Chapter Four

Daphne didn't know what to do.

She'd barely expected Chris Kepler to check his messages, much less actually respond to her. Even in the alternate universe where he read her message, and decided to reply, she'd figured he might have some words of admonishment. Something about how he was a person, too, and maybe she should think about that next time she decided to mouth off at a game. Or he'd say something dismissive that made her feel ridiculous, like she was making a big deal out of nothing.

But instead he'd written about his childhood dog?

She scrolled back up to her first message, still trying to make sense of what was happening. And that's when she saw it. She'd typed and retyped her message a hundred times, trying to get the tone right—contrite but lighthearted, remorseful but friendly—and then when she'd cut and pasted it over from her Notes app she'd deleted the most important paragraph. The one where she actually said, I was the heckler, and I'm sorry.

SHE'D SENT AN APOLOGY MESSAGE AND DELETED THE APOLOGY.

There were still references to her being sorry, but without that introductory paragraph, it read more like she was generally sorry. Instead of unmasking her as a piece of shit, if anything her message had made her seem like an even better person for caring enough to reach out.

And now he was writing about his childhood dog and asking her what time it was, and it was all so normal…so nice. It would be beyond awkward to say something now, like, Oh, by the way, I'm the one who made fun of how bad you were at the game? But anyway, let me tell you more about my cat.

Milo had that judgy face on again, and this time she knew she deserved it. She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the slippery feeling in her stomach as she typed her response to Chris' question.

D: 11:43.

She could've left it there, closed the door behind her. But damned if she didn't want to open the door a little bit more, even if it meant that she was crossing a line she couldn't venture back over.

D: Where are you?

"Stay in the present," she murmured to Milo, who'd flipped over onto his back, showing his belly even as he hid half his body underneath her bed. It was one of his favorite things to do, inviting tummy scratches while simultaneously making it impossible to administer them unless she crouched down and wedged her hand uncomfortably between the bed frame and his body. She leaned over to try her best, but Milo immediately rolled back over and slunk over to his favorite spot, curled up in the laundry on the floor of her closet.

C: Two hours behind. Not sure exactly where.

While they'd been talking, she'd pulled up the Battery's schedule. They were playing the Dodgers tomorrow, so she assumed that Chris was typing these messages from thousands of miles away and many more feet above the ground.

D: Now look who's in the past. What kind of plane traveler are you? Like do you put your seat back, earbuds in, do you prefer window or aisle, etc.? Once I got stuck sitting in the middle seat between an older couple and they talked about his golf game and her pecan pie recipe the entire flight right over me like I wasn't even there.

C: We have a private plane.

Well, she supposed she should've figured that.

D: So you do whatever you want?

C: Pretty much.

She couldn't get a read on him. His replies could be so short, and she kept waiting for him to wrap it up, or stop responding. He'd already kind of done it once. But then he just kept typing. Even now, she saw the three dots appear, and then a new message popped up at the bottom of the chat.

C: Seat back: occasionally. Earbuds in: usually. Window: preferably.

The fact that he answered each part of her question in order got to her a little. This wasn't a formal interview; he didn't owe her answers to anything at all. And yet he seemed to want her to know each of those details, because she'd asked about them, and she didn't know what to do with that.

Before she could second-guess herself, she decided to cut right to the chase.

D: Can I ask you a question?

C:…

D: Why are you talking to me?

D: Not that I mind.

D: I like talking to you.

D: I mean, I appreciate that you answered my DM. I'm just surprised.

Daphne groaned audibly into her empty apartment, causing Milo to lift his head from the laundry. Everything she said was more cringeworthy than the last. Not to mention reminding her that the only reason this guy was talking to her in the first place was because she'd botched her apology so badly.

C: I can't sleep on planes.

Okay, so he was just bored. Weirdly, that made her feel better. She'd been in that kind of situation before—stuck in a doctor's waiting room, for example, with nothing to do but mess around on your phone and hope you got called soon. Those were the times when you stooped to interacting with branded social media accounts or answering all those mindless autofill prompts. Type "I am [your Zodiac sign] and that's why" and then let predictive text fill in the rest.

Bored made sense to her. Bored, she could handle.

D: Are you scared to fly? I'm not, but I hate it when anyone reminds you that you're 10x safer when you fly than when you drive. I know!!! That's why I'm more scared of cars!!!

C: I never used to be.

Huh. That implied that he was now, but he didn't follow up. Instead, his next message came in with another question for her.

C: Are you really scared of cars?

D: I got into a car accident in college—it wasn't even that bad, if my best friend were here she'd say, "It was a bump!" (She's the one who hit my car.) Anyway, ever since then I've been a nervous driver! Which I know doesn't help, only makes me more nervous, and on and on. It's a vicious cycle.

C: Have you been in a car accident since the bump?

