Page 58 of 13 Rules For Fantastic Phone Sex

“Where are your hands?” she asks.

Hah! I knew it.

“Under my pillow, behind my head,” I say, not falling for her tricks. “Now, spill.”

“Oh,” she says. “Uhm, I’ve always wanted to be overpowered. Manhandled. That sort of thing. The kind of thing that requires trust.” Oh hell.

“Got it. Sounds hot.” She may expect me to lean into sex, but I refuse to be like her other callers. “Now for the important question. What’s bothering you? You’ve been upset about something for days.”

“I can’t tell you that yet, but I’ll be able to tell you soon. It’s a nondisclosure agreement kind of situation, but maybe I can give you a dollar retainer or something so I can talk about it with you.”

“Got it. I understand.”

She lets out a long, slow, quiet breath. “Quid pro quo, Henry?”

“Tell me your secrets, and I’ll tell you mine. Not that you’ve left me with any worth sharing.”

“It’s not a secret, but I do have an interview for my first-choice grad school next month. That’s a new development.”

“That’s amazing, I couldn’t be more thrilled for you. You know that once they meet you, they won’t be able to resist having you as part of their program.”

“Mmmm. Sure,” she says, unconvinced.

“Seriously, Kait, are you okay?” She should be thrilled, but she’s almost glum. Not knowing why makes me anxious. I want to help. “You sound different. Are you sad?”

“I miss you when you fly and I can’t talk to you.”

“I can text in the air. Kait, please tell me the truth. Are you okay? You sound… not like yourself.”

“I’m fine.”

I call bullshit. Dammit. She’s turning me into a potty mouth, at least in my own head. “I have a sister. I know ‘fine’ is female for ‘I’m so far from fine I can’t see fine.’ I’m going to remind you about our agreement to share our truth, and that I trust you to be honest with me, even when it isn’t fun.”

“Fine. I mean, okay. I’m having anticipatory stress about all of the major life changes that may or may not be happening. I feel… helpless.”

“I can empathize. I don’t like thinking about it either. I enjoy having you in my life, crashing around in my brain, disrupting everything and causing chaos in my previously ordered world… and making me smile. Simultaneously, I want you to be happy and see your life goals become reality.”

“The feeling is mutual, but don’t tell anyone. I’ll lose my reputation as a cold, mercenary hard-ass.”

“Oh, yes, the mercenary hard-ass reputation that no one other than you thinks you have. The most frugal person regularly buys coworkers pizza and cookies. Earlier today, I got a weighted eye mask in the mail from an unknown gift sender, but that couldn’t possibly be you, could it, Miss Mercenary Hard-ass?”

Her grumbling response calms my concern. “That was probably yo mama.”

“Nope, my mom would have said love and lots of x’s and o’s on a gift receipt, along with slipping in a veiled reference like ‘please settle down like your doctor brother and give me grandchildren.’” I close my eyes and try to identify the emotion hitting me squarely in the chest. “You are truly exceptional at making me feel cared for, Kait. Thank you.”

“You said you liked the weighted blanket I sent, so I thought the mask might help you sleep on a plane, maybe help you stay on your sleep schedule.” “She Keeps Me Warm,” a song by Mary Lambert, swirls in my brain, but it’s my Kait, not my blanket, that keeps me toasty.

My friendship lamp turns itself on, and it makes me smile. I turn it off, and it immediately turns back on again. We go back and forth like that for a moment.

She makes a little sound of embarrassment or maybe discomfit, I’m not sure. “Henry, are you naked?”

“You’re deflecting.”

“I don’t want to run out of time to have some fun. Dirty fun.”

“Again, deflecting,” I say, trying to set limits with her for what is probably the first time ever. “I’m naked only because I was getting in the shower when you called. We’re not having that kind of conversation. Talk to me, sweetheart.”

She’s fidgeting; I catch the quiet clatter of her teacup meeting her saucer. “I miss you when I can’t talk to you, even for a few hours. All this talk about school… I can leave the job, but I can’t—I won’t—leave you behind. I want things to change, but I’m afraid. Thinking about leaving this job for grad school and even pondering not talking to you anymore hits me in the ouchy bits.”