The Private Number

My alarm goes off exactly at 6. I pull myself out of bed for a yet another day at work. I quickly head to take a shower and get dressed. I am making a veg sandwich when my phone rings. I’m pretty sure it must be Anna calling me to pick her up for work, but when I flip my phone over, I see “Private Number” displayed on it. I hesitate before I pick it up. “Hello? Who’s this?” I speak formally. There’s absolute silence on the other end. “Hello?” I say again. I can hear someone breathing, it feels creepy. I hang up immediately. I turn back to making coffee when my phone rings again; it’s the same “Private Number”. I pick it up “Who’s this?” and on the other end I hear, “Hey Lil, it’s me, James” I freeze in my place, this isn’t possible, I’m dreaming. I glance at the screen of the phone; it says ‘Private Number’. I’m scared, perplexed, and dizzy at the same time. Am I dreaming?

James was my boyfriend a long time ago; he met with a car accident three years ago and succumbed to his injuries. We were a group of five friends. James, Anna, Stella, Roger and me. Stella is my cousin and Anna my best friend, Roger and James were best friends. “Hey Lil, didn’t you miss me all this while? When do you say we meet?” I fall to the ground, about to collapse when I hear someone start to unlock my front door. I try to keep awake with no energy in my body, I feel as though someone just sucked all the strength I had, I can barely keep my eyes open. I see my phone screen, the call is disconnected. I look up to see my front door open and a manly figure walk in. By the sound of pacing of feet, I believe that man is looking for someone. I hear the footsteps approaching the kitchen, I try to move but I can’t. The man walks in, it’s Roger! He rushes to pick me up, grabs me by my shoulders and sits me down on the floor. I feel uneasy. He dips his fingers in the nearby glass of water and rubs the wet fingers on my face thoroughly. He helps me get up from the floor and sit on the nearest chair. He grabs a chair for himself and takes a seat beside me. “Roger, James!” is all I can say as I signal him towards my phone. He nods his head. He doesn’t react a bit. I’m confused at this point. “Roger, I know this sounds crazy, but I got a call from James.” He looks at me for a second before turning his gaze around the kitchen. I try to get up from my chair, “Roger, I’m not making this up! I swear he called, I heard his voice!” He’s about to say something when I hear people coming from the front door. Both of us head out of the kitchen only to see that Anna and Stella have come. Why is everyone here today? It’s been a long time since we all hung out in my apartment, almost three years. They both come close to me and look at Roger. “Did he come? Did he call?” Anna asks Roger. “He called her.” Roger replies to Anna “He called me an hour ago to come and stay outside the apartment. He even gave me the keys. He might be here in some time” He? Who ‘he’? Are they talking about James? I look at Anna for some explanation “Can anyone tell me what’s going on? Is this about James? Was it really him on the phone? Where is he?” I’m practically crying now, begging for them to tell me something, but they’re just looking at each other. I plead more, “Stella, tell me what’s happening? It’s been three years! I’ve never let myself even look at anyone else and you know that! Please Stella, tell me, is James alive?!” She looks at me, teary-eyed, and then glances at Roger; he shakes his head, “I’m sorry, I can’t say anything” Stella says quite apologetically. I look at Roger, he says, “Sit down, Lily. You’ll get to know everything in some time.”

Defeated in all my attempts, I sit down on the couch. Anna and Stella sit on my either side, and Roger grabs a chair and sits across me. I hear rapid footsteps approaching my door. I don’t even realize that I’ve stood up. I begin to walk around the couch and towards the door. As I reach the entrance, I stop in my steps to see a man a little taller than me, wearing ripped-blue jeans, a white t-shirt and a leather jacket. He looks up, probably short of breath, and I see a face that I haven’t seen in three years. I feel my legs shiver, making it difficult for me to stand stiff. James comes close to me and, I take a few steps back. He looks at me dejected “Lil, it’s me. I’ve come back.” “You died in that car accident! I saw you bruised. How can you be alive?” I’m frightened to the core as to how a dead person can come back to life.

