Chapter 20 – Rule #9 No outside contact. Ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY
KAITLIN
I’ve been keeping secrets. Big secrets. I start to pick up my Henry phone to tell him I need to spill my guts at his earliest convenience, but Hunter calls.
“You can talk to Ross, the guy who wants you to masturbate with Tiger Balm, or you can talk to Jesse, who wants a two-girl call, and you have to make a lot of making-out sounds.”
“I’ll take fake smooches with a friend for two hundred, Alex.”
“Okay, let me get Pixie. She’s working from home, and then I’ll get you and Jesse roped in. Give me a minute.”
I’m sitting in front of my easel, but I’m not mixing paints. It’s emotions that are swirling.
I make lip-smacking sounds with Pixie, who’s miles away on campus.
No saliva will be swapped on this call. I kind of wish I’d selected Tiger Balm Ross.
Fake kissing gives me too much time to think, and I’m already ruminating enough.
At least I wouldn’t be doom spiraling over what’s happening in my life.
I can’t tell Henry. I want to tell him so bad I can taste it. Whenever something is bothering me, I talk to Henry.
I fake a moan and smack my lips harder while I send Henry a text.
Me: I have news. Good news.
I desperately want to tell him what’s going on in my life. I got into my first-choice grad school. I have until May first to accept the offer, but I’m sending it in today.
Chicago.
UIC’s Medical Visualization program. I did it. I got into medical illustration—visualization—school.
And we’re selling the phone sex biz to a huge service in California.
We didn’t seek it out, but we have an offer that we’d be stupid to refuse.
Jessica, Anastascia, and I are a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them.
Which means I’ll head to school free as a bird.
After a few months of the service from California sniffing around, we’ve negotiated a fantastic exit from the business we built from a single phone line.
We weren’t even trying to sell, but it’s too good to pass up.
Ana is thrilled—she wants to stay home with her babies, the cutest things ever to grace the planet Earth.
Jessica’s ambivalent about selling. She’s already thinking about the next business we should start, but we are all in agreement: we’re not interested in sticking with our business baby once it sells.
All three of us declined a generous offer to continue on with California Girls in the future.
Our employees can keep their jobs; they’ll just be working from home.
As for me? I’m five miles beyond ready to talk to whomever I might possibly want to talk to for free. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.
“Oooooooooooh,” I moan.
Me: Is the whole thing about giving a lawyer a retainer true? If I give you a dollar retainer are you officially my lawyer and you have to keep all of my deep, dark secrets?
The service buying us has an average call time of seven minutes and hundreds of women working in call centers in California. They want to acquire tiny little us for our highly lucrative clientele, and they want to know why our callers are so willing to call so often and talk so long.
The real secret? Human connection. People hate being stuck in voicemail loops. Press one for a blowjob. Press four SPAM and five for zombies. We made it easy to develop a relationship, and poof, winning at phone sex life.
The California guys underestimate us. I manipulate men for a living. Ana looks like she’s twelve in her corduroys and braids, but she has an MBA, and she’s smart AF. And Jess? Well, she made men beg for fun until she decided to be the second shift manager. Oopsie.
The “corporate secrets” they want are rules I stuck on the wall of the kitchenette a few years ago. I may frame that piece of notebook paper, considering what they’re paying.
Me: I hope you land soon. I miss you.
The acquisition, an adorkably fancy word for selling this place, could be complete late next month.
May. May. I could surprise Henry on his birthday.
If the business sells and it magically becomes possible for us to live in the same city.
If he finds me attractive. If he wants to meet. If we like each other in person.
If falling in love with him is not utterly foolish.
If. If. If.
“I can barely speak, let alone use Spotify,” he says, his voice raw, like he’s come so hard he’s losing his voice. Oh wait. Teeheehee. That’s exactly what happened.
“Kait, you shook my world like one of those glass winter water ball things.”
“A snow globe?”
“Uh, sure. Yes.” His words are slurred, and it’s one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard. Henry fucked-up on pleasure has ruined me for other men—and I let him.
“It sounded like it.” I try to say it all matter-of-fact, but fail and let out a tiny laugh.
Does his body radiate heat as he sprawls on wrinkled sheets, spent? Would he want round two or to snuggle and doze and whisper secrets?
“You almost ended me.” He lets out a satisfied sigh.
