As Debbie spoke on the phone, she gulped down two more glasses of wine. "Mmm...this is good. You never let me drink. Anyway, you're so far away. You can't punish me... Hey...why did I even call? No, that's not right. I'm pissed, so I didn't call. Did you call me?"
Carlos had walked back to his office as he listened to the drunken woman babbling. He closed the door and patiently waited for her to finish. "Yes, I called you."
"Where was I? Oh...right! Don't charge your father and Lewis with anything. You feel me? If you don't listen to me, I'll find someone else who will. You aren't here, so you won't know!"
"Go ahead. See what happens," Carlos said angrily.
"You... You're so loud. How...could you... yell at me?" she whimpered, breaking into tears.
The woman's sudden tears confused Carlos. He quickly corrected himself, "No, no. It's okay. Go ahead."
"Go ahead? Okay. Remember, I won't forgive you. Don't call me again. I'm still mad now. Maybe forever. I love you so much, but..." The grief grew in her heart as she spoke. She cried again and continued, "I love you so much, but you lied to me and risked your life for another woman... You don't think of me as your wife. You just want me for sex..." She cried even louder.
Hearing her cry worried him. He began losing his cool and comforted her in a concerned voice, "Please, don't cry. Of course you're my wife. I love you, too!"
Debbie's crying came to a stop all of a sudden. "Really? No lie?"
"No lie. Carlos loves Debbie, you know?" he said tenderly.
"Hey...okay. Well, your wine is really tasty..." She hiccupped. "Oh, no! I hiccupped in front of you... I feel so bad...so ashamed. Still love me if I'm rude?"
"Yes," he replied helplessly, knowing that she was really drunk now.
"That's good. By the way, Carlos, when are you flying out here? I miss you so much. I'm lonely. And Gus, that brat! All he does is show how much he and his girl want each other. Huh! When you come here, we need to do that too!"
"Okay... I'll be there before you know it."
"Cool. Baby, I'm yawning! I need to hang up and get some rest. I want to hug you while I sleep. You can hug me too, and then I can kiss your chocolate abs that I love so much..."
She got more and more flirtatious. Carlos massaged his forehead helplessly, trying hard to suppress his desire. She could still get him hard thousands of miles away.
Unknowingly, Debbie drifted off to dreamland. When she woke up, it was already dark outside.
Shaking her aching head to sober up, she tried to recall what she had done that noon.
In her vague memory, she remembered that she called Carlos! 'Oh, crap!'
She hastily grabbed her phone beside the pillow and checked the call log. She was right! She did call Carlos, and they talked for precisely fifty-two minutes and one second.
'Fifty-two minutes and one second? Damn. I must have talked his ear off.
What did we talk about?' she wondered.
What frustrated Debbie even more was that she couldn't remember a single word of their conversation. When she tried to think of anything, her head pounded.
'So did I talk about James, I wonder? Did he promise he wouldn't put them behind bars?'
She sighed helplessly. 'I swear I shouldn't drunk dial!'
In defeat, she rested her head in her hands. She had one too many. But Carlos' collection of red wines tasted so good! So she got drunk, and babbled.
'Fine, forget it. What's done is done.' She decided to text Carlos and ask about it. "What did I tell you on the phone?" she wrote.
A beep let her know that Carlos texted her back. Debbie read
the message and blushed deeply.
"You said you missed me, you wanted to hug me and you wanted me to..."
'Oh my god! I wouldn't say that! But I was drunk...' She quickly typed a message back. "No. You're just teasing me. We talked nearly an hour!"
"I had no choice. You started crying. I tried to comfort you, and then you started... um...I didn't want to interrupt you." She could practically hear him smiling on the other end.
'You didn't want to interrupt?' she sulked. After taking a deep breath, she wrote, "Did I talk about your dad and Lewis?"
"Yeah."
"So... what about it?"
It took a while for him to text back. "It depends."
'Depends on what? Ugh, this man is so annoying, ' she thought angrily.
She had an urge to text him the words "get lost." But she decided better of it. 'Hey, wait...'
Suddenly, she realized she was fighting with him and that he was in the wrong. She was still mad. She should be rude.
So she went with Plan A and sent "get lost" to her hubby.
Seeing her message, Carlos sent her a voice message straight away. "Want to know everything you told me on the phone?"
'What? He...Oh no!' She refused outright, "No!"
Ignoring her refusal, he sent her a second voice message. "You said, Carlos, tell me I'm hot. Say you miss me. We can video call on WeChat. Take off your clothes, and we..."
Debbie's face was the color of a tomato when she heard the message. She kept sending emojis to drown out his voice messages.
Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore and sent back a voice message of her own. "Will you be serious for a second? Sometimes you are so annoying! I'm still pissed off!"
Shock of shocks, it worked. Carlos stopped sending her voice messages.
A sigh of relief escaped her chest.
But her relief was short-lived. She was about to get out of bed, when he sent another voice message. "You sure you don't want to video chat? You are so hot!"
'Aargh, so annoying!' Debbie wanted to cry. 'Isn't this man an impossibly arrogant CEO? But he's such a flippant jerk now! I can't even... Asshole!' she cussed in her mind.
In an instant, she texted him. "You're just a beast in a business suit!"
He responded back with sex-laced messages. She couldn't win, so she just turned off notifications and set her phone aside for the night.
The next morning, after class, Debbie finally answered Lewis' call and agreed to meet him and Portia at a cafe. Maybe it was time to talk.
Debbie was taken aback when she arrived at the cafe and saw Portia's face. It wasn't that long since last they met, but Portia looked like a totally different person now. She appeared haggard and downcast, as if all the life was sucked from her.
And Lewis was the same. He didn't look the part of a wealthy and carefree playboy.
"Debbie, we flew out here to apologize to you. We're really sorry," Lewis said as he took out an expensive gift box and placed it on the table in front of Debbie. "From me and Portia," he added.
And with that, Portia raised her head. She looked at Debbie with her red and swollen eyes. "Debbie, I'm sorry..." she apologized in a hoarse whisper.
Portia sounded truly pathetic. Her voice was unusually hoarse. So Debbie asked curiously, "What's wrong? You sick?"
Portia discreetly stole a glance at the embarrassed Lewis, tears threatening to stream from her eyes. Yet, she shook her head and hissed, "Nothing. Jet lag. I hope you can forgive me."
The truth was that she had been tortured by the perverted Lewis every night, ever since they got married. He had endless ways to vent his sexual desires on her. England or Y City, it didn't matter. Last night, he had even downed a vial of gingko biloba, and it got him even hornier. Their noise was so loud that the customers in the next hotel room over called the front desk and complained.