Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone

Chapter Two

Eliot

I wasn’t alone last night.

That’s the first thought I have when I stir awake. There was someone there with me. A fellow insomniac. Another middle-of-the-night zombie staring at the ceiling. She talked to me. She probably didn’t even realize she was doing it, but she actually talked me through it. Brought me through the worst part of the night. Ferried me across the river. Painlessly.

Have you ever had one of those random times of day when you always look at the clock? You know, you just happen to look up at 2:16 in the afternoon a couple times a week? You don’t know why exactly, but you just do? Well, unfortunately, for the last two months, mine has been 4:27.

In the morning.

For years, I’ve always been a very disciplined sleeper. No screens after 9 p.m. Stretching, toothbrushing and flossing, lights out by eleven and generally I knock out for a solid eight or nine hours. Almost every night of my adult life.

But for the last two months? I’m a sweaty, red-eyed mess in and out of light sleep until the dreaded moment I look at the clock, and yup, it’s 4:27 again.

4:27 is a real asshole, because it’s too early to be considered morning and too late to be considered nighttime. If it was five o’clock on the dot, I’d just say it was time to get up for the day. If it was four o’clock on the dot, I’d try to convince myself to sleep a little more. But since it’s a no-man’s-land time of night, I usually just end up staring at my bedroom ceiling, listening for footsteps that don’t come.

They can’t come, I constantly have to remind myself. Security system, new locks on the windows, CCTV. I’m snug as a bug in my apartment.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not jumping half an inch off the sheets every time my apartment building creaks. And though there have been a lot of renovations in the last five years, this building is old. It likes for its opinions to be heard. Every time there’s even the slightest hint of humidity in the air, the building groans and complains and I’m left tossing and turning.

Last night, though? Last night was different. I got a couple hours of sleep after my unexpected texting conversation with Mystery Woman, AKA JD. Now, it’s 5:15 and for the first time in forever, I snoozed right past 4:27. I sit up, scratch the back of my head, and eye my phone on the nightstand. There’s no way she messaged me while I was asleep, right?

I nudge my phone, wake it up, but nothing but the block-numbered time looks back at me. No messages.

It would have been crazy to assume that there’d be a message from her. Why would she voluntarily reach out to the random guy who’d been pestering her at odd hours of the night? Frankly, it’s a miracle she talked to me as long as she did.

My thumb is momentarily possessed by a ghost and hits the replay button on her last message to me. Her voice echoes out of my phone.

“Good night.”

That’s a nice voice right there. There’s a low, husky quality to it, like she’s halfway between a dream and reality. And so familiar. Where have I heard that voice before? I know this woman. I just don’t know how I know this woman.

Why, you ask? How, you ask? How is it possible that I could feel that I almost certainly know this person but I just can’t place her?

Well, I have a very . . . unique brain. One that I’ve come to love in my adult years. Now that I know how to manage my life, the way my brain works is actually a real positive. But there are definitely things I’ve learned to avoid for my own sanity. And the question of who this JD person really is is the kind of thing that will plop itself down in the middle of my frontal lobe and start paying rent.

I’m the type of person who has to have child locks on my internet so that I can only access work-related sites during the workday. I didn’t trust myself to upgrade from a flip phone for years because I knew that if I had a movie theater, video game console, a camera, and an internet connection in my pocket at all times, I would immediately sink my career.

I get fixated on things. And it’s never the right things. I know that if I want to get any work done at all today I have to mentally put JD in a box and throw away the key.

No. That’s too sinister.

Sitting on the edge of my bed I practice one of the many visualization exercises my therapist has helped me with. I close my eyes and picture JD. Which is ridiculous, because I have no idea what she looks like. She’s an animated silhouette of a woman. Not tall, not short, not curvy, not skinny. She’s a she-blob. Then, in my mind, I offer an elbow and lead her to a car. She was funny and cute so I make sure the car is cool. How about an old-school Camaro? Candy apple red. I open the driver’s seat door and help her in. Drive safe, I tell her in my mind, see you after work. I wave while the silhouette drives the Camaro out of sight.

There. That oughtta do it. I’ll think about JD when I’m done with my workday.

Ten hours later, the very second I close my computer for the day, the Camaro is squealing back into the parking lot of my frontal lobe. I mostly work from home so at five o’clock on the dot I’m already standing in my kitchen, staring blankly into a fridge full of produce while my brain is neck-deep in the mystery of who this woman is.

She’s someone I know well enough to recognize her voice, but not well enough to have called or texted her before last night.

Unfortunately, the whole random letters instead of an actual contact name is a fairly common occurrence for me. One of the things that’s special about my brain is that letters and numbers are really hard for me to decipher. Dyslexia is what they called it when I was growing up. But once I made it to college and had access to student services I was diagnosed with a whole slew of other learning disorders as well. The long and short is that concentrating doesn’t come naturally to me and neither does reading.

Having someone watch me while I hunt and peck my approximated guess at how to spell their name into my contacts list is basically my worst nightmare. Generally when I have a new person to add to my address book I just jab at a random mix of letters to save face and then the second I’m alone, I go back and fix it at my leisure, un-surveilled. Unfortunately, I have occasionally forgotten to go back and fix it in the past. And JD is one of those casualties. At some point, I stood next to her, heard her name, and pretended to input it into my phone.

