Episode3
1088 Words
Clara's Monday started with a thunderclap of sunlight right between the eyes.
The blinds in her room had a mind of their own. One gust of wind and they shifted just enough to let in a sliver of daylight, cutting enough to slice across her eyelids.
She groaned, pulled the comforter over her face, and lay there in a warm, stale breath and sheet cocoon. If she didn't move, maybe the day wouldn't notice her.
But her cell did.
It buzzed again.
She felt around on the floor beside her bed until her hand closed over the phone. The screen sprang to life with an incoming message notification. One new voice note. From (Reed_Art).
She sat up slowly, blankets draped over her legs. Her room was a disaster of dirty laundry and overwatered plants. Her laptop was shut on the desk, next to a half-eaten protein bar and a water bottle she hadn't refilled since Saturday.
Clara held the phone to her ear and hit play.
"Me neither," his voice came back. "Too much thinking. Not enough silence. I tried drawing a while ago, but the pen was slipping. Maybe I was thinking about you."
Her mouth went dry. Too soon to be hit that hard, but her body didn't care. There was an unguardedness to his voice tonight. Not the same smooth drawl. Something
rough edged into it, like he hadn't been practicing.
"I know we don't know each other," he continued. "Not really. But I keep wondering what your voice sounds like when you're half-awake."
She sat and looked at her bedroom door, paralyzed.
"Anyway," he said after a bit, "goodnight. Or good morning."
The message ended. There were sixty seconds of pure silence suspended in the air like vapor. Clara did not move. Her heart was making small, stunned jumps in her chest. The kind that came before a horrendous decision or a great one.
She listened again. Slower this time. For the tremble in his voice. That last line lodged under her skin.
(I keep wondering what your voice sounds like when you’re half-awake.)
Clara set the phone down gently on the nightstand and laid back. Her lips parted, not in response, but in something closer to wonder. Her body felt too warm. It wasn’t even eight a.m., and already something about her day felt irreversible.
Savannah shouted from the kitchen. “We’re out of oat milk!”
Clara rolled over, faced the wall, and growled, "Not my crisis."
But then her phone buzzed again.
It wasn't him this time. It was the calendar app, reminding her of tomorrow's meeting.
NovaReign. Midtown. Eleven-thirty sharp.
Damien Reynolds.
She gazed at the screen. For a moment, she thought about opening her app and finding it had all been coincidence. But the name—that name—had stuck to her mind like ink.
There was something too clean about it. Too quiet. Tech founders always had some brand or scandal tied to their names. But Damien's online presence was naked. Minimal. As if he'd developed it that way on purpose.
She searched him again. Same findings. Same recycled press soundbites. He had a single verified social account with precisely three posts—all promotional, all sterile.
And yet, she couldn't shake that voice note from her mind. The warmth of it. The vulnerability.
She had to know.
She was sitting at her desk an hour later, coffee in hand, trying not to read too much into NovaReign's design requests that kept coming in. It was all buttoned-up. High-level talk. They wanted "elevated emotion without sacrificing structural minimalism." Whoever wrote that line had a stick up their back or was trying to impress somebody.
Her inbox chimed.
Private message from (Reed_Art): (Do you ever think about me?)
Clara's fingers tightened around her coffee cup. She stared at the screen as though it had just confided in her.
She replied: (What kind of question is that?)
The answer came back immediately. (A selfish one.)
She hesitated. Then, with a breath that didn't quite feel steady, typed: (Sometimes.)
There was a silence. No typing bubble. No answer. She placed her phone screen-down on the desk and tried to focus.
It didn't work.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another voice note.
She ripped it open using her thumb and pressed play.
"I think about your hands," he said. "I think about them holding something—anything. A coffee cup. Your phone. The edge of a book you've forgotten you're reading. I don't even know if you bite your nails, but I don't think you do. I think your fingers are steady. Sharp. Beautiful."
Clara swallowed. The coffee was cooling too quickly. Her body was warming too quickly.
His voice dropped a notch. "Is that weird?"
She replayed it again, slower this time. She didn't respond. She couldn't. Not yet. Her breath caught between her chest and her throat, and she wasn't sure she wanted to let it go.
Her phone screen dimmed, and she let it go black without locking it.
She stood and walked to the window, needing something physical to touch. The street outside was busy—delivery trucks, pedestrians, a dog tied to a meter chewing on someone's forgotten sandwich wrapper. The noises should have been distracting.
They weren't.
She rested her forehead on the cool glass and closed her eyes.
What was it to want someone you hadn't seen?
What did it do when the voice in your phone was making you feel more alive than any human in your actual life?
That night, Clara was sitting huddled in her usual chair by the window, covered in the same fleece blanket, wine glass nearby. The laptop was open in front of her, tabs open to stock photos of user journeys and analytics graphs.
But she wasn't looking at the graphs.
She was replaying his voice.
Again.
And again.
She tilted her head back at one point and closed her eyes, letting the darkness pull her into something less concrete. She could imagine his mouth—because she didn't know it. His jawline—because she hadn't seen it.
Her imagination was doing the work her reality wouldn't.
Clara's fingers brushed the rim of her wine glass, the cold edge counteracting her flush.
She opened the app and typed a line.
(What do you think of when you hear my name?)
She waited.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
Just when she was about to give up, the screen lit up.
Incoming voice message.
She did not hesitate.
She pressed play.
- Writer
