Phone

Verb

to contact someone by telephone

He rang at ten thirty-three pm.

Jac accepted the call with a speed that could only be described as eager desperation. Comfort flooded her veins. The knot in her bell, which had been screwing with her appetite all weekend, dissipated as it became clear that he wasn't going to abandon their little ritual over one, silly, drunken text. The tension that had caused her to snap at every colleague, every patient, and every traffic light eased from her shoulders as she put her phone against her ear. His name escaped her lips in a breathy sigh that was very nearly a moan.

"Fletch."

There was slight pause on his end, as if he wasn't quite what to make of the undeniable frantic relief in her voice. "Sorry I never got in touch," he began. "Me weekend was absolutely hectic." Wanting – needing – only to hear his voice, Jac didn't say a thing. Simply listening to him prattling on and on was enough. "Mikey decided, as he was going t' bed yesterday, t' tell me about a trip he had t'day. Then Evie announced she'd run out of skirts – which she blamed me for 'cause apparently she can't put the wasnin' machine on no more."

Fletch paused, probably wondering if Jac was going to say something – because she never missed an opportunity to poke fun at the lengths his kids went to make his life difficult – but she was content to keep letting the sound of his uninterrupted voice wash away her anxieties.

So, he ploughed on.

"And then me dad brought Ella an' Theo home at, like, ten t' ten. All hyped up on sugar an' god knows what else from their day at the beach. Although why he took 'em to the beach when it's barely February is beyond me…" he trailed off, muttering darkly to himself. "Oh!" he suddenly added, as if he hadn't already been describing Jac's idea of utter hell, "And me boiler packed up Saturday mornin'."

She hummed in sympathy.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Exactly. So I got t' spend me weekend chasin' plumbers who couldn't install a new one 'til this mornin'. I had the kids complainin' of being cold all weekend, and me dad…" he huffed heavily down the phone and Jac could feel the accumulated stress of the past few days evaporating from his body. Could imagine the way he ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck as he flopped down across his bed. Maybe he needed this conversation as much as she did.

"Sorry," he said again after a long pause. "I jus'…" he trailed off.

"Kids," she shrugged, not sure what else to say. "Either you love them or you hate them."

He groaned down the phone – which caused Jac's eyes to close and then corners of her mouth to tilt upwards. He was tired, he was stressed, and he was a bit pissed off, all of which made the subtle nuances of his city-boy lilt ever-so-slightly thicker than usual. It was a careless – or rather, carefree – way of speaking; unconcerned with other people's perceptions and judgements. Honest and real. Just like him.

So different from Joseph, who was always so right and so proper and spoke only the Queen's English – to the point that it'd made her feel that she had to be like that too. Different from Jonny's Scottish brogue that sometimes got so thick it made him sound angry. Many an argument had erupted simply because she'd misjudged his tone. Or Matteo, who had just been smug with it; deciding that he knew better than everyone else because he spoke two languages.

Well Jac was also fluent in two languages: English and Sarcasm.

Matteo had never quite understood that joke. Maybe that was why they had been doomed to fail from the start. That and the fact he stole her research. And lied about being married.

There was a rustling of bedsheets from the other end of the phone as Fletch shifted to a more comfortable position. "I didn't make it to work t'day 'cause I was waiting on that new boiler. But then me cooker exploded as I was making lunch so I had t' go get anew on before the kids got home otherwise when else would I have found the time an' … well I was just looking forward t' a nice quiet evening, y'know? But me kids all had other ideas when they got home – shoutin' and screamin' at each other and I couldn't tell ya what it was about." He sighed dispiritedly again. "Barely got t' see ya Friday."

Something within her stuttered at that. Something fluttered a fucking pirouette to the juddering of her heart skipping a beat. She didn't bother to try and hide the smile in her voice. Damn it, it was just so easy to talk to him. Quite simply the most natural thing in all the world. "From what I heard; you were busy putting out fires across four departments."

He grunted. "The agency we use decided t' just…" he swore harshly under his breath. "Y'know, I don't really wanna talk about it 'cause it'll only piss me off an' I don't wanna be pissed off for our entire conversation. In fact, the reason I called was 'cause I needed t' hear your voice an' think about anythin' other than me shitty weekend so–"

"Okay," she interrupted. He'd needed to hear her voice… "So what do you want to talk about?" He didn't know. The silence dragged on. That unanswered text she'd sent him Friday night – well, Saturday morning technically – began to weigh heavily on her mind. Emboldened by Fletch's own admission, Jac dared to bare her soul to him for the second time in four days. "I missed you today."

