Page 59 of Kane

Kane: So now you need me to keep you awake?

Ryder: Maybe. What do you count to stay awake?

I think about it for a minute, grinning when I come up with the perfect emoji to answer him.

I tap out the chicken emoji and send it through, waiting to see his response.

Ryder: WTF? Are you telling me to count cock?

I laugh because I can just imagine his shock, his voice.

Kane: No, I’m telling you to count roosters. You know, they rise with the sun…

Ryder: Seriously?

The laugh that escapes me is genuine.

Kane: Cock-a-doodle-doo.

I send him a winking emoji and the laughing one too.

Kane: Or you could just make yourself a coffee. Last I checked, that helps keep one awake.

The little dots appear and disappear again. Several times before another text comes through, almost as if he wasn’t sure what to say, or how to say it perhaps.

Ryder: I’d rather make you a coffee.

My cheeks heat, my heart skips a beat. It’s just a text, albeit a flirtatious one, but something about the words feel monumental. Larger than life.

There are plenty of ways I could respond to him. I could be cheeky and brush him off with something humorous. I could tell him to make himself a coffee and I think he would. He seems to like it when I tell him what to do.

But something about his text feels more like a question, or like he’s trying to say something else.

Kane: Is that so?

Ryder sends back an emoji with a kissy face and my body flushes with heat.

He is flirting with me, the little devil. I grin as he texts back.

Ryder: Yes, Sir.

Another kissy face, and then a text that renders me as frozen as it does with warmth.

Ryder: I like talking to you.

I like talking to him, too.

Kane: What time are you done today?

Ryder: 3.

I glance at the clock, noting it’s nearly two. That’s an hour.

Which isn’t much time to get downtown, but it’s doable.

Kane: Got any plans tonight?

I watch the texts disappear and reappear three times before he says no.