Daphne smiled. She didn't know why it was so charming to her, that he'd used Kim's word for it.

D: No.

C: So in…how many years?

D: 7

She was probably reading too much into it, but suddenly Daphne wondered if that had been a clever way to ask how old she was. She decided to follow it up with more information, just in case.

D: (I was 20 at the time.)

C: It sounds like you're a pretty safe driver.

Justin had insisted on driving if they were going anywhere together. At the time, she'd been more than happy to give up control in that area, willing to accept his judgment that he was the better driver. If for any reason she did take the wheel—like if he'd had too much to drink and she'd had to drive them home—he would berate her the entire time, pointing out yellow lights she could've made it through or demanding why she hadn't turned down a particular street. Meanwhile, he was the one who'd navigated traffic like he was drafting in NASCAR.

It was maddening, what she'd put up with when she really thought about it. She wished she could go back in time and shout, You're the one who backed into a parked semi! Not me!

But she supposed her last chance to scream that kind of stuff had been a couple days ago. And she didn't actually want to replay any of it—she was just grateful she didn't have to live with that feeling anymore, always waiting to be put in her place. Now she was moving forward. Moving on.

D: I'm reading your Wikipedia now.

She'd thought it was somehow more honest to announce the fact, like she couldn't be accused of creeping if she owned it. But now, seeing the words so baldly in their chat, she wished she'd kept it to herself. She was going to have to get better at this if she was going to start online dating like Kim kept encouraging her to.

Not that this was the same. Not that she felt in any way ready to date. Still, it couldn't hurt to practice not being awkward as hell, if she could manage it for five seconds.

C: Is my driving history in there?

D: No, but happy birthday Did you do anything special?

The emoji was particularly embarrassing. She wished she could take it back, together with the inappropriate question—it wasn't any of her business what he did. She'd just never been able to stop herself if she found out someone's birthday had just passed or was coming up. She had to say happy birthday. It was a sickness.

C: Lost to the Diamondbacks. What else does it say?

She was impressed by how much information there was, actually. Minor league teams he'd played for in the A's organization, the teams he'd been traded to, various statistics about his batting average, how many home runs he'd hit, how many errors he'd made. Most of it was lost on her.

D: This says you're one of only 11 players in the MLB who eschews batting gloves. What do you have against batting gloves?

C: I like to feel the bat. "Eschews?" Interesting word choice.

D: Right? I love unusual words. In sixth grade I won a writing contest where we had to use all our vocabulary words in one essay. "Your homework should always be safely ensconced in your homework folder." I think that was the sentence that pushed mine over the top.

C: Well, no wonder. You wrote about responsible homework practices…for a school essay contest. You knew what you were doing.

Daphne bit her lip. She'd definitely been teacher's pet in school. Quiet, kept to herself, followed rules. It was only recently that she'd started asking herself if that was any way to go through life. She'd originally thought about going into elementary education, but she'd ended up majoring in communications and broadcasting in college, thinking one day maybe she'd combine her interests into something that could really reach people. It was a far cry from what she was doing now—writing dry corporate blog posts about setting up IT networks or writing quick clickbait listicles about movie stars and their most famous roles.

D: I was a nerdy kid. My favorite show was Reading Rainbow.

C: I remember that one. One of my favorite movies was Winnie the Pooh. I used to be inconsolable when he followed the bees into that hole and got stuck. My older brother roasted me so bad for that. If he even mentioned Winnie the Pooh getting stuck in the tree he could get me to cry.

It couldn't be a coincidence, him mentioning the same movie she'd referenced in her heckle. Maybe that was what all the crying had been about—some Pavlovian response to thinking of that movie again if that one small part had gotten to him so much as a kid. She wondered if it was possible that he did know she was his heckler after all, if she was the one who'd misread the earlier messages and her original intent had come through just fine. She started to scroll back up to the top of their conversation before another message came through.

C: Can I ask you a question?

She sat up a little straighter on her bed, trying to settle the sudden flutter in her stomach at the way he'd mirrored her earlier words. She racked her brain, trying to figure out what he could possibly want to know.

D:…

C: Why did you message me in the first place?

So he didn't know who she was. And now he'd given her the perfect opportunity to come clean—it would be like ripping off a Band-Aid. I'm the one who heckled you at the game, she'd type, and then he'd know. But then that led to so many more things she'd need to say—how sorry she was for doing that, how sorry she was now that she hadn't led with that information from the beginning.

"Sure," she said, more to herself than Milo, who took no more interest in whatever she was doing. "Here's a can of worms for you, go ahead and open it."

She started drafting her response, before eventually getting up, setting the phone temporarily on her bed while she went to fix herself a cup of tea. She was out of her Sleepytime tea and normally she wouldn't have caffeine this late, but tonight she would make an exception. She needed to think about how to explain, and for that, she needed to be awake.