The change in his tone was immediate.

"Really?" he sounded like the cat who'd just got the fricking cream.

Jac shook her head, a small uneven chuckle escaping her lips. "Really. I…" she shrugged a shoulder and shifted further down her bed, pulling the duvet up to her chin as she switched her phone to the other ear. There was no feeling of discomfort or embarrassment; she wasn't ashamed to admit that he was a vital part of her day, and she wasn't worried about him knowing it either. It was several months too late for all that anyway. "I don't know … felt like there was something missing. I kept expecting to walk round the corner and bump into you, or look up from the nurses' station to see you charming the socks off Mrs Alwrite."

"Edna's back in?" he asked with a tinge of sadness. "I thought you'd fixed her for good last time?"

"I did!" she said it a bit louder than she'd intended.

"Alright, keep ya hair on! You'd of thought I'd just accused ya of plannin' the assassination of JFK!"

"I wasn't even born when Kennedy was assassinated … unlike someone."

"Oi! I ain't that much older'n you y'know," but she could hear the mirth in his voice. It was bloody infectious.

"Ah, see, all those grey hairs tell a different story."

"Don't think I ain't figured you dyed yours blonde t' hide the grey better Naylor!"

Jac didn't really know what to say to that. Telling him the real reason she'd dyed it blonde would just ruin the entire mystery – and the betting pool was nearing £250. But she still couldn't figure out why there was so much fuss about it, enough to warrant a betting pool that had been running for over six months. She'd simply picked the blonde dye off the shelf at Morrison's one day because there hadn't been any of her three preferred shades of red available. Not a single thought of her sister had crossed her mind. At least not until she glanced in the mirror once she'd finished and felt a stab of crippling grief in her chest that had sent her straight to the hair salon.

"Tell me 'bout Edna then," Fletch prompted and Jac jolted away from the tangent her mind had wandered down. "Why she back so soon?"

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. "She had a fall. The paramedics thought to bring her in just in case since she lives alone. Only Connie was running low on beds, so she asked if we had any room since Edna mentioned being my patient." Jac heard the floorboards creak outside her door as Sacha made his way to the bathroom and instinctively lowered her voice. Why the lumbering idiot didn't go before he went to bed was a mystery Jac doubted she'd ever solve. "Anyway," she murmured. "Short story is: Connie owes me a favour."

"I was startin' to worry," he admitted. "The thought of you lettin' another department offload ont' Darwin without there being somethin' in it for ya…"

"I know where you live, Fletcher," she warned.

He laughed.

In the lull that followed, her drunken confession nagged insistently at her again. Niggling and worming at the remaining shreds of doubt that hadn't been chased away by the sound of his voice murmuring soothingly low in her ear. He clearly wasn't going to bring it up, so Jac decided to bite the metaphorical bullet.

"About the text I sent the other night–"

"How 'bout we don't delve too deep int' the business of us?" he offered. "Feelings aside, it's complicated and I get that you've got your reasons for it being so – neither of us comes without a shed load of baggage after all. So maybe we jus' … stop tryin' t' pretend like it ain't complicated?"

"I can do that," she murmured.

"Cause you told me nothin' I hadn't already figured in that text," he continued.

Jac stopped breathing.

"But I know you only said it 'cause you had a glass too many with Sacha." She couldn't tell if he was disappointed or not. Couldn't tell if she wanted him to be disappointed that her confession had been made under the influence of alcohol.

"Doesn't make it any less true," she whispered hoarsely.

"I know. I never said it didn't … but it makes things…"

"Complicated."

Fletch heaved yet another sigh down the phone, "Y'know," he murmured, "there are times I wish it weren't complicated – that you weren't complicated … but the truth is I don't think I'd 'ave fallen for you so damn hard if you were anything else."

I like it, he'd whispered that day. I like it a lot.

After that everything went back to how it was. Easy banter and constant communication throughout the day and into the evening until the kids were in bed. Then their chatting turned from stilted un-punctuated sentences to clandestine phone calls while the night closed in around them. Long talks conducted in low murmurs and extended pauses in an unspoken agreement to not disrupt sleeping children.

