The phone tries to reconnect the video signal to no avail.

"I have poor internet connection in the bedroom, sorry." I hear Emmy walking around.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Going to brush my teeth. Don't worry, I'm taking you with me." Her voice becomes echoey as she goes into the bathroom.

I grin and get up to go brush my teeth too. "Wait, do you have any mouthwash?" I ask when I'm done. "I didn't pack mine."

"Right below the sink."

I squat and open the cabinet. All I see are—

"Behind the new toilet paper rolls and next to the tampons," she says. "Sorry."

I reach forward, blindly feeling my way, and my hand grabs the top of a plastic bottle. "We're rapidly discovering all of each other’s secrets, finding out you use tampons is not a shock, Emmy. Why are you hiding the mouthwash though?"

"I hate the look of the bottle."

I look down with an amused frown. "It looks pretty normal to me. Lots of big writing, but nothing offensive."

"I don't know what to say. I find it ugly. Okay, I'm putting you outside for a second. Actually can I call you back?"

I look at the phone as if I can see her. "Sure," I say, hoping she won't second-guess herself or feel weird and not call back. I realize out of the two of us, I've already done that to her. "Talk to you in a minute." I take the opportunity to grab the charger and plug the phone in by the bed since her battery is low again. Then I take my jeans off and slide into her bed. Onto her sheets. Normally I sleep naked, but I keep my boxers on.

The phone rings. "Hey," I greet her. We're just talking, no video call this time.

"Hey," she says and I hear the smile in her voice. "Are you in bed?"

"I am."

"Me too."

"What side do you sleep on?" I ask, looking at the bedside tables on either side of the bed. The table nearest me has books piled up versus the other. I'm assuming I'm on her side.

"The left," she says. "Closest to the bathroom. I mean who wants to walk farther than they have to, right?"

"True."

"You? What side?"

"At this moment, the left." I imagine the bed in my own room at my apartment. "But at home, the right side for the same reason."

"Where's home?" she asks. "Now you know so much about where I sleep, and I know nothing about where you usually sleep."

Thinking about my apartment in New York makes me feel lonely, cold. "I have a condo on Fifty-first."

"Central Park?"

"Nearby." Actually overlooking it. I picked it up from a day trader who'd lost his entire life savings in the crash.

"Wow. David lived in Manhattan. Not too far from this hotel actually. I loved to come and visit him here."

"It's a great area." I don't say that I actually spend more time there than at home because that would beg the question as to why. "Do you miss visiting New York City?"

"I miss David. But I love Charleston. I've . . . been happy there."

There's so much she's not saying between the gaps in her words. Earlier she mentioned David was all she had left, which begs the question of what happened to her parents. I know I could ask and based on the fact I poured my soul out to her, she'd probably answer.

But I don't want her sad. Not now while she's alone and after the day she had. I want her happy, sleepy, relaxed. I want her falling asleep with me with a smile on her face.

We talk for hours.

We talk about everything and nothing.

"Like Japanese haiku poetry," I say at one point after we've both agreed to turn off our bedside lights. We're on speaker phone, and her voice emanates from the phone that I've laid face-up on the bedside table.

"What about it?"

"What's the point? I mean, I don't get it."

"There's nothing to get." She laughs. "They're little vignettes of everyday things meant to be observed for just what they are."

"It's a big joke propagated on the literary community, is what it is."

She giggles. "Go downstairs and get my book of Japanese haiku, it's sitting on the small desk in the corner by the book shelves. There's an art to it. I'll prove you wrong."

"You want me to go downstairs in the dark, with a beast on the loose who could leap out at me any moment?"

"He's not a beast."

"You were there, you saw the whole thing!" I fire off indignantly.

"Fine. Well, he likes you or you wouldn't have seen him at all."

"Likes me? He farted in my face."

"Exactly. He feels comfortable around you. He'll probably come visit you in the night."

I sit bolt upright in the dark. "Emmy, you better be fucking kidding." I look toward the shadowy opening of the stairwell.

"Oh, and I also have a ghost. But I don't hear from it much."

My skin goes cold and clammy. I can do pretty much anything. But I don't do ghosts. "You what?" It comes out as a whisper. "Are you serious?"

"Wait," Emmy murmurs. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

I cringe. "Yes?"

She chuckles. "Oh my God, you're serious."

"Fuck, yes, I'm serious. Please tell me you're fucking joking, Emmy."

She's still laughing.

"Do you or do you not have a ghost?" I very slowly and very quietly lie down and draw her duvet all the way up to my chin so I don't draw attention to myself.

"I—I don't know," she manages, and I know she's trying hard to stop laughing.

I'm rigid, my eyes squeezed shut. "You don't know?"

"I mean, I hear things sometimes. It's an old house."

I moan. I can't breathe.

"You're really freaked out, aren't you?" she asks.

"Mmm hhmmmm. You better not get off the phone with me. Like, ever."

The phone buzzes with a text, and I open one eye.

Snaking one arm out from under the covers, I unplug it from the charger and bring it in bed with me. She's sent me a text.

