It was a brightly-lit evening with strawberry-flavoured overcast. Although the sun was nowhere to be seen, it seemed that it was still hours before darkness would have swept across the sky.

Cursing the stuck traffic in her mind, Pia shut off her scooter. It would be another hour before traffic moved another inch.

While waiting for traffic to inch forward, she began to recall the events that had occurred during the day. Her office buddy had been dumped by his girlfriend and she had spent the noon out of her desk consoling him. It also steered her to reminisce her own romantic misadventures. And she lost the track of time.

Suddenly her phone’s screen demanded her attention. She realized it had been flashing its light for a while.

2 missed calls.

From an unknown contact.

She didn’t recognize the caller but gradually she began to make something of the digits as if they meant something. Or someone. Before she could manage to get herself to make up a name, it began vibrating again.

“Hello! Who’s this?” she said hoping to be wrong.

“Hi, Pia!” said a familiar voice which she hadn’t heard in years.

She couldn’t bring herself to utter a word.

“How are you, Pia?” said the voice again. She froze for more than a few moments again. Until she came back to her senses, it had been more than a minute.

Just to think of a lie.