As she exited her daughter's room about a week later, after succumbing to the urge that all parents have; to make sure that bed bugs or monsters hidden in wardrobes hadn't spirited offspring away in the hour since the child was put to bed, Jac tugged her phone from her back pocket and fired a quick message to Fletch.

Jac Naylor
→ Emma asleep. Your lot?

Adrian Fletcher
→ not yet xx
→ is it still illegal to tranquilise your kids before 9 pm?

Jac Naylor
→ yes xx

Adrian Fletcher
→ spoil sport

He bombarded her with a series of yellow faces with variously unhappy expressions. Jac merely rolled her eyes as she made her way into the kitchen to see about cobbling together something that resembled a meal. Sacha lounged against the kitchen counter nursing a cup of tea, ready to chop or stir or peel if Jac required it; her willing servant in this second dominion of hers. Kitchen department's more my thing she'd once told Michael Spence, it's the knives.

Jac Naylor
→ should have kept it in your pants then Fletcher xx

Adrian Fletcher
→ fuck you

Jac Naylor
→ I'm a bit busy right now. Call me later and we'll talk xx

Adrian Fletcher
→ don't go putting thoughts in me head that I know you ain't gonna follow through on

Jac Naylor
→ just call me xx

He was late calling.

Having spent the past half hour impatiently staring at the TV, not taking in the overrated drama that was unfolding in yesterday's episode of EastEnders (that Sacha had made her record so he wouldn't miss), Jac accepted Fletch's call almost as soon as she felt the phone buzz by her elbow. She didn't see Sacha rolling his eyes as she got up from her spot beside him on the sofa, but the sound of the TV volume being turned up followed her out of the living room. "Kids immune to the tranquiliser darts, are they?" she teased. But it turned out that Fletch was still trying to do the parent thing.

"–Evie can you jus' go t' bed please? No, not in a sec – now!" there was a pause, during which Jac assumed his eldest said something suitably teenager-y as she stomped up the stairs. Fletch groaned loudly. "A double night shift in the ED is easier than kids."

Jac smirked down the phone as she leant a shoulder against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. The sounds of Danny Dyer talking some crap filtered through the closed living room door. Sacha chuckled on cue. "You don't have to tell me that," she sank down on the bottom step. "Although, how you manage with four … one is more than enough for me."

"It's like she decided overnight that she was gonna grow up."

"Well … she will be fifteen in a few months Fletch."

"I was still a kid at her age."

"It's different for girls," Jac reasoned, wondering when she had become so comfortable dishing out parenting advice. It was only a short decent from here to the yummy-mummy brigade clustered around each other on the edges of the school playground. "Boys can still be prats at twenty. I should know. I dated a few of them at med school. Girls are expected to grow up sooner."

He grunted but said nothing. Jac found the muffled sound of the football game he was watching, and the occasional sniff as he suffered through the cold that he claimed he'd caught off Emma when she'd gone over to play with Theo the other day, oddly relaxing. She found herself imagining curling up beside him on the sofa of an evening. Him watching his shitty football while she read the latest edition of whichever medical journal she hadn't unsubscribed to that week. The kids upstairs asleep. Elliott's mutt dozing in the middle of the floor…

As if merely thinking about the mongrel was enough to summon him, the dog nosed his way out of the living room and padded over to her. After staring at her with his solemn face for a moment, he proceeded to flop down at the bottom of the stairs – right on top of Jac's feet. Absently, her mind still ambling down What If Lane, Jac ran her hand through Gary's thick fur. Emma adored him.

"It's just … I'm not ready for her t' grow up," Fletch confessed, breaking the comfortable silence and scattering Jac's thoughts like frail wisps of smoke.

"I know," and she did. She also knew all too well the difficulties of navigating adolescence without a mother; at least Evie had her dad. "But it's happening whether you want it to or not."

"Nah it'll be fun!" he insisted a fortnight later.

"It'll be hell. Literal, actual, hello on earth."

Fletch laughed easily down the phone. "C'mon Naylor. Live a little."

Jac muttered darkly under her breath as she flounced around her empty house. Bored. Completely and utterly bored out of her mind. Emma was away for the weekend with Mo – again. She suspected Mo was trying to compensate for Jonny's prolonged absence from his daughter's life, but Jac hadn't said anything because she appreciated that someone else realised that Emma needed some kind of a family beyond her and Gary the dog.

"I am living!" she told Fletch.

"Oh yeah? Emma's off for the weekend with Mo, ain't she? And you ain't working."