"We can stay on the phone as long as you need to," she says. "I'm sorry I freaked you out."

---

Emmy: Did you really read the books on my Kindle app?

---

"I don't want to know what you've heard that makes you think you have a ghost," I tell her, "but I think you should probably get the place saged or cleansed or whatever when you get back. In fact, I'll get it done tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll have Father Pete come over and bless the place."

---

I did. I'd love to know which ones, and which PARTS are your favorite.

I hit send.

---

"Trystan," she's saying. Then I hear her pause and know from her quick inhale of breath she read my text. She clears her throat and continues. "I'm surprised you know what saging is. Along with your fear of ghosts it doesn't seem very manly."

"My decorator insisted I sage my apartment when I bought it from the previous owner to get rid of his karma or whatever."

Her text response comes through.

---

Emmy: It depends on my mood, but all of them usually open to my favorite parts. Try one.

Emmy: Read me a story. A sexy story.

---

I groan. Out loud. A vision of her reading erotica and touching herself in the bed I'm in right now is almost too much to bear. "Emmy, if you were here you'd see, and feel, just how manly I am right now." I don't bother texting her back. She was trying to distract me from my fear and it worked.

Her breathing changes.

I'm hard as granite and desperate to slide my hand down to get some relief. "Emmy?"

"Yes?" she whispers it.

"I have a confession. I went through all of your photos, and I found the one of you in the yellow bikini. I can't get it out of my head. I thought about it when I was in the shower this evening. In your shower."

"You did?"

"I did. I was washing with your soap, lathering up my whole body, and bam there you were in my head, in that tiny, indecent bikini, and God, you turned me on so much. I was so hard."

I give in and slide my free hand down my stomach until it reaches under my boxers. I fist my cock and squeeze hard once, letting out a groan I can't keep in.

"D-did you touch yourself?" she asks.

"Yes, Emmy."

She makes a sound that almost make me want to come in my hand right then. It gives me confidence to say more. "I imagined you in the shower with me, the bikini wet and see-through. Your nipples showing through the fabric, your skin shiny and slick."

I swallow, my mouth dry, my breathing erratic. She doesn't respond, but she doesn't tell me to shut up either.

"I sucked your nipples through the fabric, Emmy."

She gasps, and I give my cock one long stroke to get the edge off. But it makes it worse.

"More," she whispers and my stomach hollows out. "Tell me more."

"But it wasn't enough," I go on. "I slipped those little bikini top triangles aside to see your tightly budded nipples begging for my mouth. Pink or beige, Emmy?"

"Pink," she gasps out.

"Fuck. Are you touching yourself, Emmy?" Jesus, please let her be touching herself.

"Y-Yes."

Thank, Christ.

"Am I on speaker?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Good, you have two hands. Use them, Emmy. I want you to touch yourself like I want to touch you. Tell me, Emmy. Are your fingers between your legs?"

Her breathing is coming in light, sharp bursts.

"Emmy, if your hands aren't between your legs, they need to be right now. I want you stroking your clit. Are you doing it Emmy?"

"Yes." Her answer is just breath, no sound.

"What does it feel like? Are you wet?" I ask, my voice sounding strangled to my own ears.

"Yes. Oh God, yes."

"Spread your legs, Emmy. Wider."

If I was there, I'd have them so damn wide.

"Tell me what it feels like," I coax.

"Slippery. Warm."

"God, Emmy." I can't stop my hand, it's stroking up and down, squeezing, desperate. I imagine it's her warm wet body sliding up and down my cock. That I'm already inside her. I squeeze harder. "Slip a finger inside, Emmy." I can barely form the words.

"I am."

"Two. Make it two, three if you can, I want you to really feel me."

"Trystan," she moans. "Oh . . . my . . . Oh my God." Her whispers are frantic. She sounds shocked.

Jesus, what I wouldn't give to see her face right now. To feel her body spasm. See her lose it. I want to know if her skin turns pink, if she squeezes her eyes closed, if she arches her back.

She's gasping, panting, and I know she's almost there. I can almost feel it. My fist pumps harder, tighter, faster.

"That's it, Emmy. Are you fucking yourself, Emmy?"

"Y-Yes."

"Feel my cock sliding in and out of your sweet wet pussy while you rub your clit. Hard. God, you're beautiful. I want to feel you come, Emmy."

I'm on the edge, it's building, taking over. My heart is pounding so hard it feels like it's outside my body. "I'm going to come, Emmy." My words are grunts. I don't know how I'm coherent. If I'm coherent. "I'm so close. I'm going to imagine pumping into your sweet body, and I'm going to come so deep inside you, Emmy."

"Oh, God. Oh my God." Her breathing is erratic, desperate, picking up speed. "I'm coming, Trystan. Oh my God. Oh, oh, oh . . ." her voice fails and a long low moan takes over. It's endless. And oh my shit, if it's not the sexiest fucking thing I have ever heard.

I lose it then. My body goes rigid, I kick the comforter off my belly, and throw my head back into her pillow, the smell of her surrounds me as everything builds and rushes south and I come so damn hard, erupting into my own hand and across my stomach.