Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone
Chapter Three
Eliot
“Awake tonight, too?”
She. Just. Messaged. Me.
Somehow, in the last ten seconds I’ve gone from collapsed into a pile of pillows to standing straight up on my bed. If I lifted my hand over my head, I could plant a palm on the ceiling. I’m completely crackers. I fall into a crouch and then tip awkwardly onto one side when my squishy mattress betrays me.
“Every night.”
I sound breathless in my message to her, but that’s because I am breathless. I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to hear from her again. But she messaged me. She messaged ME. I’m now a million miles from sleep. I can feel my heart beating in my ears. I couldn’t care less.
“Wasn’t sure I’d catch you, but I thought I’d give it a shot.”
“I’m glad you did!”
I sound way too excited, but them’s the breaks. I am too excited. Even though I have no idea who this woman is, she’s my comrade in the trenches of insomnia. For months, it’s just been me and my Netflix account. But right now? I have a living, breathing person, who not only is talking to me, she understands the peculiar estrangement of not being able to sleep at night. She’s as fried as I am.
My glee starts to subside when five minutes pass and there’s no response from her. Was I too gung ho? I’ve been known to want things a little too badly. It’s part of my chemistry. It goes with the whole obsessing over random stuff thing.
“You still there?”I ask her.
“Yes! Sorry. Someone just needed my attention for a second. But it’s all good now.”
I frown.
“Same person as last night?”
“No.”
I frown more. I thought for sure she was joking last night when she said that she’d been voice-messaging with someone else as well, because, duh, is there anyone else in the world besides me who prefers voice-messaging over texting? But . . . maybe . . . is she actually talking with someone else at the same time she’s talking to me?
Well, if she is, I guess that’s exactly zero of my business.
“I’m glad you messaged me tonight. I was getting dangerously close to finishing season 1 of Love on Mute all in one fell swoop.”
“Yikes, things are getting dark over there, Hoffman.”
“You’re telling me. This show is terrible. The worst one yet.”
“Maybe we need to switch it up from dating shows. I mean, there’s more out there, right?”
I’m grinning at my phone, up on my side, balancing my cheek on one palm. I’m very aware of the fact that in between messaging her, I keep placing my phone in the center of the other pillow. It’s a place of honor. It’s where someone else’s head is supposed to go.
“Switch it up?”I ask. “It’s not like we’re searching for high art, are we? And what’s more mindless than competitive dating shows?”
“Hmm. Competitive baking shows?”
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to watch the British one that everyone is always talking about.”
“Yeah, me too. People say it’s soothing.”
“Well, shall we?”
I can hear the heartbeat in the palm of my hand as I prop my head up. All I did was ask her to watch a television show with me, but even so, I suddenly have a case of sweaty pits.
“Shall we what?”
“Watch that baking show together?”
“Define ‘together’.”
I laugh at how flat and unimpressed her voice sounds. For some reason, it delights me.
“I don’t know, we press play at the same time and chat while we watch?”
There’s a long pause, and I brace myself for her to message me back and tell me that I’m being too . . . much.
“Which episode should we start with? Looks like there’s a lot of seasons and, like, preseasons and Christmas specials and stuff.”
I scramble for my computer so fast I knock it off the bed. It’s times like these that I feel like a third-grader in a man’s body. There are moments in my life when I could swear I haven’t grown up at all. And feet balancing on the bed, one hand planted on the floor, reaching with my fingertips for something I just dropped while my blankets tangle around my legs is definitely one of those times.
As I gather it back up, I take a deep breath. I peruse the options for the baking show, and we decide on an episode, coordinating to press play at the same moment. Plucky music and colorful baked goods fill my screen. I get a message from JD and pause the show to listen to it.
“Crap. This is backfiring. Instead of making me sleepy, it’s making me hungry.”
“I know. I haven’t eaten a cupcake in about a decade, but suddenly I feel like I’d faceplant into one given the chance.”
“You haven’t eaten a cupcake in a decade? Are you shitting me?”
“Just health-conscious. Sugar and dyes make me lose it.”
“Like what kind of losing it?”
“Like seeing spots in my vision and tapping my fingers a mile a minute and impulse-buying egg boilers off the home shopping network.”
“That . . . is a very specific type of losing it. Oh, shit! That was such a sick burn from that old lady judge.”
“What? What burn? They haven’t even started judging yet.”
“Huh? Wait, what minute are you on?”
I realize the issue immediately and am already exiting out of our text strand and calling her number before I can think twice.