurd they’d come. He was just there to give me warnings and precautions. And he was the most considerate person I've met. He would always be there for me in times of dire need and troubles. But now that I think about it, it really has been so long since the last time we had chatted over a drink or even just met for business. It was kind of weird hearing his voice again when I haven't even seen him for almost a year now.

"How's LA?" I casually asked.

He had been assigned to meet and negotiate with the executives of one of our partner companies in Los Angeles to work on a future project that we had been going over for the last two years. And ever since he had left for that, he has been staying at the state alone.

"Same old boring meetings, as usual. It’s almost like I’ve never even changed places. My schedules are pretty much the same as what I had back there…" Hudson said with apparent disdain laced in his voice then quickly stopped, "Oh no. You're still not back in the city, aren’t you? I heard from your brother that you were actually planning to stay in a town or something. The last time I've heard, you were in Paris. What's with that?"

I scowled at his words as I was immediately reminded by my brother again. Leave it to Kevin to relay all the news to everyone else. That pompous squealer. I swear I won't ever tell him about my plans anymore.

"The news does really have a mouth, ears, and wings, huh," I remarked with subtle annoyance.

"You know that saying?"

I was even more surprised that he did.

"I just heard it,” I briefly responded back, “And I didn’t really know there was even a saying."

Hudson just chuckled softly from the other end and I sighed.

"Anyways,” I interjected, cutting his tittering shortly, “Have you read my emails?”

“I've already received your final revisions alright,” Hudson replied with a huff but was now sounding much more serious as he regarded my words. He was really like that when business talk comes in. “I'm amazed that you had even finished everything in just one go. I’m still working with something right now and I'd be returning to the city before the fall so I will just send you back the reorganized documents through an email soon. Or… do you want me to send it by fax?”

"No hassle,” I told him, merely sighing, “I'm still on vacation for a month or two. So I would not really be back to check it again for now. I still have an urgent matter I needed to settle for a while.”

Making that reason sound like it was related to business was obviously a complete lie. But then, Hudson didn’t really know why I was even here in this town so I thought it would have been better not to say anything more to him. And mostly, it was primarily because of certain personal reasons, as well.

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