It was nearly five o’clock in the morning. My phone was ringing and it was a friend of Becky’s. He never called me usually, but Becky was out, maybe something happened. I drowsily picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Kat!” Phil whispered into his phone. “Kat…get Becky?”
He was clearly drunk, but this was not a drunk dial.
I lazily walked over to Becky’s room. I knocked on her door - no answer. I opened it up a crack, called her name. No answer. I tried shaking her to wake her up. She was passed the fuck out.
I could hear Phil on the other end. “Kat, there’s a police man, he wants to talk to you…”
“What?”
Muffled voices.
“Yes, this is Sheriff John McHale, Charleston Police Department. Do you know a young man named Philip Ellis?”
I blinked. “Um, yes…”
“We found him sleeping in the lobby of the Tate Beatty Center on campus. We were just wondering if you knew him.”
“Um, yeah, he’s a friend of mine…”
“Well, he got a bit tipsy. Do you have a place he can stay the night?”
“Yeah, um, he can stay here…”
“Only with your permission, ma’am. Otherwise, he’ll have to spend the night in a jail cell uptown.”
“No, no really it’s okay, he can stay here.” It wasn’t a problem. I was actually surprised the officer was being so nice about the whole thing. Phil attended the Citadel; he must have gotten leave somehow, or sneaked out, like the rest of them did, in their civilian clothes. They weren’t supposed to drink, or break curfew. If the school found out about this ordeal, he could have been kicked out.
“No, please, bring him over.”
A few minutes later, a knock came on the door. Phil stumbled into the house, I talked to the Sheriff a bit, he left and I closed the door. Phil was at my feet, hugging me around the legs.
“Thank you, sooooooooooo much,” he was almost crying. “My angel!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Dude, what the fuck were you doing in the Beatty Center? You don’t even go to this school!”
He shook his head. “My angel…I was just tired, and it was open. So I fell asleep on the couch…you saved my life…”
“Just get your drunk ass on the couch and go to sleep,” I said, rubbing my exhausted eyes.
He was one of the first people I knew from Charleston to get married.
