Pepper’s Day In – Part 2?

So this is a thing I’m continuing.

Pepper hastily picked up the phone, genuinely curious as to who it was.

“Erm, hello?” he said, clearing his throat so he didn’t sound as if he’d just rolled out of bed.

There was a slight pause, then a nervous voice spoke back.

“Uh, yeah. Hey, Pepper? It’s Lightning.”

Pepper nearly dropped the phone, his breath taken. He quickly regained himself, and tried not to sound too eager.

“Oh, Lightning! Long time no talk! I mean, er, what do you want? Something up?” he asked, laying back on the couch. Although attempting to sound casual and cool, he was practically hyperventilating, and quite audibly so.

“Well, I just… I left something important at your apartment, and I wanted to know if I could come by and look for it…” she said hesitantly.

Pepper furrowed his brow.

What did she leave here? I looked through everything after she left… I don’t remember seeing anything…

“Well, sure. I was gonna head out today and do some errands, but I guess I can stay in if you want to drop by.” he said, lying blatantly.

The voice then sounded relieved.

“Alright, cool. I’ll be over in like an hour, okay? I hope I’m not imposing… especially since you had errands to d-”

“No, really! It’s fine. I just… you sound like it’s really important, so I just may as well let you come over now so you can get it and be done with that.” he said hastily, but immediately regretted his wording.

SHIT. I didn’t mean it like that…

It was silent for a moment, until Lightning spoke up again.

“Uh… okay. Sorry to be an inconvenience.” she said, then hung up without another word.

“Shit.” Pepper said simply into the phone, but nobody was listening on the other end.