Page 65 of 13 Rules For Fantastic Phone Sex

I hang up after her words get soft and slurred, then go silent. I’m conflicted, but I want to linger, and listen to her soft breaths as she sleeps while I wish she were mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY

KAITLIN

RULE #9: NO OUTSIDE CONTACT. EVER.

I’ve been keeping secrets. Big secrets. I start to pick up my Henry phone to tell him I need to spill my guts at his earliest convenience, but Hunter calls.

“You can talk to Ross, the guy who wants you to masturbate with Tiger Balm, or you can talk to Jesse, who wants a two-girl call, and you have to make a lot of making-out sounds.”

“I’ll take fake smooches with a friend for two hundred, Alex.”

“Okay, let me get Pixie. She’s working from home, and then I’ll get you and Jesse roped in. Give me a minute.”

I’m sitting in front of my easel, but I’m not mixing paints. It’s emotions that are swirling.

I make lip-smacking sounds with Pixie, who’s miles away on campus. No saliva will be swapped on this call. I kind of wish I’d selected Tiger Balm Ross. Fake kissing gives me too much time to think, and I’m already ruminating enough. At least I wouldn’t be doom spiraling over what’s happening in my life.

I can’t tell Henry. I want to tell him so bad I can taste it. Whenever something is bothering me, I talk to Henry.

I fake a moan and smack my lips harder while I send Henry a text.

Me: I have news. Good news.

I desperately want to tell him what’s going on in my life. I got into my first-choice grad school. I have until May first to accept the offer, but I’m sending it in today.

Chicago.

UIC’s Medical Visualization program. I did it. I got into medical illustration—visualization—school.

And we’re selling the phone sex biz to a huge service in California.

We didn’t seek it out, but we have an offer that we’d be stupid to refuse. Jessica, Anastascia, and I are a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them. Which means I’ll head to school free as a bird. After a few months of the service from California sniffing around, we’ve negotiated a fantastic exit from the business we built from a single phone line.

We weren’t even trying to sell, but it’s too good to pass up. Ana is thrilled—she wants to stay home with her babies, the cutest things ever to grace the planet Earth. Jessica’s ambivalent about selling. She’s already thinking about the next business we should start, but we are all in agreement: we’re not interested in sticking with our business baby once it sells. All three of us declined a generous offer to continue on with California Girls in the future. Our employees can keep their jobs; they’ll just be working from home.

As for me? I’m five miles beyond ready to talk to whomever I might possibly want to talk to for free. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.

“Oooooooooooh,” I moan.

Me: Is the whole thing about giving a lawyer a retainer true? If I give you a dollar retainer are you officially my lawyer and you have to keep all of my deep, dark secrets?

The service buying us has an average call time of seven minutes and hundreds of women working in call centers in California. They want to acquire tiny little us for our highly lucrative clientele, and they want to know why our callers are so willing to call so often and talk so long.

The real secret? Human connection. People hate being stuck in voicemail loops. Press one for a blowjob. Press four SPAM and five for zombies. We made it easy to develop a relationship, and poof, winning at phone sex life.

The California guys underestimate us. I manipulate men for a living. Ana looks like she’s twelve in her corduroys and braids, but she has an MBA, and she’s smart AF. And Jess? Well, she made men beg for fun until she decided to be the second shift manager. Oopsie.

The “corporate secrets” they want are rules I stuck on the wall of the kitchenette a few years ago. I may frame that piece of notebook paper, considering what they’re paying.

Me: I hope you land soon. I miss you.

The acquisition, an adorkably fancy word for selling this place, could be complete late next month. May. May. I could surprise Henry on his birthday. If the business sells and it magically becomes possible for us to live in the same city. If he finds me attractive. If he wants to meet. If we like each other in person.

If falling in love with him is not utterly foolish.

If. If. If.