Page 7 of The Art of Catching Feelings

His thumb hovered over the preview of the message.I’m sorry about your pain. I don’t pretend

He almost swiped to delete it, but something made him click to open it instead.

I’m sorry about your pain, it began, just like in the preview, before continuing on.

I don’t pretend to know what you might be going through. Maybe it’s just about baseball, or maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe it’s not “just” baseball when it’s your job and your life. I don’t know.

I do know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and sad. Lately it feels like I can’t think too hard about what’s already happened, and I can’t think too hard about what might happen in the future. I have to stay aggressively in the present just to get through my day. Is that what all those yoga influencer accounts have been trying to say this whole time?

Chris surprised himself with his own snort of laughter. Then he schooled his features back into neutrality, not that anyone was even paying attention to him. It was second nature by this point.

Luckily, I work from home, so if I cry on the job nobody has to know. Well, except for my cat, Milo. He gives me the judgiest looks, like he can’t believe I would be so unprofessional. But to be fair, that might just be how his face is. I’m not trying to resting-bitch-face-shame my cat. I also don’t have jerkscoming to my workplace and shouting random shit at me! If you wanted to heckle me, I guess you could call me out for not including at least three affiliate links or forgetting the final word count on my invoice. Not very exciting stuff, but it’s the reason they give for not paying me within thirty days so sometimes it can make me cry lol

Anyway, I’m rambling. Sorry. That’s the only important part of this message, which I know you’ll probably never even see. I’m so, so sorry.

It was a bizarre message. For one thing, there was a tone of familiarity in it, as though they already knew each other somehow. The username wasduckiesbooks, the profile icon a rubber duckie, fittingly enough, on top of a stack of books. He clicked over to the profile, to see if anyone he knew followed the account, some real-life connection he might’ve missed. But there was nothing. The account had a couple hundred followers, and a quick scroll through the feed showed that it was only pictures of book covers or stacks of books, no selfies or other identifying pictures. Nothing to even indicate that this person was a big baseball fan, or why they would’ve reached out at all.

Maybe the most bizarre thing was how Chrisdidfeel like he knew this person already, or that the person knew him.I have to stay aggressively in the present just to get through my day. In that one sentence, he felt like someone had made sense of the way he’d been feeling lately.

While he’d been reading, he’d stretched out on the seats, his back leaned against the window and his legs toward the aisle. At six foot three, he was hardly the tallest person on the team, but this was the part of the flight when he started to feel restless. Normally, he might get up, find a group of guys playing cards, or even just hit the bathroom as an excuse to stretch his legs. But today, he was happy to keep a lower profile.

His foot must’ve been sticking out in the aisle a bit, because Roberto Gutierrez, the veteran slugger the team had picked up from the Tigers right before spring training, stepped on it as he walked past. Chris winced slightly, pulling back in, and started to apologize.

“You gonna cry about it?” Gutierrez said, before continuing up the aisle.

Maybe it had been a joke. He’d already gotten some ribbing from his teammates, and genuine concern from guys he was friends with, like Randy. But this had felt more pointed.

It was late. They’d played a shitty game, and were now on a six-hour flight across the country to play a team who, despite Randy’s optimism, was practically guaranteed to take at least two of three. He was sure all those factors were behind Gutierrez’s irritable mood.

Maybe it’s not “just” baseball when it’s your job and your life.

He stared down at the message still pulled up on his phone. It didn’t feel right to leave it completely unacknowledged. So, he typed a one-word response.

Thanks.

It had only been on the screen a few seconds when a little gray word appeared beneath it.Seen.

Fuck. He had no idea the app sold you out like that. Now he thought back to how long it had been since he’d first opened the message, how weird it must’ve seemed, the delay between him first seeing it and him responding to it. Or maybe the read receipt could’ve been the equivalent of a response, if he’d just left it alone. This was why he didn’t mess with social media.

And yet the idea that there was a person on the other end, someone who was seeing these messages in real time, compelled him to keep going.

When I was a kid, I had a pug named Otis.

Three dots, like they were typing. Then the dots disappeared. Chris realized that his message was a bit of a non sequitur, so he started to add a bit more context.Milo & Otis? It was about a dog and a cat…

He actually didn’t remember anything more than that. He clicked over to a search page, wanting to look up the movie real fast to jog his memory, before it occurred to him just how stupid this whole thing was. Who cared. He went back to Instagram to delete his unsent draft, but saw that there was new text from duckiesbooks already.

Milo & Otis! That’s cute. Don’t look it up but apparently there was some animal cruelty in the way they filmed that movie tho.

Then, a second later:Oh god, I’m sorry. What a downer thing to bring up! I haven’t seen that movie since I was a kid. They used to show it in my after-school program on rainy days. I bet your pug was adorable.

It occurred to him that he didn’t really know anything about duckiesbooks, including their age. They’d mentioned working from home, which suggested they were an adult at least, but still it was a relief that they seemed to get his dated references and referred back to when they were a kid in a way that suggested it had been years ago. Still, it was a good reminder of yet another reason he didn’t use social media—as someone who was at least quasi-famous, he had to be extra careful about boundaries. It would be best if he shut this down.

He was, he typed.And don’t worry, I won’t look up the movie, but I appreciate the heads-up. Have a good night.

But at the same time he sent his message, there was another from duckiesbooks.

Milo’s actually named for the main character in ThePhantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. It was one of my favorite childhood books. Basically, Milo is this super bored kid who thinks everything is pointless until he gets a mysterious package in the mail with a magical tollbooth and a map. He goes off on all these adventures through places like Dictionopolis and the Doldrums, and runs into these princesses Rhyme and Reason and this watchdog named Tock…

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