He comes close to me and grabs me by shoulders, “See it’s me” he takes my hand and strokes his cheek with it, he then moves it down to his heart, I feel his heartbeat. “I did have an accident but I survived it. It was near death experience, but the doctors pulled me out of it” I stand shocked and frozen, “Then why didn’t you come back all this while? It’s been three years, why haven’t I heard from you?” Roger comes behind James and puts a hand around him, “That was because he slipped into coma a week later due to unknown concussions. He told us not to tell you because he wanted to surprise you, and a week later when he slipped into coma, I told you that his mother didn’t want you to be there at the funeral because as a matter of fact she doesn’t like you. I told you that because the doctors said there was still some hope for him to recover. He came out of coma a month ago.”

James smiles at me and pulls me in for a hug and I don’t seem to respond back by hugging him, he couldn’t have survived that! It was a head-on collision with a truck! He kisses me on my cheek and moves close to my ear, “Behave Lil. You don’t want your sister and your friends to know everything, right?” I gasp and quickly put my hands around him to hug him back.

“So let’s give these love birds some privacy and we’ll come back later” Stella slyly suggests. But I don’t want to be alone right now, “No, why don’t all of us sit here for a while and order some pizza?” I immediately respond and Roger, Stella and Anna rejoice. “I’ll order pizza” Anna says as she grabs her phone and surfs through the stack of menus. “I’ll get some wine” Roger says as he takes his jacket and disappears through the door. James is looking at me and I don’t have the strength to face him or be alone with him right now. I quickly grab my phone, “I’ll call my office and get a day-off from work” and while saying this I rush to the kitchen and stand in the extreme corner, as far away from the door as possible. I feel myself sweating and my phone almost slips from my hands. I dial Stacy’s number, she’s a secretary of my boss, Peter, and I let her know that I won’t be coming today, and she acknowledges and hangs up the phone.

Now, how am I going to deal with all of this? I rest myself on the kitchen slab. I have to act all happy and overwhelmed right now. I take a deep breath and turn around. I gasp as I see James standing right behind me. He smirks at me and I try to back off a bit but the wall is right behind me. He moves his face closer to my hair as though smelling it, “You still smell the same Lil. Nothing’s changed about you.” I tremble beneath his gaze. I want to run away from him, but he places his hands on either side of the wall blocking the escapes I had. “No running now.” His voice sends a shiver down my spine and I feel the tears swell up in my eyes. The tears fall down my cheek and I’m heavily crying by now. He cups my face with his hands, “Shh shh, don’t cry. I won’t let you go. Not this time”

This terrifying moment is interrupted when Anna walks in casually and her expression changes to awe “Of all the places, you both chose the kitchen to rekindle your romance. Now that’s bad choice” James moves away from me, “Yea, I know right. And look at her” he says pointing towards me, “I come out alive after three years and show up at her doorstep, and all she does is cry. She doesn’t seem so happy to see me here now, does she?” Anna laughs and says, “You’ve got to stop messing with her. She’s obviously overwhelmed seeing you here.” She then pulls James and me out of the kitchen into the living area. I rush to the washroom to wash my face, I look in the mirror to see that I’ve gone pale and my lips have gone dry. I splash the water on my face as much as I can. I dry my face with a towel and put some blush or makeup to bring some color to my face. I gain all my strength and move out of the washroom and into the living room where everyone is seated. I find a place on the couch and sit there. James comes out of the kitchen with five wine glasses and places them on the coffee table. James occupies the seat beside me. I shift a little to make sure there’s some distance between me and him. Stella as usual starts telling the gossip she just overheard at her work place, with Roger interrupting her every now and then by asking baseless questions only to irritate her. While Anna sits beside Stella silently sipping her wine and giving the weird signals to me whenever Stella’s stories take an unusual turn. “This is just like the old times. It doesn’t even feel like I’ve missed a thing” James says with an amaze. Yes, just like the old times, I’m afraid.

We’re interrupted by the doorbell. “Must be the pizza!” Roger says quickly and rushes to get the door. He brings the three boxes of pizza to the coffee table and opens them. We all dive into them, all at once. ‘Just like old times’. James moves close to me, puts his hand around my shoulder and pulls me close. I push him away slightly so that others don’t notice. He comes closer to casually kiss me on the cheek to obviously ‘show some love’. I push him away and this time harder, that Roger looks up suspiciously, “Hey, you guys okay?” Frightened, I look up to him, “yeah, yeah, we’re fine” James backs off, “Are we really?” I know I’ve put a lot of blush, but I can still feel my face turn pale. I widen my eyes to signal James to keep shut, but I know he won’t. Now, even Stella and Anna are staring at us. James takes his hand off my shoulder and gets up. He looks at me as though challenging me to say something. He knows I won’t be able to, I can’t lose my friends. But what’s worse is that after they leave, I’ll have to deal with the same James again that I had to do bear with three years ago, and who knows, this time it may be worse.