I paw through my fridge and frown when I see that I have everything I need for chicken stir-fry except for the chicken. How did that happen? I’m usually so meticulous with my grocery list. Ah. My sister, Vera, came over earlier this week, and instead of making chicken quesadillas for one, I made them for two.

I grab my house keys and make the jog down to the grocery store around the corner.

“Hey, Eliot.”

I smile at Dawn, my usual checkout person, and look back at my phone, checking for messages from JD. Then I do a double-take. Dawn is about twenty-five, pretty cute, always swimming in her store-issued employee vest. Have I ever taken her number? I can’t remember. I replay her voice in my head. Is that JD’s voice? I only realize I’m staring when Dawn starts blushing. She’s glancing up at me from under her bangs and fumbling to get the package of chicken breasts to scan. I have to hear her voice again to be sure.

“How’s your day been?” I ask her.

“Good!” she squeaks, blushing even more.

This doesn’t sound like JD’s voice from last night. But I can’t quite tell. Why is she squeaking? Is it because she’s embarrassed to have spent last night unexpectedly talking to me for an hour, or is it because . . .

Oh. I catch sight of my face on the CCTV screen behind the cashier’s stand and realize immediately that Dawn is probably blushing because I’m staring at her like I’m about to dissect her with a microscope and tweezers. I look like a lunatic.

“Have a good night!” I wave gently and try to look non-threatening as I leave the grocery store.

I mentally cross Dawn off the list on the jog back to my apartment.

I’m back, standing in my kitchen, frowning at the just-bought packet of chicken, when I realize that I don’t want chicken stir-fry for dinner. I want Thai food. Frustrated with myself, I tug at my hair a little, debating what to do. Usually, I completely shut down these kinds of impulsive urges. Impulsivity is something I’ve grappled with my whole life and up until I finally paid it off three years ago, I had the credit card debt to prove it. I live life according to a very strict plan, all the way down to my menu for the week, or else I end up spending five hundred dollars on takeout in a single month.

I put the chicken in the fridge and check my bank balance. Next, I look at the whiteboard on the wall that has my menu for the week planned out. Lastly, I check my debit transactions to see when the last time I ordered takeout was.

I decide that it wouldn’t be completely irresponsible to order in tonight. I can have the stir-fry tomorrow night. I call in my usual order at the Thai place down the block and spend the next twenty minutes passing my phone from one hand to the other, pondering who JD might really be.

That woman I met at Chelsea market before Christmastime? I got her number, didn’t I? She was a self-published author who had been interested in my design services for her next book. What was her name again? Jackie? Jessica? But I’m pretty sure she’d been wearing a wedding band so that probably means she wouldn’t have stayed up into the wee hours of the night halfway flirting with me, right?

I check my phone and don’t find a Jackie or a Jessica. So, I guess it could be her.

My doorbell rings and I grab cash from my wallet. When I swing open the door I’m surprised to see that instead of the usual delivery kid, it’s actually the Thai restaurant’s hostess who is standing there. She has long, pretty hair and a nervous smile.

“Hi, your brother’s not delivering tonight?”

“He’s out on a delivery and your order was up, so I thought I’d just run it around the corner for you.”

“Thanks.” I hand over the cash and a nice tip and take the food. “That’s really thoughtful of you.”

“Mmhmm.” She’s looking down and playing with the zipper on her raincoat.

It’s time for her to go now, but she’s still just standing there. I hesitate with my hand on the door. Finally she sighs and rocks back on her heels, her eyes still bottoming out somewhere around my throat. “Have a good night.”

And then she’s hurrying back toward the elevator and disappearing behind the sliding doors.

I look at the Thai food in my hand and back at the elevator. At the Thai food and at the elevator.

Hmmm.

I think about messaging JD and asking if she just delivered me my dinner, but 1) I’m not sure if this messaging thing was a one-night-only type of deal, and 2) I’m scared of how many points she might deduct if that’s a wrong guess.

I eat my dinner slowly, quietly, at the dinner table, refusing to let myself multitask. One of the best ways I’ve found to manage my chaotic brain is to only let myself do one thing at a time, focusing as best I can on that single task. But my phone is calling my name from the kitchen counter.

After dinner I go for a run, do ten minutes of stretching, shower, pick up clutter in my living room, vacuum, and answer four different work emails.

I deserve an Oscar for my emulation of a functioning adult this evening. Because even though I’ve gone through the motions, if pondering JD’s identity were a video game, I’d be permanently acquainting my couch with the imprint of my ass. My fingers would be irrevocably curved into gamer claws right now, empty Red Bull cans scattered across the floor.

But luckily for my poor fingers, she’s not a video game. Instead, I’m staring out the window at 9:15 in the evening, refusing on principle to grab my phone to message a strange woman I don’t know, and avoiding the irrefutable fact that there is absolutely nothing to do but go to bed—and absolutely zero chance that I’ll fall asleep when I do.

Another night of dating shows in bed it is.

I’m on hour four of a show about people who are trying to find love—get this—Little Mermaid-style. AKA they can’t speak to one another. My eyelids are, miracle of miracles, starting to get a little heavy, so I’m just contemplating shutting my laptop when my phone buzzes on the nightstand.

I scramble for it, catching it up before it even stops vibrating, and there, look at that, holy smokes, yes, oh my GOD, it’s a voice message text from JD.