A well-used Henry fills me with satisfaction.
We sit in companionable silence for a few minutes until he gets out of bed, cracks open a can, and takes a drink.
“I could die a happy man, Kait. A brilliant woman, a beer, an orgasm. Aside from you being here, I can’t think of a single thing I would add. ”
“Same. I wish I were there too,” I say, and it’s the truth. “Nowhere I’d rather be.”
“You said you had lots you wanted to talk about. What’s on your mind? I’m mostly sentient again.” There’s the rustle of him leaving the bed before padding around his room.
“I got into grad school.”
I’ve never told him my major. I never used to paint while we talk, but now I do every time because I’m working on his birthday present here and there. I like the idea of the happiness his voice brings me being imbued into the paint. Silly.
“Kaity babes, that’s fantastic. I’m so proud of you,” he says. And he is. I can hear it. But I can’t tell if I’m imagining the sliver of fear in his words or if I’m projecting.
“I’ll step away from this job.” I’ve been wanting to broach the topic, but I was afraid he’d be upset.
I’m delighted, but with a million changes coming, the only one that scares me is things changing with Henry.
I’m desperate to keep him in my life, which is beyond pathetic, but it’s no less true.
I’m just not sure what that would look like. “And that would change things.”
“Yes, it certainly would change things,” he says, a little sad, where I’m thrilled.
I’m working on his painting, but I put down the brush at his tone.
“Henry, I want to be able to look at you when I talk to you and meet you for brunch.”
I feel needy. I sound needy. I. Hate. It.
“I want to meet you, Kait,” he responds.
“I want your first and last name—and definitely your middle since you’ve worked so hard to get mine—and your real phone number.
I want to know your course of study, why it’s top secret when that’s the first thing every college student talks about, and where you choose to go to school, because I’m absolutely positive you’ll get more admission offers.
I know you—but I want the first-date stuff. ”
“It’s not top secret,” I say, but my program will have maybe five people in my cohort.
“It’s just that if I tell you what I’m studying, a quick internet search will give you my full name in about eight seconds.
Besides, I suspect the tenth-date stuff will be far more interesting than the first-date stuff.
” I say it with a healthy dose of flirtation—wink wink, nudge nudge—but I can’t hide my trepidation. I’m gone for this man.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” he says, serious beyond what I expected.
“I can’t expect you to understand, but I want more.
I never mention it because you can’t tell me, so pressuring you about it seems douchey, but I want your phone number.
It’s hard to share deeply personal things with someone, then hang up and realize you don’t even know their name. ”
“I can appreciate why you feel that way. I know your name, but I don’t know your face. I could walk past you and not know it. I feel that deeply.” The way his voice gets soft and small makes my bones ache. I don’t want to cause him pain. I want to share my truth with him.
“And you do know my name, Henry,” I say, desperately summoning courage to break a very real rule at our place of business.
“Kait isn’t my entire name, but it is my real name.
Everyone else has a fake phone name, but when I was just starting in this business, I kept outing myself, saying my real name.
I’d be like, ‘Hi, my name is Samantha,’ but then I’d refer to myself and get it wrong.
I’d be chatting away and telling a story, like, ‘And then my super-hung boyfriend said, you’re the best Crisco-covered sex beast fuck kitten I’ve ever had, Kait,’ instead of using my fake name.
It was a huge mess. And I kept doing it.
And for some reason, I never really cared while everyone else cares a lot. ”
“Kait,” he breathes, and I swear I hear a tiny hitch as he inhales. “I’ve been calling you your real name all this time?”
“Yes,” I say, and I can’t help but smile because Henry’s… thrilled. Delighted even. “Since day one, Henrypoo.”
“Kait,” he says, winded, as though he’s been running. “There are no words. Should I be offering up some sort of quid pro quo?”
“Like your middle names?” I jest.
“Hah. No. You could see my face, if you wanted to,” he offers, gentle and soft, and kind as always. “I know you said it’s about fairness, but you could.”
Everyone else has. Assholes. They torment me by looking at him on their phones and saying he’s hot, or a 2, or a 10, knowing I refuse to look at photos of callers.
Jessica said he’s got a voice for radio and a face for making babies and left it at that.
When I said Saoirse told me he was the ugliest boy in the family, she smiled and asked to be introduced to one of his brothers.