"Hello?" Pt. 1

Easter Sunday

Here it is. Enjoy, and excuse the typos. Sarah xx 

For @sghaziaa and Allofthestars-234  

~*~*~ Daniel ~*~*~

Pulling up outside the now familiar house, I take in a large breath of air as I prepare myself to see Sophie. Despite only having known her for a short amount of time, she had become someone that was so dear to me that it made me nervous just to be in her company. Having a female friend wasn't a new experience for me- I had and still have plenty of those- but with Sophie Clément, the dynamics were different. At first, it had been hard to place why our relationship differed to the others I maintained, however, in past weeks I had become aware why she meant more to me.

I was, in an unpractised way, falling in love with her.

I'm not sure when I came to this revelation. Perhaps it was somewhere between visiting Le Louvre and that creepy bone place she took me to in Paris, or maybe it had gone back to that first night in January that I saw her at the Lister and Hardy Gallery but the woman was all I thought about.

Even in my dreams, I saw her face, heard her voice and smelt her ever present perfume, the scent of orange blossom, jasmine and cedarwood forever reminding me of her. She was intoxicating to the extent that I had my assistant, Evelyn, go out and purchase Jo Malone orange blossom candles. It was impossible to escape the wildcat that kept me on my toes, not that I would ever want to escape her.

I knew my feelings for Sophie were complicated. Falling in love with her was something I hadn't planned, but it was happening, and it was happening at the worst possible time. Meeting Sophie was something born out of error. My life was a mess that night when I mistakenly called her; I was newly heartbroken and not yet out of my relationship with Arabella when Sophie became a part of my life. It was her that encouraged me to move on and she became a friend instantly.

Those early days, I should have stopped calling her but there was this invisible gravitational pull that always found me hitting the dial button once I found her name in my contact list. I always told myself that it would be the last time that I'd call her, that I should let her go, that I shouldn't put myself in that position where I could maybe one day feel more for her than I should.

When that day came, and realisation hit home, I was conflicted. On the one hand, Sophie was the girl I had been waiting all my life to meet. On the other hand, was it fair to either of us that I think of her in that way when we were both fresh out of relationships? She had suffered an acrimonious break up shortly before Christmas and I was going through the whole Arabella-Samuel thing. Falling in love with Sophie should have been the last thing on my mind, and yet, it was at the forefront.

Elias had warned me, too. That evening at the Gallery, he had met Sophie before I had the chance to come face-to-face with her. They had spoken and Elias had slipped her his phone number, but as far as I knew, she had never called. At least, not for the purposes that he'd been hoping for. They met this week, under the pretence of Sophie writing a tell-all article about me for Vogue. Elias, with my blessing, had met Sophie and upon his return that evening, he came with a warning.

"That woman," Elias had said, cradling the neck of a bottle of Corona in his hands while staring directly at me. "You're going to break her heart, unless she breaks yours first."

It was dangerous territory to be around Sophie. I knew that, and yet I constantly found myself ignoring that part of my brain that was sending me the warning signs. Yes, we might be the undoing of the other, but what if we weren't? What if, we were exactly what the other wanted, needed?