Page 51 of Puck You Both

He lets the sound sit. He knows. He's been standing on the far side of this exact conversation for days, owning the clock.

I switch the phone to my other ear and put my free hand flat on the counter. In real negotiations there's a table, a stack of papers, and faces to read for leverage. Tonight there's just granite under my palm and my pulse behind my ears.

"I have a request."

It comes out in the contract voice, without affect, a voice with no body attached.

On the other end, a breath catches. Slight, half a second, but I've spent three weeks learning this man's breathing, and he just held his.

"I'm listening," he finally says.

My hand presses flatter on the stone. There's no draft to delete now. No icon to hit. Just my mouth, and the thing it's been circling for two days.

"Next time." My throat tries to close. I talk through it. "The two of you... Call me."

Silence from Milwaukee. Total.

With the last of my mental strength, I add, "Don't tell me when."

Ninety miles north, a man I've been at war with for eight years is holding a phone and, unless my ears are lying, still holding his breath.

Then Patrick exhales, long and slow, and I can hear the smile inside every drawn-out syllable as he says, "There he is."

Heat crawls up the back of my neck. "Don't."

"That wasn't a joke, Wallace." His voice has dropped somewhere warmer. "Noted. No warning."

"Fine." I clear my throat. "That'd be all."

"Okay." There’s a pause I can't read. Then, quieter, "Goodnight, Wallace."

"Goodnight."

He hangs up first, and I stand in my kitchen holding a phone with nobody in it.

The shaking starts one beat later, once it's safe, the way it does after a collision the body schedules for later. Hands first, then something high in my chest.

I asked.

Out loud, on record, in a voice that mostly held, and whatever happens next is out of my hands, which is the deal I made, which was the entire point, and which I already regret, and want, and regret wanting.

I sleep badly and wake up hard twice.

***

NIGHT ONE.

The battery reaches one hundred percent by eight and my phone travels with me from kitchen to couch to bathroom sink. Volume checked twice. Do Not Disturb, off. At eleven I take it to bed and set it on the nightstand, then move it closer, and at eleven-thirty I catch myself flat on my back in the dark, fully awake, hands folded on my chest, listening intently to a phone not ring.

Night two.

At ten fifty-eight the phone goes off while I'm brushing my teeth, and I answer without looking, foam in my mouth in under one ring.

"Whoa," Becker says. "Were you holding it?"

I spit. "No."

"You—"