"Your point, Adrian?"

"Got any plans?"

Jac huffed, outed. She'd already admitted to having nothing planned. In fact, she'd spent the whole of Thursday's and Friday's shifts making sure that everyone on Darwin knew she had the weekend off. From the hospital, from being a parent, from everything – and she was planning on doing precisely nothing. Problem was that by twenty past nine Saturday morning, Jac was absolutely bored rigid.

Her solution: ringing Fletch.

Who had promptly invited her to come with him and his older two kids to Alton Towers theme park the following day. Theo and Ella, being too young for thrill rides and overpriced fast food, were going to be spending the day with their Auntie Becks, apparently. Whoever the fuck that was.

"You opposed t' having a bit of fun?"

"Theme parks aren't fun," Jac protested. "They're … hell. On earth."

"So you'll come then?" he asked, full of excitement and mirth and the prospect of spending the entire say bullying her into enjoyment.

Gary the dog stared at her with his long face, doing a very good imitation of his former owner. Jac huffed through her nose. "Fine. I'll come."

A few evenings later, when Sacha wandered into the kitchen to pour them both a glass from the bottle they'd open the other day, Jac's phone – abandoned on the kitchen under the book Emma had brought home from school – chirped its merry text alert, announcing the arrival of a message from the Director of Nursing. Curiosity, and perhaps a fair amount of envy, couldn't prevent him from glancing at the screen to read the snap-shot of text super-imposed over a photo of Emma grinning widely as she strangled a rather resigned-looking Gary the dog.

Adrian Fletcher
→ my lot in bed. can I call?

Sighing to himself and wondering if it would make him a bad friend if he turned her phone off – or hid it – Sacha took the two glasses and Jac's phone back into the front room. To his surprise, Jac didn't immediately call her he's-not-my-boyfriend-Levy-shut-the-hell-up. Instead, she typed out a quick message and then placed the device screen down on the arm of the sofa, smiling at him as he handed her the wine, asking if there was anything he wanted to do with Emma at the weekend.

When she disappeared to the loo some time later, Sacha seized upon his opportunity. Launching across the sofa, and nearly upsetting both glasses of wine, he snatched up her phone. adrenalin racing through his veins, conscious that Jac could return at any second, he held the device in his hands and wondered what the hell he was doing. He typed out the passcode that Emma had taught him shortly after he'd moved in – because she'd wanted to look at the photos on her mummy's phone – and opened up Jac's messaging app.

Jac Naylor
→ watching some sappy crap with Sacha. I'll call later xx

Adrian Fletcher
→ how is he?
→ What you watching?
→ Xx

Jac Naylor
→ 4 weddings & a funeral. He wanted Notting Hill. I told him no fucking way. Julia roberts pisses me off. Much rather Devil Wears Prada
→ actually no. I'd much rather Titanic but Sach always has to complain about historical inaccuracies for the first half hour. then he moves on to dissing Leo so 4 weddings it was. For his own safety
→ he's worried about Essie xx

Guilty, Sacha locked the phone and returned it to the arm of the sofa.

It wasn't as if Jac had given him cause to be jealous; not as if she and Fletch were actually together together. Yet for whatever reason, reading Jac's words to the man she'd spent a year or more slowly falling in love with helped settle Sacha's black thoughts. Helped assure him that he still had – and always would have – a place and a part in her life.

Adrian Fletcher had better not break her heart, Sacha mused. His best friend deserved the moon on a string and if Fletch couldn't see that … well Sacha wasn't really one for threats but for Jac he was willing to make an exception. Of course, the more likely scenario was that Jac would break her own heart by inadvertently breaking Fletch's by reacting badly to some small or significant step forward in their relationship and out of habit, out of fear, out of an innate belief that she wasn't ever good enough, hitting the eject button.

Sacha just hoped that all this mutual pining amounted to something that was strong enough to withstand the inevitable fuckups Jac was liable to make if, and when, they transitioned from friends to something more. Because for whatever reason, Fletch saw Jac – and Sacha knew that once someone saw beneath Jac's many, many masks, it was easy to see why she deserved the world. No, Adrian Fletcher wasn't the problem.

When Jac returned from the loo, Sacha casually announced that he was bored with Four Wedding and would she mind if he put something else on? She complained horribly about Anne Hathaway throughout the duration of the new film, but he knew from expensive experience that was just her way of engaging. If Jac truly didn't like something, she'd not bother to comment. Or she'd just turn the TV off. Besides, Miranda Priestly might as well be her spirit animal and Jac was secretly a sucker for any film with Meryl Streep in it.

