Page 199 of Sexting the Pakhan

“Yes.”

“That’s humiliating.”

“No,” he says.

“It is for me.”

I feel him turn his head on the pillow. “For me too,” he says after a moment. “Just differently.”

I close my eyes.

I don’t ask how. If he tells me how, then I might tell him my own version, and I don’t want to cry in a room where he can hear it.

Sometime later, I roll without meaning to and wake enough to realize my hand is on his chest. He doesn’t move it.

I should. I don’t.

The last thing I remember before sleep takes me fully is his breathing slowing under my palm.

When I wake, the bed is empty. For one awful second, I don’t understand what’s wrong. The room is pale with morning. The blanket beside me is cold. My hand closes over nothing.

Then my phone starts ringing.

Karina.

I sit up and answer immediately. “What?”

“Well, good morning to you too,” she says, but her voice sounds wrong. Tight.

My heart is already racing. I throw the blanket back and cross the room. “Where are you?”

“At home. Listen to me carefully.”

I go to the window and push the curtain aside. The yard outside is quiet.

I hear her exhale. “I’ve been trying to decide whether to tell you this in person, but after last night, I don’t think we have the luxury.”

A cold feeling starts low in my stomach.

I grip the phone harder. “Tell me what?”

“The number,” she says.

For a second, I don’t follow. Then I do.

The unknown number. The wrong number that was never wrong.

I close my eyes. “Not now.”

“Yes, now,” Karina says. “You need to know how bad this is.”

I rest my forehead against the glass. “Karina.”

“The number wasn’t random at all,” she says.

I go very still. “What do you mean?”

“I took it from the library system.”