I stand up. “Stop it, James.” I say through gritted teeth. “What happened?!” Anna interrupts quite shocked; I look back at her apologetically. I can’t utter a word now, I know that all eyes are on me and that everyone wants to hear something from me, but I don’t have the guts to face their questions and judge me. I know they won’t understand.

“TELL THEM, LILY! THEY DESERVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!” James shouts at me and I jump. I turn around the couch to run to my bedroom, but James grabs my hand, “Didn’t I tell you, No running now!”

I can hear my heart beat and I wonder if others can hear it too. “I never wanted to do this. I never wanted to hide anything from you guys. I’m sorry” I begin, terrified as how they are going to take the next things that I’m going to reveal. I look around to see Roger, Stella and Anna looking at me with shock and curiosity at the same time. I look at James and continue with a trembling voice, “James and I were in love, you guys know that. But what you don’t know is that he wasn’t good.” James raises his hand, “Good? I wasn’t good? I loved you, Lily” Somehow I find the strength to face him and stare back at him, “No you didn’t, James. You wanted to own me. You assaulted me when no one was around, and I thought it was just your anger that needed to get out on someone you could rely on. I tolerated it for years; I thought you loved me because you were different when our friends were around. You were more caring, loving and gentle then, but as soon as they used to leave, you abused me, you gave me so many bruises that I had to find new ways to cover them or else just make an excuse about I got them. It wasn’t just occasionally; I had to go through with this on a daily basis. And when I told him that I was pregnant, he grew angrier because he thought i was framing him to marry me, but I just needed to know what we were going to do next. I never forced anything upon him; I could have taken care of the child all by myself, but he assaulted me that evening as well. The same evening you guys rushed to the hospital and we told you that I slipped in the kitchen and hurt my back, but actually that day I suffered a miscarriage. The very next day, I told him that I wanted to break up and that I wanted him to leave my home. He blackmailed me, and he showed me tapes in which he had captured our private moments. He threatened me that if I told anyone he would release the tapes on the internet and even send the copies of it to my colleagues, to my parents, and to whoever we knew. He made my life miserable, I couldn’t escape from him even if I wanted to. For the next few days, he would abuse me, drug me, and assault me even more. I just couldn’t take it. So I planned an accident to get rid of him and save myself. I had hired that truck driver who collided with James’s car resulting into a fatal accident. I kept a track whether he was alive or dead. The doctors called me up around three days after when he gained consciousness. He told me he saw me on the street where the accident took place; he knew it was me who had caused it. I couldn’t put myself in danger all over again. I disconnected his oxygen source which gave him concussions and left the hospital. Then you guys told me that he was dead a week later. I went into depression and even blamed myself that I had taken the decision way too harshly, but you guys don’t have any idea what I had to deal with. I was provoked.”

I look around at my friends, and they all look shocked, while James on the other hand looks furious, as though if they weren’t here, he would have strangled me to death. “Now you guys know what she did to me! This is who she is! She kills you when she no longer needs you around” James says, boldly. He rushes close to me full of rage and grabs my throat, “And what you thought Lil, that you would kill me and magically get your baby back? That loathsome piece of shit was the reason you tried to kill me? It would have been better if I had let that child be born and then killed him in front of your eyes. That would have made you realize you can’t fight me!” Roger, Stella and Anna push him off me. I’m short of breath, I try to inhale as much as possible, and I can already see the black spots that I hadn’t seen since three years ago. I’m filled with anger once again, I would have tolerated anything he said to me, but he bad-mouthed about my child, our child, whom he killed and didn’t even feel sorry about it. The worst part is he still doesn’t feel ashamed of whatever he did. He wasn’t punished then, but he will be now. I pull out the gun I have in my bag and take an aim at James, and next thing I know is that I hear a ‘bang’ and James falls to the ground. I feel relieved. I walk over to the couch, pick up my leftover slice of pizza and take a bite, and sip my wine.