Later, as he stumbled blindly down the hall to the bathroom, cursing once again his bladder for forcing him out of bed a mere forty minutes after he'd gotten into it, he saw a golden light spilling from underneath Jac's bedroom door. He lingered, and after a moment heard the tell-tale hushed murmurings that all late-night phone calls were conducted in. He smiled to himself as he fumbled for the bathroom light, cursing again as the harsh glare temporarily blinded him.

She could hear Evie's muffled complaining as Fletch sought respite from his spawn one bright, but cold, Sunday afternoon in late February. "What is she prattling on about now?"

"Dunno. Something about how I'm always on the phone t' ya." Jac was about to vehemently protest that they weren't always on the phone with each other, but the words died in her throat. "Yeah," he muttered. "I had nothin' to say t' her either."

Jac wandered into the living room to be met with an alarming sight. Her daughter was holding both Elliott's dog and Uncle Sacha hostage; high definition animated snowflakes were falling on the TV and the first few notes of the opening song began vibrating through the floorboards. Jac promptly turned right around. Nope. Not today. Kitchen it was.

"Where have you sought out sanctuary this time?" She asked, noting the time and deciding she might as well start making something for dinner.

"Garage."

"Not the loo?"

"Nah. They figured that one out the other day."

Just as she opened her mouth to retort something witty, a child squealed in delight. A piercing shriek that caused Jac to jump right out of her skin. "Shit! Fucking Christ!"

"Bloody hell!" Fletch cursed, "was that yours or one of mine?"

"Fucked if I know!"

"Anyone ever told ya you've got such a dirty mouth, Naylor?"

She grinned at the sink. "Elliott and Connie once banned me from theatre for a week because I kept swearing during surgery."

"You still do," Fletch informed her. "I hear ya. Mutterin' under your breath when things get slightly tricky an' you think no one can hear ya with all them machines beepin'. Ya know theatre is meant t' be a sterile environment, right? That dirty mouth of yours could cause an infection."

Jac snorted, not really surprised he'd noticed. They stood shoulder to shoulder for hours at a time multiple times a week; if anyone was going to hear her cussing away it was him. "Yeah, well. I'm betting good money you like my dirty mouth."

Crap.

She really ought to stop saying the first thing that came to mind.

A strangle sort of sound preceded Fletch's reply. "There you go – puttin' them thoughts in me head again."

Jac just laughed as she wrenched open the fridge.

At a quarter to three in the morning over a week later Jac was jolted out of sleep by her phone vibrating beneath her cheek. A muffled, overly cheery tune accompanied the buzzing and she shoved her hand beneath her pillow, searching blindly for the blasted thing. cracking open an eye, she answered the call with a curt, "Naylor," expecting it to be some work-related emergency. What other reason would there be for someone to ring her in the middle of the night? She covered her eyes with a hand against the afterimage of the bright screen and hope this could be resolved before sleep fully escaped her.

"Jaaaaaac!"

She instantly knew two things; it was Fletch, and he was drunk.

So, she groaned.

"Did I wake ya? I woke ya. I woke her! Shit. Sorry. Well no 'm not 'cause I want t' talk t' yous."

"Stag do went well I take it," she murmured. He laughed, and it brought a smile to her face in the dark of her bedroom.

"In th' taxi on me way home," he confirmed. "Oh, yeah, mate. That's th' one. Past Sainsburys an' then down by th' canal."

Jac fed him a few more directions to give to the driver – not trusting him in his incapacitated state to successfully guide the taxi through the winding roads of his newbuild estate. Knowing her luck, he'd call her again to say he was lost and either she'd have to get in the car to find him, or ring his dad. Neither option was appealing.

"So, why'd you call me?" she asked after double checking the driver knew where, exactly, to deposit her drunk DoN.

"Does a man need a reason t' call a beautiful woman?

"He does if he wants to remain in possession of his crown jewels."

"But I don't 'ave any – 'm not the bloody queen!"

She chuckled her breath. Fletch rumbled something she didn't quite hear, his words fumbling and slurring and melding together. Perhaps she should hang up now; this whole scenario was reminiscent of that time she'd pestered him with texts after drinking a bottle and half with Sacha. If she hung up, she could spare him any potential awkwardness.

