It started as a wrong number.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was something else. A crossed wire. A storm. A shift in time, like a ripple through a pool so still you wouldn’t even notice the tremor—except for what it changed.

He’d picked up the receiver at Graceland one late evening, shirt halfway unbuttoned, hair mussed from half-napping on the velvet couch in the upstairs lounge. He hadn’t expected it to ring. It was nearly 2 a.m. But he was the kind of man who never quite kept track of time anymore, not since everything started feeling like a blur. Divorce, tours, Vegas residencies, cameras, screaming—so much screaming.

But when he pressed the phone to his ear, expecting some drunk friend or panicked call from one of the boys, he heard her voice.

Calm. Steady. Sweet.

Not shocked. Not rushed. Just—there.

She didn’t ask for him.

She just asked, “Can you hear me?”

And he did.

Lord, did he.

He didn’t know her name at first. Not really. She gave him the tiniest piece of it, something soft, like honey slipping from a spoon. She talked like the world wasn’t ending outside the phone line. Like she wasn’t impressed by him—but not because she didn’t care. It was because she did, in a way that was unfamiliar to him. Gentle. Curious. Like she was picking apart the layers of him with a smile in her voice.

The calls didn’t stop.

He didn’t want them to.

No address. No requests. No “I love you Elvis” or heavy breathing or strange, needy questions. Just… her. The same woman, calling a few nights a week. Sometimes he’d pick up before the second ring. Sometimes he’d be pacing, shirtless in the kitchen, cursing the world under his breath until the phone rang and suddenly, he could breathe again.

She listened.

That was the damn thing about her.

She really listened.

To his half-muttered complaints. To his rambling about old gospel records. To the way he talked about his mama, like she was still sitting next to him. She asked about his dreams, and when he hesitated—because he hadn’t thought about his dreams in a long time—she waited, and then asked again the next night.

There were strange things about her, sure. Words she used that didn’t quite fit the times. Slang he’d never heard. The way she sometimes paused like she was checking herself, or avoiding something. She said things about the future like it was already written down in front of her, but so smooth he didn’t question it. He thought she was just poetic. Or maybe lucky.

But Elvis didn’t dwell on it. Not really. Not when her voice came through so clear it gave him chills. Not when she called him “darlin’” in a way that made him feel like he was hers, just for the length of the call.

He didn’t know her address. Didn’t know where she was calling from. She never offered.

And he never pressed.

Because somehow, not knowing kept the magic alive.

So on this night—quiet, slow, humid—he laid back on the couch in nothing but a pair of black slacks, phone cradled to his ear, hand resting behind his head, waiting for her to speak again.

The room was dim. Just the light of the lamp behind him, and the faint sound of cicadas outside. The house was asleep.

But he wasn’t.

Not when he knew she might call.

And when she did, he smiled slow—like she’d just kissed him on the cheek.

He shifted, clearing his throat a little before saying, low and lazy:

"You ever think maybe you're just a voice I made up... just to give me somethin’ worth waitin’ for?"

And Lord help him—he meant every word.