Episode2
1022 Words
The next morning, there was a headache behind Clara's eyes and the telltale bitter flavor of too little sleep.
Outside her window, the city was stirring already—horns, pigeons, the clanky hiss of the ancient radiator in the building. She scrunched up against the filtered light and rummaged for her phone.
No new messages.
Still no reply to her last message to him. But his voice—the velvety, deep rumble of it—lurked in her memory like the sediment of wine. She replayed his message the night before without opening the app. Her thumb rested on it, but she withdrew. Not yet.
She stood at the edge of her mattress, leaning back over her head, wincing at the pain in her shoulders.
The cheap bed frame creaked when she got up. Her socks slipped on the cold hardwood floor, still cold despite the fact that technically spring had already started.
Outside in the kitchen, Savannah stood by the stove, stirring something into a mug with furious energy. Her robe was lavender silk, too short to be proper, and Savannah never wanted to be proper at home.
"You look like you did something criminal and hid the body in your sleep," Savannah told her, not lifting her eyes.
"I did," Clara said quietly. "I killed my will to live."
Savannah snorted. "Well, don't leave it in the fridge. I just cleaned out the Tupperware graveyard."
Clara rolled her eyes as she spooned whatever coffee was left in the pot into a cup. It was lukewarm and too sweet. "You didn't clean anything. You picked up my soup and called it a cleanse."
"I cleansed the energy," Savannah said, gingerly sipping her brew. "So… mystery man?"
Clara didn't answer.
Savannah gazed at her mug. "No word?"
"None."
"You've got it bad."
Clara leaned against the counter, holding her mug in the way she'd been doing for protection from the conversation. "I don't even know his real name."
"That's not keeping you from looking like you're going to lick your phone at night."
Clara raised an eyebrow. "It's not like that."
"It never is… until it is."
They fell into a silence. The whir of the city drifted in through the windows like music behind a movie they weren't watching. Clara sipped at her coffee, her stomach knotting—not with fear, but with knowing exactly what she didn't want to say.
He had her. Not physically. Not even romantically—yet. But there was a pull, a weight to their talks that stuck to her skin. It wasn't what he said. It was the space between them. The restraint. The silence.
There was something s****l about not knowing what he looked like, and craving his voice like an afterthought that curled along her spine.
She blinked, hard, and set her mug down too quickly. Some sloshed onto the counter. Savannah didn’t miss it.
“You’re blushing,” she said.
“No, I’m overheating.”
“Sure.”
Clara retreated to her room and sat at her desk, opening her laptop. The screen flickered to life and immediately bombarded her with notifications—two missed Slack messages, an invoice reminder, and a project update.
She opened the project file "DCR_GRP_CLIENT" and clicked through the wireframes. The UX framework was beautiful. Precise. Whoever had created it wasn't merely technology savvy. She observed they were thorough.
Spick-and-span. Methodical. The margin notes weren't vague guidelines—they were questions. Slick ones.
Clara couldn't help but rifle through the notes, looking for. something. A name. A hint. A voice within the interface. But the files were anonymized. She grabbed her coffee, then let it go. Her gut roiled.
A ping in her inbox distracted her.
Subject: (Welcome to NovaReign Project Collaboration)
Her furrowed brow.
She opened the email and read the message.
Thank you for partnering our consulting team with the NovaReign Interact Project. You've been assigned to work directly with the Founder for Phase One.
Meeting: Tuesday, 11:30 AM
Location: NovaReign HQ – Midtown
Contact: Damien C. Reynolds
The name slapped her as a winter gust of wind. Not because she remembered it, but because her body did.
That knowledge without memory. A tune you know from a dream.
Clara stared at the text. Her heart started to do something strange in her chest.
Damien C. Reynolds.
She'd heard the name before, she was sure of it. A headline? A podcast? Maybe on a Twitter thread on billionaires who didn't really exist in real life. She couldn't recall.
She started a new page and searched the name.
Results appeared immediately.
Founder and CEO of NovaReign. Thirty-four. Net worth: gross. Infamous for avoiding the spotlight. One grainy paparazzi photo and an excess of essays dissecting his understated like it was taboo.
She leaned back in her chair. Part of her was dizzy.
No way.
It couldn't be him.
Her fingers had gotten ahead of her mind. She opened the anonymous app. Opened (Reed_Art)'s chat by tapping on it. Nothing new.
But there was her last message: (Tell me about Vermont.)
A voice note, sent ten minutes earlier.
She clicked play.
His voice—deep, slow, kinder than last night—was heard. "It rained today. I forgot how quiet rain is when you're not fighting the city to hear it."
Silence.
Then, as an afterthought: "I wish I'd recorded it for you."
Clara swallowed.
Her hands shook over the screen. She could reply. Ask him what he did for a living. Push. Or pretend she wasn't losing control.
Instead, she sent: (What do you look like?)
Sent.
She closed the app, then reopened the NovaReign calendar invitation.
Damien Reynolds.
Founder.
And now, client.
Her eyes tracked the screen, her own spectral reflection in the black glass.
Was it possible?
Her phone buzzed again. She didn't glance at it this time.
She stood, her cold feet on boards, and walked towards the window. The city pulsed beneath her, alive. Cars, lives, stories—all moving as one.
There in it, a man she did not know had just called her by name as if he already had.
- Writer
