Page 50 of Puck You Both

Delete.

Me: You have my number. Both of you. Use it whenever

Whenever what? Whenever the mood strikes? Whenever Theo wins an argument? The sentence has no floor. I stand there holding the phone over a container of rice, fork still in my other hand, trying to find the end of it.

The end of it is a picture I can't afford to render in my kitchen on a Tuesday.

Delete.

The problem isn't vocabulary. I've sat across from general managers and said numbers out loud that would buy buildings, in a voice that never moved. The problem is that every draft is a door, and each one opens onto a different version of me. I haven't decided which version gets to exist.

I put the phone in the drawer with the takeout menus and do my entire mobility routine on the living room floor, and if I take it back out at eleven to check the thread, that's between me and the drawer.

At some point on day two I catch myself in the notes app, typing Proposed parameters, with a colon, and the colon is what saves me. A colon means a bullet list is coming. I close the app before the list can arrive, formatted, possibly with sub-clauses.

I put the phone down.

And there's the real block, the one no draft fixes—any message I send makes me a man who sent one. Standing in a doorway can be an accident. Getting caught on a call can be an ambush. A request, typed and delivered, is authored. Signed and time-stamped, from me. Wanting it.

By the second evening, the group thread starts looking like an option, because it has both of them in it and a campaign for cover. Except Theo lives in that thread, and if I type one uncertain word into it he'll point that out where Patrick can see.

His direct thread, then. I scroll up through it, allegedly to gauge the tone, and run straight into my own text from four days ago, sitting there with smugness I barely recognize as mine.

Best hands in the division never have to ask.

I stare at it for a long time.

Four days ago I typed that with one thumb, unbothered, a man operating on someone else's nerve. It reads differently now. I wrote the scouting report on myself and didn't notice. The best never have to ask, declared by a man who has since spent two days building paragraphs to avoid asking, deleting them, and filing the exercise under consideration.

It's 9:40 on the second night, drafts dead, dinner eaten, dishes done, everything in this apartment squared away except its owner.

I hear my own voice say, out loud, to nobody, "Just call."

The voice has a point. Every text I've composed had an exit built into it. Some angle I could deny late. But deniability was the previous policy.

The Yes ended it.

I pour a glass of water, drink half, and call Patrick before the glass is back on the counter.

He answers on the second ring. "Wallace."

There’s total quiet behind him, quiet that doesn’t disclose where he is. And with whom.

Every sentence I own files out of the building.

"Am I interrupting?" My voice sounds flat, like I’m buying time by the letter. Which I am.

"No."

Nothing else. He isn't going to fill any space, that's clear inside two words. I can hear him deciding not to help me, and the decision sounds comfortable.

"The gala seating chart," I begin, and immediately hate myself. "Table nine has a conflict."

"It does." A moment of silence. "You called me at ten PM to discuss table nine?"

My mouth feels dry. "It seemed urgent."

"Mmhmm."