Page 49 of On His Mind

He calls.

It rings in my hand, and I nearly drop it. My heart sinks into my stomach. I look at myself in the camera, push my hair back off my face, and answer.

“Hey,” I answer quietly, because of the hour.

“Hi.” The room behind him is dark. He lifts the book so I can see it — a paperback, worn at the corner, and I can’t read the cover in that light.

I grin and lift my sketchbook to the camera.

Then I get my phone stand off the nightstand and prop him against the lamp. I turn the volume down, lean back against my headboard, and go back to my drawing. And we don’t say anything. Ten minutes go by. Then twenty. There’s the small sound of a page turning, and my pencil on the paper. I have never in my life understood how anyone stands to talk on the phone, and here I am with a boy propped against my lamp whoisn’t talking either, and it isn’t awkward, it’s the least awkward thing in my week.

At some point, I glance over, and he’s reading. Really reading, brow down, entirely inside it. I pick the phone up and bring it close.

“Hey?” I whisper.

He looks up and lifts his phone.

“It’s almost eleven.”

He doesn’t answer, but something crosses his face that says he knows exactly what I’m saying.

“Maybe,” I say slowly, “we could do this in person sometime.”

Nothing. Just those eyes that say more than words could.

I narrow mine. “You’re sure you’re not tired?”

He shakes his head.

“What helps?”

He shakes his head again. “Nothing.”

I look at him for a while. The dark room, the book, the quiet expression he always holds. “Are you afraid to fall asleep?”

He shakes his head. He looks away when he does it.

“Do you want to stay on FaceTime?” I ask. “You can watch me sleep. Maybe it’ll inspire you.”

The side of his mouth lifts. It’s barely anything.

“I’m kidding.”

He looks down at his book.

I say, “I heard Hawthorne threw a crazy party this weekend.”

He holds up two fingers.

“Two?”

He nods.

I laugh. “I’m now convinced you don’t talk because you’re secretly exhausted.”

He shrugs, and I smile. He almost does something with his face that in another person would be a smile.

“Seriously. Why are you so quiet?”