Page 5 of When He Calls

"What do you do?" he asks.

"Edit manuscripts. Freelance. From home."

"What are you working on?"

"A romance novel about a woman who inherits a vineyard in Tuscany."

The distance between this bathroom floor and a Tuscan vineyard is laughable. Between cold tile and imaginary sun. Between my hands, which are coming back to their right color in the bathroom light, and the protagonist's hands, which are probably doing something picturesque with a grape right now. A laugh comes up from the bottom of my chest. A real one, unexpected, genuine, the sound of something breaking in a good direction.

"There it is."

"There's what?"

"The laugh. When the body lets you laugh, the worst part is over."

"Is that science?"

"Three years of answering phones."

My hands are back. Pink fingertips. Right-colored knuckles. They flex and they work and they belong to me again. Bean is still leaning against my leg, her weight grounding me to the tile, to the room, to the version of reality where the bathroom is a bathroom and the fear is manageable.

The call opens up from there. Twenty minutes become thirty. Thirty becomes forty. The fridge hums. The bass thumps. Bean adjusts her position against my leg, resettles, sighs the sigh of a dog who's accepted that the floor is happening tonight. His questions keep coming, not pointed, not therapeutic, just present. The vineyard novel. How long I've been editing. Whether I like the work or just do it. And I answer, which is the strange part, because the answers aren't the rehearsed ones. They're real. Unedited. The kind of sentences that come out when a person stops monitoring every word for signs of weakness and just talks.

At some point my back slides down the side of the tub until I'm almost lying on the tile, legs stretched out, Bean curled against my hip. The position should be uncomfortable. The tile has warmed under my body instead. Panic below a three. The hum of the fridge, his voice, Bean's breathing. The quiet of 2 a.m. when the neighborhood is asleep and nobody knows I'm on this floor except a dog and a stranger.

"Brantley." His name is unfamiliar in my mouth, a word I've never said before, belonging to a person I've never seen and just spent forty minutes breathing with in the dark.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

"That's what we're here for."

"I don't usually." I stop and take a deep breath. "I don't usually fall apart for strangers. Or at all. I usually do it alone, like a normal fucked-up person."

"You didn't fall apart. You just needed someone to listen."

Falling apart and reaching out. I've never separated those two things before.

"The line is open any time," he says. "No appointment. No waitlist."

"I won't need to call again. Promise. I'll stop clogging up your line."

The call ends. Phone on the tile. The skeleton is quiet. The fridge hums. The bass thumps through the floor. Bean lifts her head off my knee and looks at me with the expression that means outside now, ears perked, head tilted, body aimed at the door.

"Yeah, okay."

Up. Legs work. Leash off the hook. Bean's feet clicking on the hallway floor, vibrating with energy. I bend down to pet her and tell her she’s such a good girl for waiting so long. The front door opens to cold air and an empty sidewalk. Ellis's skeleton is dormant, jaw locked open, LEDs dead. A piece of plastic that costs forty dollars and costs me everything.

We walk. Past the skeleton. Past the foam gravestones. Past the inflatable ghost two houses down that sways with a weight I can't look at. Bean pulls toward every bush, every lamppost, every crack in the sidewalk. Each stop resets something. Each reset buys a second where my hands are on a leash instead of on the floor.

Three blocks. Bean does what she needs to do. She sniffs a fire hydrant for so long I almost pull her forward, but the standing still is good practice. Standing still in October, outside, at night. Dr. Maren would have called this an exposure win. Me, being out in the dark at three in the morning… Dr. Maren would have written it down in the session notes with the date and the duration and the anxiety rating. The notation would have turned the standing-at-a-hydrant into data, which is what therapy does to moments. It turns them into evidence for a case your brain is building against you.

The walk back is easier. Bean trots ahead, her body loose, her tail up, her feet clicking on the pavement at the speed of a dog who has no idea what month it is. Past everything again. The skeleton stays dormant. The ghost sways. The foam gravestones sit in the yard with their joke epitaphs that Ellis thinks are funny and that I will never read.

Inside. Lock the door. Handle, deadbolt, handle. Bean's leash on the hook. Her bowl on the kitchen floor needs filling. Water, food, the small rituals of keeping something alive. Her whole face is in the bowl, her tail going.

Yeah, we have a weird as fuck schedule, but working from home means I can sleep and work as I want, so this is just what works for us.