Blue Hour

Unveiled

He who is content is rich - Lao Tzu

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Unsure I picked up my phone, "Hi..."

"Charlotte..." My racing heart skipped a beat when I heard his voice. 

He sounded relived. 

Before he could say anything more, I skipped in. "Please Alex, give me a second. My phone was off and I have not read your texts or heard the voicemail. I am so terribly sorry for the chaos. My text seemed to not have gone through. Damn... Sorry."

He paused for a second before answering me. "Noted. Do you want to get breakfast?" 

No grace period for god ol' me it seemed. 

My stomach rumbled and I felt strongly obligated. Had I not decided I had stalled long enough? Vanishing for two days wasn't nice at all.

"Ok, where do you want to meet?" I hoped it wasn't somewhere fancy. After all, he was double B and now officially back. Though he didn't knew, I knew...

"I will pick you up at the dorm in 20 minutes. See you outside, little one." Was his answer before he hung up.

Wait. What had just happened? He knew where I was? How in the world, did he know where I was?

Charlotte, breathe.

Maybe the pop-culture had not overstated the capabilities of these super rich guys. But my phone had been off, for the whole time! At least until our call right now... 

My brain went back to all the crime series I used to love as a teenager. How long had a call needed to last to locate someone? 30 Seconds, maybe? Ours had lasted close to a minute. So most probably he had used some of this tech to find my location.

Was I angry? Yeaa... no. Screw it, I was flattered.

It was evident, that he had been waiting for me to turn on the phone. More so, he had had someone immediately track my location. No matter how stalker-scary this sounded, for me it mattered more, that he had bothered. He cared for me!

Interesting was also that he had openly showed his move. He must have given up on hiding his identity.

I got ready in lighting speed. Everything packed I sat on the extra bed, when Hannah came back 10 minutes later from the bathroom. "Thank you for letting me crash tonight."

"Don't mention it. I told you, as long as the bed is free, it's no problem. You are always welcome." she smiled friendly.

Smiling back I half-heartedly hugged her goodbye. I felt a bit awkward as we had never been overly friendly before. It seemed like the right thing to do after her help last night.

Stepping out of the dorm exactly 20 minutes after our call, I looked around the crowded sidewalk. 

The streets were busy as usual: signal horns honking between sirens ringing. Ah, New York City serenade.

Just then, two fancy, black SUV's pulled up in the no-parking zone in front of the dorm. It did look a bit more like FBI than billionaire. Still, I was not surprised when a back-door opened and Alex stepped out waving towards me. He was wearing a full-on dark grey suit with a black shirt. 

Jeez. Locking sharp as a shark with perfectly ironed slacks.

No, not intimidating at all.

I grabbed the handle of my worn-out bag and made my way across the pavement. It wasn't easy, as the few people that weren't glued to their smartphones, stared nosy towards Alex.