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CHAPTER ELEVEN: HELL OR HIGH WATER ( aka 03x15: a higher power )
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"DOES YOUR PHONE ALWAYS ring this early in the morning?"
The unfamiliar male voice in her bed had Dallis' eyes snapping open in pure panic. She didn't think, she acted on instinct, jutting her elbow into the stranger's ribs and seeking to leave a bruise. The man let out a high-pitched yelp, flinching away from her and rolling over the side of the mattress with a weighty thud.
"What the fuck?"
"Oh." Kneeling on the side of the bed in a white oversized sleep shirt and her underwear (thank God), Dallis blinked down at the stranger now sprawled across her floor with his bare ass out. "It's you..."
You... you... she had no idea what his name was.
She did know that she invited him back to her apartment last night, and a thoroughly amused (and equally as shit-faced) Morgan had done nothing to stop her except offer her the can of pepper spray he kept on him 'in case of emergencies.' The rest of what went down was only hazy, but she was unfortunate to remember a quick, sweaty tryst between her sheets that ended after two minutes. The man then rolled over and started to cry for his ex-wife before his sniffles eventually faded off into snores.
Dallis was mortified then, but not nearly as much as she was in the light of morning. He was attractive, that she could admit, with salt-and-pepper hair and the beginnings of a beard. She tried her best not to let her eyes wander south as he scrambled to his feet, looking thoroughly out of place beside her overflowing bookshelf.
"You don't remember my name, do you?" he demanded, hiking on his skinny jeans that had rips in the knees.
This man was in his mid-to-late forties and wearing ripped jeans. Dallis couldn't begrudge someone their style -- refer to Penelope Garcia, her dear friend -- but his clothing just so happened to represent the attitude that poured from him in waves.
"I don't," she admitted without remorse.
Her phone started to ring again, ordering her to answer it.
"Listen..."
"Troy," he muttered like a belligerent teenage boy.
"Listen, Troy," she was already turning her back on him, reaching for the phone she'd fortunately remembered to charge despite the seven tequila shots Morgan had coaxed her into downing with him. "As... interesting as our night was, I'm late for work. You should--"
"Go?" He nodded his head. Dallis' lips thinned into an uncomfortable smile. "I get it."
"Great," she stared at him, waiting.
The attitude he paraded around, while she had no doubt was somewhat true, was a clear front for the deep insecurities he'd found himself drowning in. See: the crying about his ex-wife.
