Page 5 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Bouncer

"I prepare talking points for everything. It's a whole thing about me." I take this as an opening to sit up straighter against the cabinets, as if posture will help my case. "Point one. I'm sorry I yelled at you about a spreadsheet you had nothing to do with. Point two, the blue rent thing, thank you, that was a genuinely kind thing to say to a stranger who screamed at you, and I noticed, and I'm choosing to bring it up now instead of never, because that's apparently who I am at eleven at night."

"It's one in the morning."

"That's worse. Add that to point two. Point three?" I lose the thread of point three entirely, which has never happened to me in my life, not once, not during a single client pitch. "I don't remember point three. I had a point three."

"Take your time." He doesn't sound annoyed. He sounds, if anything, like a man settling into a chair, as if he's decided this is happening and might as well get comfortable for it.

"I got laid off," I say instead, because point three has clearly left the building and this is what's rushed in to fill the space. "Did I mention that on the call? I feel like I mentioned that."

"You mentioned it."

"I had a title." My throat does something unreliable on the word title, and I clear it, annoyed at my body for the betrayal. "It's stupid to be this upset about a title."

"Doesn't sound stupid to me."

Something about the way he says it, flat and certain, no hesitation in it at all, gets me somewhere under the tequila, somewhere I don't have a system built to handle yet. "You're being weirdly nice for a man I verbally assaulted over the phone."

"You didn't assault me. You gave me a very thorough audit."

That startles a laugh out of me, real and a little too loud for the empty kitchen. "That's the nicest way anyone's described a mental breakdown to me all week."

"Been a rough week?"

"It's been a rough month. Possibly a rough decade. I'd have to check the file." I lean my head back against the cabinet, tequila bottle rolling against my knee, and something about talking to a total stranger at one in the morning feels, for reasons I'm too drunk to interrogate, easier than any conversation I've had all week with someone who knows me. "Thank you for calling back. And leaving the message. And not being weird about the spreadsheet thing."

"The spreadsheet thing was the best part of my night."

"That's deeply sad for you."

"Been a slow week."

I'm smiling now, sitting on a kitchen floor that won’t be mine much longer, talking to a man whose name I still don't know, and it isn't until Sunny's second call comes through twenty minutes later, worried I've gone quiet too long, that I even think to ask.

"Wait," I say, sitting up fast enough that the room tilts a little in protest. "I don't even know your name."

There's a pause on his end, short, almost amused. "Didn't seem important at the time."

"It's important now. I'm apologizing to a stranger at one in the morning; I'd like his name for the file."

"Archer," he says, and something about the way he offers it, easy, unbothered, like it's the least complicated thing that's happened to either of us tonight, settles into me somewhere I won't understand until much later.

"Archer," I repeat, testing the shape of it, filing it away next to the blue rent and solid system and the specific quiet kindness of a stranger who didn't have to call back at all. “I’m Maya.”

"Get some water, Maya," he says before we hang up, and my belly does this weird flutter thing, which has to be the tequila, but there it is anyway. The way he said my name, in his voice as if it already belonged there.

Chapter Four

Archer

Days of texting and I still haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong, because by all accounts I should’ve stopped by now, but there's something about this woman that has me hooked. My own personal Spreadsheets. It’s the nickname I put in my phone for her.

Wednesday

Spreadsheets: Day two of unemployment. Applied for eleven jobs and reorganized my sock drawer by color AND season. This is either progress or a cry for help.

Me: Sounds like progress.

Spreadsheets: It's a cry for help. But thank you for the vote of confidence.