Page 44 of The Art of Catching Feelings

Dream me has about the same table manners as real me, she almost joked, then bit her lip. She wanted so badly to ask what she looked like. What did a dream version of her look like, to him?

As if sensing her question, he laughed a little. “I don’t know how your dreams are, but I don’t always see every detail crystal clear. So like the pine needles beneath my feet felt so real, but you’re a little blurrier. It was less about what you looked like and more about the feeling of you. Not unlike the way we’ve been talking, actually.”

And how do Ifeel?she wanted to ask, but of course she couldn’t.

“Anyway, you’re eating strawberries,” he continued. “And you hold out your hands, to offer me some. And I say, I’m allergic—I really am, by the way. My throat completely swells up. But you just say,No you’re not.And then you kiss me.”

Great. She was some kind of fruit assassin.And then what happens?she wanted to ask, and again he seemed to anticipate her question.

“And then I wake up. But the weirdest thing is that I felt like I could taste the strawberries, could feel that stickiness on my mouth. Even though I probably haven’t had one since I was seven years old, for obvious reasons, so I don’t see how I would even remember what they taste like.”

He was quiet for a minute, and they just sat like that, on the phone together but not saying a word. It was surprisingly erotic.She wondered if he was feeling the same way, or if all this tension was completely one-sided.

D: That dream is a little sexual.

There was a slight delay as he obviously had to check the text message, and when he came back his voice had a rasp to it that buzzed right down to her clit like a live wire. “Ah,” he said. “Yeah. I definitely—sorry.”

D: Why are you sorry?

“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

D: You didn’t.

She thought about the pulse between her legs, how badly she wanted to touch herself, how badly she wishedhewould touch her. In the past two weeks, they’d flirted a bit, skated close—sometimessoclose—to taking it over that edge. She’d always held back. She’d always had good reasons to, the same reasons that Kim had been warning her about earlier that night and still existed now. But suddenly she didn’t want to hold back anymore.

D: I mean, you did make me uncomfortable. Just in a different way.

“Oh?” The way he said that word, she knew he understood what she was saying. She wanted to be bold enough to spell it out, to tell him what she wanted to do, to ask him if he’d woken up from that dream dying to come. But she couldn’t imagine typing those words out, couldn’t imagine saying them aloud even if she wasn’t trying not to speak on this phone call. The best she could do was tell him she had to go.

D: Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Hanging up now.

“Wait,” he said.

Daphne gripped the phone, her palm already slick.

“Don’t hang up. Please.”

She swallowed. She couldn’t do what he was asking, for so many reasons. It was wrong. But then the very fact that it feltwrongonly made it more exciting, and she was torn between what she knew she shouldn’t do and what she really, desperately wanted to give in to.

“I’ll tell you every way I’ve imagined this,” Chris said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll tell you everything I want you to do. I know you have to be quiet—but I don’t.”

She kicked her covers off, suddenly way too warm with them draped over her. She wanted exactly what he was describing, could already imagine the things he could say in that voice of his that would make her come in a matter of seconds. But it also felt too vulnerable—both for her but also forhim. What would he think if he knew who she was, who he was saying those things to?

D: No talking.

She hesitated before sending the next message.

D: But I won’t hang up.

EIGHTEEN

Daphne set her phone next to her on her pillow. It would be better if she could forget he was even there, that he could hear her.

The fact that he could hear her would be what got her off.

She slid her hand under the waistband of her pajama pants, into her underwear. She wasn’t surprised to find herself already wet, sensitive to the tiniest pressure of her fingers. They hadn’t explicitly talked about him taking care of himself, too, but she liked to think that he was—that he was hungry and aching on his side of the phone the way she was on hers. She turned her head, trying to listen for any sounds coming from him, when she rubbed the crest of her clit in a rough circle and let out a whimper.

“Fuck,” he groaned, and she tilted her head back, lips parted as she applied more pressure to that same spot. He was definitely also getting off.

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