Page 10 of The Art of Catching Feelings

Justin had insisted on driving if they were going anywhere together. At the time, she’d been more than happy to give up control in that area, willing to accept his judgment that he was the better driver. If for any reason she did take the wheel—like if he’d had too much to drink and she’d had to drive them home—he would berate her the entire time, pointing out yellow lights she could’ve made it through or demanding why she hadn’t turned down a particular street. Meanwhile, he was the one who’d navigated traffic like he was drafting in NASCAR.

It was maddening, what she’d put up with when she really thought about it. She wished she could go back in time and shout,You’re the one who backed into a parked semi! Not me!

But she supposed her last chance to scream that kind of stuff had been a couple days ago. And she didn’t actually want to replay any of it—she was just grateful she didn’t have to live with that feeling anymore, always waiting to be put in her place. Now she was moving forward. Moving on.

D: I’m reading your Wikipedia now.

She’d thought it was somehow more honest to announce the fact, like she couldn’t be accused of creeping if she owned it. But now, seeing the words so baldly in their chat, she wished she’d kept it to herself. She was going to have to get better at this if she was going to start online dating like Kim kept encouraging her to.

Not that this was the same. Not that she felt in any way ready to date. Still, it couldn’t hurt to practice not being awkward as hell, if she could manage it for five seconds.

C: Is my driving history in there?

D: No, but happy birthdayDid you do anything special?

The emoji was particularly embarrassing. She wished she could take it back, together with the inappropriate question—it wasn’t any of her business what he did. She’d just never been able to stop herself if she found out someone’s birthday had just passed or was coming up. Shehadto say happy birthday. It was a sickness.

C: Lost to the Diamondbacks. What else does it say?

She was impressed by how much information there was, actually. Minor league teams he’d played for in the A’s organization, the teams he’d been traded to, various statistics about his batting average, how many home runs he’d hit, how many errors he’d made. Most of it was lost on her.

D: This says you’re one of only 11 players in the MLB who eschews batting gloves. What do you have against batting gloves?

C: I like to feel the bat. “Eschews?” Interesting word choice.

D: Right? I love unusual words. In sixth grade I won a writing contest where we had to use all our vocabulary words in one essay. “Your homework should always be safely ensconced in your homework folder.” I think that was the sentence that pushed mine over the top.

C: Well, no wonder. You wrote about responsible homework practices…for a school essay contest. You knew what you were doing.

Daphne bit her lip. She’d definitely been teacher’s pet in school. Quiet, kept to herself, followed rules. It was only recently that she’d started asking herself if that was any way to go through life. She’d originally thought about going into elementary education, but she’d ended up majoring in communications and broadcasting in college, thinking one day maybe she’d combine her interests into something that could really reach people. It was a far cry from what she was doing now—writing dry corporate blogposts about setting up IT networks or writing quick clickbait listicles about movie stars and their most famous roles.

D: I was a nerdy kid. My favorite show was Reading Rainbow.

C: I remember that one. One of my favorite movies was Winnie the Pooh. I used to be inconsolable when he followed the bees into that hole and got stuck. My older brother roasted me so bad for that. If he even mentioned Winnie the Pooh getting stuck in the tree he could get me to cry.

It couldn’t be a coincidence, him mentioning the same movie she’d referenced in her heckle. Maybe that was what all the crying had been about—some Pavlovian response to thinking of that movie again if that one small part had gotten to him so much as a kid. She wondered if it was possible that hedidknow she was his heckler after all, if she was the one who’d misread the earlier messages and her original intent had come through just fine. She started to scroll back up to the top of their conversation before another message came through.

C: Can I ask you a question?

She sat up a little straighter on her bed, trying to settle the sudden flutter in her stomach at the way he’d mirrored her earlier words. She racked her brain, trying to figure out what he could possibly want to know.

D:…

C: Why did you message me in the first place?

So he didn’t know who she was. And now he’d given her the perfect opportunity to come clean—it would be like ripping off a Band-Aid.I’m the one who heckled you at the game, she’d type, and then he’d know. But then that led to so many more things she’d need to say—how sorry she was for doing that, how sorry she was now that she hadn’t led with that information from the beginning.

“Sure,” she said, more to herself than Milo, who took no moreinterest in whatever she was doing. “Here’s a can of worms for you, go ahead and open it.”

She started drafting her response, before eventually getting up, setting the phone temporarily on her bed while she went to fix herself a cup of tea. She was out of her Sleepytime tea and normally she wouldn’t have caffeine this late, but tonight she would make an exception. She needed to think about how to explain, and for that, she needed to be awake.

FIVE

Chris tapped his phone on his thigh while he waited for Duckie’s answer. He knew she was composing something from the way the dots disappeared, then reappeared again, like maybe she’d thought twice about whatever she was going to write and had deleted it to start over. The thing was, she didn’t seem like much of a baseball fan—or maybe it just didn’t fit with her book-themed account; he didn’t know. But something about the way she’d cut and pasted that fact from his Wikipedia, the way that they’d been chatting for almost half an hour at this point and she had yet to make any comment about the team’s record, the season, what did he think about that decision from the commissioner or this year’s chances that so-and-so would make the World Series…

He was glad not to talk baseball. It was refreshing. It was just unusual for him, especially on the internet, where his presence felt completely superfluous except in his limited capacity as Chris Kepler, third baseman for the Carolina Battery.

This was a terrible idea. What response did he expect, except some variation ofBecause you seemed like a sad sack on TV and I felt sorry for you.

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