Call Girl

After her talk with Katie, Erin knew she had to do something. She couldn’t just keep sitting in limbo, pretending her feelings for Harry weren’t real. She either had to act on them or agree to stop all contact so she could let them fade.

She knew what she wanted to do, but what she wanted to do wasn’t necessarily the smartest choice. Nothing about the situation she had put herself in was going to be easy, but she was fully prepared to handle whatever was going to be thrown her way.

The coffee plans she had made with Harry were made prematurely, before she had actually decided what she was going to do, but even so, the coffee shop wasn’t exactly the worst place for the whole thing to go down.

Erin walked into Barnum & Bates fully prepared to let him down easily. She had this whole spiel planned, in which she would go into detail about her overloaded school work and utter lack of free time. She’d tell him she wasn’t in a position to see anyone at the moment – which wasn’t a lie – and that she was sorry things couldn’t go differently.

Maybe they could in the future, he would think, and she wouldn’t deny him that teeny bit of hope, because she knew if the tables were turned, she’d want to have something to hold onto as well.

Even though Erin had planned on meeting Harry for coffee and having “the talk”, it didn’t make it easy to actually have it.

When she walked into the coffee shop and laid eyes on him, in his two sizes to big sunglasses and a snapback covering his face, everything she had planned to do was thrown out the window and was replaced with everything that she would do.

“Harry,” Erin nearly whispered when he looked at her from behind his sunglasses. Even though she couldn’t see his eyes, she could feel them on her, and it sent an arrow straight through her.

“Erin,” he answered, smiling at her brightly from across the table. He stood up to greet her, pulling out her chair so she had the perfect place to sit. Erin couldn’t help but notice how gentlemanly he was, and she wondered if that part of him would ever fade. “How’s your afternoon?”

“It’s great,” Erin responded, nodding as she took her seat. “Class got out early so that was a bonus.”

Harry seemed thrilled by that, and for the life of her, Erin couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t normal for someone to be so happy for someone else, but Harry was just exceptional that way. He didn’t know it, but every word he said and every look he gave her made it harder and harder for her to leave.

“I’m glad you finally agreed to meet me again,” he said after they’d both ordered their cappuccinos. Honestly, Erin hadn’t meant to get anything, because that would just mean she would have to stay longer, but she found herself ordering anyway before her brain had a chance to tell her differently. Erin smiled at him, and he continued. “I was beginning to think I’d made you hate me.”

Erin chuckled at that, because he had no clue she hadn’t been able to get him out of her head for what felt like weeks. That was when Erin knew she was a goner, because of all the things that she felt for Harry, hate was the farthest from them. He made her feel weak in the knees and out of breath. He made her feel dazed, confused, and just a little bit crazy. He made her feel a lot of things, but hate wasn’t one of them.

“And that would be such an awful thing?” she asked, as the barista handed each of them their warm mugs. She took a sip as Harry smiled, his whole face barely visible beneath the excessive accessories he wore. She wanted to reach over and rip off his sunglasses so she could see his eyes, but she could only imagine what sort of black eye he was sporting underneath.

“The worst.” Harry chuckled before taking a sip of his drink and pulling back with a slight grimace. It was obvious he didn’t like the taste, but he drank it anyway. “And if I hated you?”

If Harry hated Erin, things would have been a whole lot simpler. She wouldn’t have to lie awake tossing and turning while she thought of him. She wouldn’t spend all of her dates at work constantly turning her head to make sure he wasn’t at the same restaurant. She wouldn’t have to think about him at all, but hate was quite the opposite of what Harry felt, so it wasn’t that simple.

“I guess I’d have to make you stop,” she replied easily, smiling at the cool smile he gave her. Even beneath the glasses and hat, she could tell how perfect that smile was.

“You think you could do that?”

That was another question entirely, and one that Erin had always been afraid to answer herself. If Harry found out the truth about her – about what she did for a living – would she be able to make him stop hating her?

She didn’t think she knew the answer. In fact, she couldn’t even begin to guess it. It was 50/50, up in the air, and that was what let her believe, even as stupid as it was, that maybe he’d be able to forgive her if he found out. Hope was a stupid thing for a girl like Erin to have, and she knew that, but even with that knowledge, she made a decision in her mind that she hoped she wouldn’t regret.

“I think so.”