Page 19 of The Art of Catching Feelings

D: Why did you delete your Instagram?

She was genuinely curious, but also the further they got away from discussing her identifying details, the better.

C: Social media felt like a distraction I don’t need right now. That’s the short answer, anyway.

D: And the long answer?

A pause, so long she thought maybe he really was typing out another block of text, some detailed explanation of how he was trying to prioritize in his life or rebrand or whatever else someone with a verified checkmark might say.

C: It made me sad.

A woman in a slouchy sweatshirt approached Daphne’s table, asking if she could use the extra chair. Daphne smiled and said sure, no problem, watching as the woman dragged the chair over to a table where a couple other women were all talking and laughing. The woman had a stroller pulled up next to the table, and one of the other women had a baby strapped to her chest in a sling.Daphne felt her smile droop a little as she thought, not for the first time, about what she might’ve given up by divorcing Justin. She didn’t want to stay married to someone only because the timing was right to start a family together. At the same time, in her lowest moments she couldn’t deny that sometimes she worried that he’d been her chance, and she wouldn’t get another.

D: I get that.

C: I did see your post about that book you were reading—the one with the mermaid on the cover. It was good?

Daphne still had the book in her purse, actually. She took it out and set it on the table, as if she’d just arrived at a book club and was ready to discuss. With an apartment as small as hers, she tried really hard not to make false idols out of books as physical objects, but she couldn’t deny that this was one of the most beautiful she owned. Hardcover with dreamy, watercolor art printed directly on the textured white of the cover.

D: It’s one of those books that you’ll think about for a while afterward. It’s about a girl who thinks she’s a mermaid, and the book’s very metaphorical where you’re not quite sure whether she’s experiencing magic or madness. I love the way the author writes about language and words.

She hesitated before typing anything more. She didn’t want to be the one to bring up his brother, but she also felt irresponsible not giving more explanation on the book.

D: Definitely a content warning for suicide, though.

She slid her fingernail along the book’s spine, tracing the smooth letters of the title.

C: I appreciate that. I’ll probably never read it—I was just interested in your thoughts. I can’t remember the last time I read a book.

Maybe it was good that he’d said that. Because Daphne could feel herself starting to fall under the spell of these intimate conversations just a bit, get dangerously close to imagining what itwould be like to meet in real life and talk face-to-face. She needed something to knock her back on her ass a little, and a revelation that he didn’t like to read would definitely do it.

D: Try. What book do you think it was?

C: It was probably college. We had to read Catch-22 for a class on twentieth-century American literature. I remember liking it at the time but couldn’t tell you anything about it now.

Daphne actually couldn’t remember that book much, either. She thought she’d read it, but when she tried to conjure details about it she was pretty sure she was confusing it with Kurt Vonnegut novels she’d read around the same time.

The coffee shop was starting to get busier now, people hovering around the door looking for an empty seat. She felt bad about monopolizing a table when she clearly wasn’t using it, so she started to pack up, shooting a quick text to Chris.

D: I have to get going. But I’m interested in your thoughts on books, too, so if you think of any others to share, I’m here!

C: Will do.

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Daphne forced herself to finish her draft blog post and send it off to the client before she even checked her phone again. She also did the dishes that had stacked up in the sink and extricated some Easter grass from Milo that he somehow kept finding and chewing on. Next year she’d have to tell her parents that, no matter how much she appreciated them still sending her a basket even though she was a grown adult and they were on the road, maybe skip the plastic grass.

By the time she was finished, it was past lunchtime. She made herself a quick bowl of ramen and sat down at her counter to eat it.

At this point, she didn’t know what exactly she’d call whateverthis thing was with Chris Kepler. Were they friends? But surely friends didn’t conceal their real identities from each other, so that didn’t feel accurate. But she did like talking to him, got excited every time she saw a new message come in. She wondered if there was some way she could come clean at this point, explain how the misunderstanding had happened in the first place. Maybe if she brought up the heckling situation somehow, she could gauge how he felt about it, find an opening to identify herself.

D: Have you seen the video of your heckler being heckled?

Not the most elegant way to broach the subject, maybe, but it did the job.

C: Yeah.

Or…it didn’t. Seriously, that was all she was going to get?

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