I wake on the floor. At least I think it's the floor.

It's cold.

I'm cold.

My face is cold.

I don't know why my face is cold and my brain is too sluggish to come up with any suggestions for me. I'm going to have to open my eyes and give my brain a visual prompt.

In three… two… one.

Ugh. It's definitely the floor.

My face is pressed against the cold tiles, my limited field of vision reveals the base of the toilet, an overturned glass, an empty bottle of what looks like Chardonnay, and my phone.

I let out a quiet groan and close my eyes again.

My brain takes the evidence and slowly pieces the fragments together. Shards of memory are pulled forward and help to fill in the gaps.

There's a bar, or three, and wine. There's Kara, a tattoo shop, an Uber, more wine. There's laughter and raised voices and more wine and...

Ah fuck.

More pieces come together and I remember the fight. Or more specifically, that there was a fight. The details escape me.

I slowly, slowly push myself up to seated. Slowly, so as not to kick off the nausea that's surely lying in wait. I lean with my back against the side of the bath and pinch the bridge of my nose.

A dull throb has started behind my eyes. I need pain relief and water and the sooner I get it the easier my day is going to go. I just need a few minutes to sit here though. Just a few minutes to keep the nausea at bay and try to work out just how I ended up passed out on the bathroom floor last night.

I should call Kara. I'll know within seconds of speaking to her just how bad the fight was. I'll be able to find out whether a bouquet of flowers will suffice as an apology, or if I'm going to have to go the extra mile. I already know it'll be me who has to apologise. It usually is.

I lean to the side slightly and reach for my phone. There's a message already on the screen and it takes a couple of seconds for my eyes to focus.

Messages - 24m ago
Alex
Wow. Um, okay. I wasn't expecting that.
Blast from the past is right. Are you okay?

I read the message, drop the phone and lurch to the side, immediately emptying the contents of my stomach into the toilet.

It's been four years since I last heard her voice.

Four years since I saw her, spoke with her, touched her.

Four years since she walked out of that hotel room and out of my life forever.

Or maybe not for ever, apparently.

I was asleep when her call came in. The timestamp tells me she called at three thirteen a.m. which should've been my first clue, really. I don't know what I'm expecting as I listen to the voicemail, but no call at three-thirteen-a.m. is ever going to be either (a) good news or (b) sober.

Ciao, she says, then giggles. That means both hello and goodbye, did you know that? Of course you knew that.

Four years, man. Four years and I have a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

Let me tell you something you didn't know. What you didn't know is that tonight my girlfriend, Kara, for that is her name, Kara went and got a tattoo on her ass cheek…

Of course she has a girlfriend. I don't know why this makes me feel so…

It's a Japanese symbol. I know, right? But wait! It says "DESTINY". Classy, huh? I knew you'd appreciate that. But it gets better. Beneath the kanji there is a flute. Uh huh. A flute. Like a PIPER would play? She is sooooooo happy with it. Believe me, Al, it's no "love is pain".

She giggles again and my heart tears a little hearing the familiarity with which she says my name.

This is Piper, by the way. Her voice has a sing-song quality to it now. Blast from the past. Recognise my voice?

You had me at "Ciao".

Boy. Well. I guess you know things are bad when you're calling old girlfriends from the bathroom floor in the middle of the night, huh?

She pauses. I realise I'm holding my breath.

How are you still… in my brain?

I ask myself that same question regularly.

Where are you? Do you miss me? Probably not.

Oh, Pipes.

I miss you. There's a pause, as if she's just realised what she's said and then, quickly, I don't know what I'm doing. Ciao.

The call ends and I'm wiping away a traitorous tear from my cheek as Katie, or Cathy, or whatever the hell her name is comes back from the bathroom.

She clambers onto the bed and kisses the back of my shoulder before she lies behind me again, and I don't even look at her as I swing my legs out of bed and tell her she needs to leave. I take my phone into the bathroom and lock the door behind me.

It is two and a half hours later when I've composed a message I'm happy with. It has taken me almost all of that time to come up with it. Countless versions have been typed and discarded until finally, I send this:

My phone tells me I called you late last night.
I apologise. I didn't mean it. It won't happen again.

I breathe a sigh of relief as I hit the send button, then open the browser on my phone to Google the number for the nearest florist who can deliver today. I'm not expecting a reply, so am startled when one comes instantly.

Didn't mean what? To call me,
or what you said?

I have no idea what I said, so there's no way I can reply to this in any open and honest kind of way. What the hell did I say?!

To call you. I didn't even realise
I still have your number. Again,
I apologise. I'll delete it now.

This is a big fat lie. I have no intention of deleting her number. I can't do that. Equally, I can't explain why I can't do that. I just can't. I just hope she doesn't call me out on my bullshit.

You didn't answer my question.

I'm not expecting this response. I did answer the question. I told her that I didn't mean to call her. I'm re-reading our brief exchange when her next message arrives.

I said: are you okay?

Ah. The question. From her original message. I'm not. But what's another lie?

I'm fine. Sorry to have
troubled you.

I'm waiting for her reply. After ten minutes, I realise there isn't going to be one.

I've been at work for ninety minutes when the three dots I've been watching intermittently appear and disappear on my phone's screen finally turn into a message.

It's a disclaimer, then an apology, followed by a denial.

I tap out a reply instantly. I don't know why I do that. I could just read the message and not reply at all, thus terminating this unexpected contact and slipping straight back into forever again, but I can't. I don't want to spend too long thinking about why this is, so I just send a message with a question, making her reply again.

What the fuck am I doing?

I know she'll reply again. She is too polite to leave a question unanswered, even via text message.

Her reply comes moments later. I don't even know if she remembers what she said in her voicemail, she sounded pretty drunk. Okay, very drunk. Either way, she's telling me that she didn't mean to call. She follows this up with not one lie, but two.

She's telling me she didn't realise she still had my number. I know this is untrue, because there have been occasions over the past four years when I've very nearly contacted her, and on two of those occasions, only two but still significant, I've opened a message to her only to see those tell-tale three little dots on my screen that tell me she's typing a message.

The messages have never arrived, the dots simply disappeared again, but she has had my number for all of this time and she's almost used it at least twice that I know of. Once on the night of my thirtieth birthday and once when the headline news that day was about a certain high-profile drug baron who had met his death in a shoot-out with police in Istanbul.

The second lie is that she says she'll delete my number now. This lie is brought into focus by the preceding one. Why now, Piper? I want to send that to her. I want to call her out on her lies and ask her why she's doing that.

I don't though. My concern takes precedence over my pettiness and so I send a message that refers her to my original text. When she hasn't replied a couple of minutes later, I follow it up with another.

I said: are you okay?

She replies almost instantly. With another lie.

If she's so fine, why's she calling me at three in the morning? I consider asking her this, but am interrupted by a knock on my office door. By the time I've dealt with the work crisis, forty minutes have passed and so has the moment. I let it go.

I let her go.

Again.