Page 99 of Sexting the Pakhan

Unknown Number:Come for me.

I turned my face into the pillow and came so hard my whole body shook, one hand pressed over my mouth, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes because pleasure and grief are apparently neighbors when you haven’t slept properly in five years.

For a few minutes, I didn’t move.

Then my phone buzzed again.

Unknown Number:You still there?

I stared at the message with my heart beating too fast.

Me:Yes.

Unknown Number:Better?

I typed back with fingers that still trembled.

Me:A little.

Unknown Number:Sleep.

Me:Bossy again.

Unknown Number:You like it.

I smiled into the dark despite myself.

Me:Unfortunately.

Unknown Number:Good night.

Me:Good night, stranger.

He didn’t reply after that.

I lay awake for another hour, staring at the ceiling, one hand over my stomach out of old habit, listening to my daughters breathe through the baby monitor they were too old for but I still kept because some part of me would always need proof they were safe.

Now morning traffic crawls around me, and I feel the aftertaste of last night like guilt under my tongue.

Not because I touched myself. Because I answered him.

Because he texted first, and I was glad.

Because I’m thirty steps away from a school gate, six years older, a mother of two, and still keeping a secret unknown number alive like a match I strike whenever I need to remember I can burn.

Karina calls again when I’m two minutes from the café.

I hit the button on the steering wheel.

“Do you want pancakes or eggs?”

“Coffee,” I say.

Karina says, “That’s not breakfast.”

“It is when you’re wounded,” I say.

“You’re getting pancakes.”