+TYPED OUT-

+REPARATION-

Mondays' phone rang. The woman didn't even budge from her position.

"Monday, please pick up your phone. The man has called you almost every day since you got back."

"Luce, sista, you saw me, didn't you? You saw me losing my mind here. Wokin' arund like mad wo-maan, eyes dry as broken clay pots. He made me go asiwère, é it's payback time," Monday said, widening her eyes.

In New York, Kenneth smiled in front of his phone screen. Monday seemed to excel in the assignment concerning getting reparation as she made him taste his own medicine.

It was midnight in Paris and 6 PM in New York. Perhaps he should let her sleep; Nah. Kenneth waited and called back three hours later.

Monday sat up and picked up her phone from the nightstand. Sleep didn't come easy. She wondered if he would call her again; seeing he did call reassured her. Kenneth asked her to wait for the explanation concerning the infamous day, and Monday understood it went beyond the simple fact he saw her smoke.

Though he could not speak of his mother's story, he assured Monday of the sincerity of his feelings. He visited her booth when he had a moment, and they spent the fairs' after talking. Kenneth would walk her back to her hotel. He didn't go up as Monday shared her room with Dagmar, and she declined his invitation to go to his.

Monday wanted to be with him, but she refused to take any risks. They had stepped over each other's emotional fence too quickly and found themselves overwhelmed by feelings that flooded and rained on them in cascades.

The souvenir of when she saw Kenneth on the balcony of the bar in Berlin surfaced. Even there, while her phone vibrated in her hands, Mondays' heart exploded. Love was the oddest and scariest of emotions. Hate was blunt, but love tormented and made one's balance sway daily.

"Hello."

"Wow, I thought you wouldn't pick up."

"I wasn't going to."

Monday could almost see him smile. The man was a sadist, for sure.

"Why did you reply then?"

"I figured you wouldn't let me sleep if I didn't. Do you know it's 3 AM in Paris? If you didn't, now you know."

"I do."

"Then why call, Kenneth."

"Being sleepy is like being drunk. People speak without filters."

"I'm not sleepy," as soon as Monday said it, the woman felt the fatigue as though the sandman sprinkled some of his dust on her.

"How are you?"

"Good."

"Do you miss me?"

"Pardon," Monday squealed.

Kenneth chuckled but picked up on his question, "do you?"

"You're crazy. Do you know that?"

"I miss you," the man said as he looked at his view of Central Park.

"Kenneth," Monday whispered while her heart played squash on her rib cage and bashed against it.

Kenneth had neither the time nor the energy to play mind games where he fiddled with the ambiguity of words. Not that he didn't understand the art of seduction, which consisted in blowing hot or cold, but the man knew that it would only annoy Monday.

He was the one who needed the get brownie points. He still hadn't delivered a valid explanation for his past behavior. Thus, he wanted Monday to remember his feelings with exact words highlighted and in bold.