Page 23 of Sounds Like Love

“No,” I said, pushing myself up from the table. I grabbed my parents’ landline, because there was no way in hell I was going to give a stranger my cell number. “I’ll call you.”

“Oh.”I could hear the frown in his voice.“Okay.”

“Do girls not call you?” I teased before I could stop myself, and he barked a laugh.

“They call me a lot of things,”he replied, and then stated his number.

I dialed it, and just before I pressed the call button, I hesitated. What if all of thiswasreal? And he was actually—I don’t know—floating in a pool or something, drinking a mai tai, and I was here in my parents’ seaside cottage, and we were—

“Did you dial the right number?”he asked.

I hit call. My parents’ cordless phone was splotchy with white noise. I waited for a phone somewhere to start ringing, telling me that he was upstairs in my brother’s room or in the guest bathroom or—orsomewhere. In my head, he had sounded so close, like his mouth was pressed against my ear, telling secrets to me and me alone.

The phone rang. Once, then again.

And again.

I knew this wasn’t real—I knew I was going crazy. I clenched my jaw, a moment away from hanging up, when suddenly someone picked up on the other end, and the same deep and gravelly voice answered, “So how do I sound in real life?”

Chapter9(You Come) Crash into Me

FAR AWAY.

That was my first thought—he sounded very far away on my parents’ landline, and the old technology made his voice sound flat with static. My second thought was that he wasreal. A person. Someone who existed somewhere in the world with a Santa Ana area code. So he couldn’t be some hallucination. I pinched myself—and it hurt. I was awake.

Slowly, I sank down onto the hardwood flooring in the middle of the kitchen. I didn’t trust my legs. I didn’t trust my lungs.

Was the room getting smaller, or was it me?

“You … you’re real,” I whispered.

And almost at the same time I heard his thoughts—“So sheisreal.”

“You didn’t think I was real, either?” I commented, a little confused, because he’d sounded so sure of himself. And it made me feel a little better. If I was going nuts, then so was the figment of my imagination.

He coughed. “I—of course I thought you were.”

“Probably,”his voice echoed in my head, sounding so much clearer than his voice on the phone.

Liar, I thought.

“Oh, now we’re name-calling?” He sounded offended.

I paled. “I didn’t say anything!”

“You called me a liar.”

“I—I did,” I admitted. “In my head. On accident.”

“Liar,”he thought back.

I scowled. “I’m not lying!”

He said, “I didn’t say you were.”

“You did,” I insisted. “In your head.”

“On accident,” he echoed.

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