But if she hung up, she wouldn't be able to make sure he got home in one piece.

"What do you want, Adrian?" she asked, interrupting his prattling about someone named Davy Keys who Jac suspected was the groom to be. She felt sorry for the poor woman who was going to become Mrs Keys.

She could hear him grin. "I want t' talk."

"About?" she supposed she ought to feel privileged or whatever that out of everyone on his contact list, she was the one he decided to drunk dial. She also supposed the sentiment would be more endearing if a) she wasn't fucking exhausted and b) they were sleeping together. She'd be willing to forgive him if there was the promise of sex to make up for it.

He made some non-comital noise. "I dunno … jus' want t' hear your voice I guess…"

"Well you can hear it tomorrow. At work. During the day." Jesus Christ she could feel her voice catching in her throat, all scratchy as if she smoked 40 a day.

"You're cute an' sexy when you're grumpy."

"Fuck you." Her throat caught on the 'uck' and so the 'you' came out all breathy.

Fletch hummed. "So," he announced abruptly. "Me dad's a tosser."

Jac rolled her eyes. "What'd he do this time?"

"Jus' … everythin' … like, he said he were gonna take the kids out last week, right?"

"Right."

"But then last sec he cancels 'cause like his other family needs him or somethin'."

"It was the week before last," Jac informed him. "But please, do go on."

"Why can't he jus' … why couldn't he 'ave…" Fletch trailed off, but Jac was all too familiar with the path his thoughts were leading him down. Knew all too well the despair and knowledge of not being enough that haunted him. The unwarranted spite that was directed at the other family just because they had been enough, they had been chosen, when he hadn't been.

You and me – we're the same. At the time his words had only confused and scared her; a prospect she hadn't been able to process because of all the other shit she was trying to ignore. She was different now. "You have no idea how happy it makes me to know that you're just as fucked up as I am Adrian Fletcher."

"Like it when you use m'name," he confessed in a low voice that sent shivers down Jac's spine.

She licked her lips, throat suddenly dry. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she could hear the gentle rumble of the taxi's engine as he shifted in his seat. "Say it again."

Slightly taken aback by the demand, Jac humoured him all the same. "Adrian." It was a nice name; suited him. She wondered why he didn't use it more. Perhaps she ought to – outside work, of course. Using it at work might suggest to others that they could use it too and Jac felt oddly possessive about who got to use Fletch's name.

He hummed, whether in affirmation of something the taxi driver asked or in response to hearing her use his name again she didn't know. "Jac?" he asked slowly, her name catching in his throat causing the 'ac' sound to elongate. "Jacqueliiiinne…"

"What, Adrian?"

"D'you like me?"

She snorted. "What kind of question is that?"

"D'you like me?" he pressed.

Fucking hell. Why did he have to do this now?

"You know how I feel about you," she said quietly after a long moment. "But why should I say it again when you haven't given any indication that you're going to say it at all?" Fletch sucked in a heavy breath, sounding much like he'd just had a door slammed in his face. Or a fist punched into is gut.

Jac could hear his pout in his next words, could imagine the way his eyes widened as he stared into hers. A wheedling, boyish grin on his face that would make her heart tug and the corners of her lips twitch. "That's not fair. You're being unfair. She's being unfair!" he complained to the taxi driver. If the taxi driver replied Jac didn't hear it.

"I'm not going to argue with you about this," she began. "I think you–"

"Who said we're arguin'?"

"You're drunk and you're still pissed because your dad let you down – again – by choosing his other family over you. I get it. Believe me: I get it. But I'm not going to argue with you."

"Yous want me t' says it?" he asked as the taxi clattered over a road hump. "Is that it? Alright then I'll say it then. I–"

"Not like this," she interrupted firmly. "I don't want it like this."

She ought to have anticipated his reaction.

"Then how the fuck do you want it? Fucks sake!" The line went dead.

He'd hung up.

Jac dropped her phone beside her and stared up at the dark ceiling, suddenly not at all tired. She should have just ended the call the instant she realised he was drunk. Sometimes it felt like she could only go so long without messing things up; without saying or doing everything she instantly regretted but could not take back.

She should've just let him say it. Let him say it and then told him to go to sleep and that they'd talk about it in the morning. If he even remembered. He was going to wake up with a hangover and pissed off, and not remember why and…

Jac buried her face in her hands and groaned to the empty expanse of her bedroom.