Run To You Read Online Free Page A

don’t belong in your world, I think at him, but phones don’t pick up thoughts. He has to make do with my stupid silence, and my shaky breathing.
    ‘Calling then hanging up? That’s hardly polite. Why would you do such a thing?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I tell him, while the image of my own fear and panic rises inside me. It’s like seeing a bird caught inside a bottle.
    ‘Perhaps you were busy, and couldn’t complete the call,’ he says, in this purring persuasive tone – almost as though he’s daring me to say yes. Make it easy on yourself, he seems to be suggesting, but weirdly I can’t quite do it.
    I can’t say, ‘Yes, go away, I’m busy’
now
.
    ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘Or maybe you had an appointment you had to attend.’
    ‘That could be the case.’
    ‘You have such an important life,’ he says, and I know for sure then. He’s teasing me, in the most subtle and strange way I’ve ever been teased in my life. I can almost hear a lick of laughter in the back of his voice, but it’s not unpleasant. It’s not even infuriating.
    It’s something else, instead.
    ‘I really do.’
    ‘So many matters to attend to.’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    He makes a little hmm-ing noise in the back of his throat, like some friendly psychiatrist. I can almost see him nodding with understanding, though of course it’s obvious the understanding is fake. It’s obvious even before he knifes me with his next words, hard and fast and right under my ribs.
    ‘Nothing at all to do with being afraid and intimidated.’
    I fall silent again then – mainly because I have to. It’s impossible to talk when your throat has sealed itself up, and your body is frozen in one weird position. I’m almost bent double over my desk and my hand has made a fist in my best suit jacket, as though my body just had to prove him right. Naturally I’m afraid and intimidated.
    I’m a completely ridiculous person talking to this scion of business. He probably eats people like me for breakfast. I’m probably not even good enough for his breakfast. I’m the water he swills around his mouth after brushing his teeth with his gold toothbrush, before spitting me into the sink.
    ‘Are you still there, Alissa?’
    I wish I wasn’t. I wish I could tell him where to go, but there are so many reasons why I won’t. There’s Lucy and what happened with her, and that place and its mysterious allure. And then of course there’s the real reason:
    Him.
    ‘Possibly.’
    ‘This makes me think of you as something ephemeral, that I might blow away with a whisper. Is that so?’
    ‘I’d probably phrase it a different way, but generally yes.’
    ‘Really? How would you phrase it? Tell me, enlighten me, let me hear your voice.’
    That’s too much pressure. He has to know that’s too much, right? Just the idea of enlightening him is making my armpits prickle.
    ‘I wouldn’t use the word ephemeral.’
    ‘I see. And there is a reason for this?’
    ‘Yes. It’s too … pretty. It needs to be more basic.’
    ‘Ah, then perhaps insubstantial would do.’
    ‘That’s better.’
    ‘Or invisible.’
    ‘I could deal with invisible.’
    ‘Of course you can. Of course. Because that is how you feel, is it not? You feel so perfectly invisible, like no one could ever notice a single thing about you. And, in fact, you’ve grown so used to this state of affairs that you’ve started to fall in love with it. You like being in the background, hidden from view … lingering around the edges at parties … keeping out of conversations in case someone finds you as insufferably dull as you’ve
always
suspected you are. You can’t even talk to me because what if I don’t care either? Surely my life must be so expensive and jaded that anything you say will sound like the simperings of a child.’
    He pauses just long enough for me to say something here – a denial, perhaps, or an accusation. But truthfully, I think he knows I’ll only answer with this hollow, horrified