ring ring ring bananaphone:"Hi, this is Liz. I'm prooobably having an out-of-body experience, but leave a message with your name and number and I'll get back to you when I'm back, okay?"
Libby's machine clicks on, leaving as a message ..................silence. Lots of it! If it manages to convey total confusion and the inability to form the starting syllable of a sentence, that will not surprise anyone, because that is how powerful a silence it is.
"Oh. Sorry, I was um, lookin' for a um. A Libby. Not a Liz. But maybe I wrote the number down wrong. I done that before one time. Maybe two."
"Aaaaaaa-" So, that's definitely a girl calling him back shortly (long enough to fumble for the phone and hit "voicemail", listen to the message, and then pound in the numbers for Tad's phone immediately) and that's definitely something heavy and loud hitting the floor in the background "-my breakfast ... good thing I haven't ... poured anything in there yet ... Tad." Her brain was working on autpoilot for a second there, hold on. Let the rest of her catch up to where that was going. "No. This is Libby. Uhm. Hi. I only let my friends call me that. Libby, I mean. Not Liz. That's in case I get a call from a professor or something."
Pause. Rustle. She may not be awake enough to pick up a cereal bowl and also converse yet. (She's clearly not awake enough to converse intelligibly ever.) "Which you, uh, aren't. Yeah. Hi. It's Libby."
Tad may actually need the reassurance, there, but mostly that's just immediate half-awake dazed panic talking. "... hi." Stop talking, Libby.
"Libby!" He sounds marginally more awake than usual, like he is actually interested in hearing from her, which ...he did call the next day, so. (It's poor form in some Guy manual somewhere, but those sorts of rules are an encumbrance he ignores. Or sleeps through the explaining of.) "I called a Liz."
It slowly penetrates his brain, her words. Which are making sense of that for you, Tad, like words do sometimes. "So that's ...two names. I'm called Tad but am also ...Thaddeus, and um. Sometimes I let people call me Wesley."
He sounds very sly about that, and should never tell Libby any of these stories.
"Thaddeus," she says, like it's some kind of secret knowledge stolen from Atlantis and given to her in fire. This is awesome she knows his full name. "And sometimes Wesley. Your ... uhm. Your brother lets you pretend to be him sometimes?" She had to think there, because she's not sure Tad's brother ever actually introduced himself, and besides some of that conversation got lost under the memory of "Tad kisses good" and probably Tad's brother existing was one of those things.
This alertness pleases Libby in some vague way that she steadfastly refuses to label under "cute guy, likes me, AWESOME" because that would make her feel like she was still in high school and she is a sensible, mature (...) young adult living in a dorm with two roommates and that would not do because she is not in high school anymore, obviously. "Does that mean you like to wear panties like he does, hm?" Her memory of that conversation, hazy as it is, may still be better than Tad's and she may be using this fact for evil. Who knows
( ... )
Comments 12
"Oh. Sorry, I was um, lookin' for a um. A Libby. Not a Liz. But maybe I wrote the number down wrong. I done that before one time. Maybe two."
...so it's definitely Tad.
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Pause. Rustle. She may not be awake enough to pick up a cereal bowl and also converse yet. (She's clearly not awake enough to converse intelligibly ever.) "Which you, uh, aren't. Yeah. Hi. It's Libby."
Tad may actually need the reassurance, there, but mostly that's just immediate half-awake dazed panic talking. "... hi." Stop talking, Libby.
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It slowly penetrates his brain, her words. Which are making sense of that for you, Tad, like words do sometimes. "So that's ...two names. I'm called Tad but am also ...Thaddeus, and um. Sometimes I let people call me Wesley."
He sounds very sly about that, and should never tell Libby any of these stories.
Reply
This alertness pleases Libby in some vague way that she steadfastly refuses to label under "cute guy, likes me, AWESOME" because that would make her feel like she was still in high school and she is a sensible, mature (...) young adult living in a dorm with two roommates and that would not do because she is not in high school anymore, obviously. "Does that mean you like to wear panties like he does, hm?" Her memory of that conversation, hazy as it is, may still be better than Tad's and she may be using this fact for evil. Who knows ( ... )
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