My heart does something it shouldn’t. It’s dangerous. Stupid. The kind of skip that happens when you start wondering what color someone’s eyes are even though you’ve told yourself it doesn’t matter.
“You know I don’t even know you, right?” I tease, keeping it light. “I could be getting off to the sound of a 65-year-old paramedic with a smoker’s cough and a foot fetish.”
“Are you calling me seasoned or kinky?”
“Both. Respectfully.”
He chuckles low, and I want to bottle the sound and tuck it under my pillow.
“You’re lucky I like you.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Guess I am.”
There’s a pause where he doesn’t say anything, and nor do I. It’s a silence that feels like a softening. Respite. The way he might hold me after he’s finished doing every filthy thing he’s told me he wants to do.
“I should go clean up,” he says eventually. “Shift in ten.”
“Day shift or overnight?”
“Morning. We do twelves. I’m off-night—for now.”
I nod, even though he can’t see me. “You ever sleep, or are you just powered by caffeine and chaos?”
“Mostly chaos. Definitely caffeine. And recently, a very good girl in my ear.”
I snort. “Gross.”
“Accurate.”
We've been doing this for about a month. Safe, anonymous cyber sex with just enough realness tucked in the margins. I know he’s a night owl, and that he’s got a scar above his eyebrow from falling out of a tree when he was a kid. That he listens toold rock on long drives, and likes the sound of my laugh. He even told me it was one of his top three favorite sounds.
But he’s still just a voice on the end of a line.
With a stretch, I wiggle my toes beneath the blanket. There’s a spark under my ribs that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. Not a flame, not yet. But something warm. Something I’m not quite sure how to acknowledge.
I want to ask him more, what his days look like. Who he spends his time with. Whether he’s already thinking about the next time I’ll beg for his voice in my ear telling me to come.
I want to ask him so many things, but I don’t.
“I should let you go,” I say instead. “You’ve got things to do, I’m sure.”
“You offering to supervise?”
“Only if it involves a uniform.”
I can practicallyhearhis responding smirk.
“Thinking about me in it, or out of it?”
God. This man.
“Mostly out.”
“Smart girl.”
“Smartmouth, too.”
“Jesus. Goodnight, Red.”
