“Tokyo,” he whispers.
What happened in Tokyo? Was that your sadness bleeding through the line or mine? I want to ask these things, but I don’t. I pull into the garage, and he says, “That you getting back?”
“Yep. I’m here.”
That same old silence rises up around us, filling up the phone line and my chest as I get out and walk to the stairwell door.
“I can’t sleep without you,” he says softly.
“When will you be back?”
I cup the phone against my ear and take the stairs up to the foyer slowly.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
“Tomorrow night, then.”
“Tell me something else, V.”17VanceI tell him I use kid toothpaste because the mint stuff burns my mouth. He tells me he’s scared of needles.
“I think it’s because I fell off my bike and chipped my front tooth when I was about ten. Had to get a bunch of shots at the dentist that night.”
“Wait a second,” I say. “Does that mean your front tooth—”
He laughs. “Yeah. The bottom part on the left one’s not real.”
For some reason, this shocks me. “It looks so normal.”
“Looks can be deceiving.” He sounds like he’s smiling.
“How do you know what to say to people in the services on Sunday?” I open the fridge and grab an apple. That’ll be my next question. Why does he refrigerate the apples?
“What to talk about?” he clarifies.
“No, like when they ask questions in that open question time.”
“How do you see shapes in marble?” he asks as I start upstairs.
“That’s not an answer, McD.”
“I don’t know. I just talk to them.”
“I don’t see shapes. I just get an idea, and my hands figure out the rest.”
“What’s your day-to-day like in Manhattan?” he asks.
“I work at a co-op there. I mentor students sometimes.”
“Tell me more.” I hear him yawn.
“You getting sleepy?”
“Don’t jinx it.”
I smile, because he does sound sleepy. I hope that he’ll fall asleep. “Chelsea. Well…I eat a lot of donuts. Still live above Donut King. I don’t have a girlfriend or a boyfriend. Not sure if you wondered.”
“From the ’gram, I didn’t think so.”
I snicker. “The gram. Guess I can’t make fun of you, though, Mr. Sixteen Million.”
“Eighteen now.”
“Well, Jesus.”
“Is the reason.”
I get a good laugh out of that.
God, who does he talk to when I’m not around? One of his women? Do they talk like this? I fucking hope so—and it also makes me feel like dying.
I stretch out on the bed, biting into the apple.
“That can’t be your dinner, Rayne.”
“How do you know what it is?”
“Because I have ears. It’s an apple.”
“A cold apple. Been refrigerated.”
“Right. For freshness. Got a problem with that, Rayne?”
“I fucking hate fresh apples.” I pretend I’m spitting it out.
He tsks. “Some people have no taste.”
It sounds so real—so outright blue-blood snobby—I laugh before chomping again on my unnervingly cold apple.
“It makes my teeth cold.”
“You know what they say about cold teeth.”
I snort, and call him on FaceTime again.
He peers into his phone’s camera, the angle making his eyes look preternaturally large and more feline than normal. A slow smile bends his face. “I can see you.”
“You’re a lump in the dark.”
He gets up and steps into a bathroom.
“Ohh.” His shirt is off now. In the mirror, where he points the camera, I can see he’s only wearing dress pants. “Just your trousers, huh?”
“They’re not so bad. It’s the shirts that get you.”
“Yeah? Itchy?”
I hear more so than see him turn the sink on. “More confining, to me. The tailor makes them so they look good when you’re walking around. Not when you’re stretching to scratch an itch.”
“You got a lot of those?”
“Tailors?” He shifts the phone on the counter and smirks toward it.
“Itches.”
“I don’t know. You scratching?”
“Maybe.”
We have phone sex. Because that’s what we do. Afterward, it’s quiet on the line. My phone screen is an inky blot. We’re both lying in our own respective darkness now.
“Why didn’t you show up—at the hotel that time at New Year’s?” My whispered words surprise me. I squeeze my eyes shut.
His answering silence lets me know he understands the question.
“Because I’m a coward.”
I hear something brush against his phone’s mic. Then he’s breathing heavy.
“Sky? You’re not a coward.” I turn on the light by my bed. So he can see my face. “I shouldn’t have asked. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.”
It’s just his hoarse voice and the dark screen. Fuck, I wish he’d turn the light on.
“No it doesn’t. I was confused after…but then I wasn’t. Then I fucking worried for you. I would have given anything to find out what was going on.”
“There’s no justifying how I…mess you up.”
“I’m not messed up.” It’s a lie, of course, but I’m okay with that. “I came out to Evermore on my own free will.”
“To find out…what was going on.”
“What’s so bad about that? You’re under my skin,” I tell him recklessly, “and that’s where I want you to be.”