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"Same time tomorrow?" I ask. The question that's become the closing ritual. The lock that turns at the end of every call, sealing the next one into place.

"I'll be here, Milo."

The call ends. The screen goes dark. 2:14 a.m. Two hours and thirteen minutes.

I sit on the floor for a long time. Bean's breathing is slow and even above me. The apartment is dark. My shirt is soft against my skin and I'm aware of it in a way I wasn't before the call, aware of the fabric on my arms, my chest, the collar against my throat. My body is awake. Not with fear. With the other thing. The thing that's been building for six days, the low heat that starts in my stomach and spreads when his voice drops into that register, the one that's just for me, the one that isn't the operator.

My phone buzzes. Noor.

You're up late. Everything okay?

She's three hours ahead. 5:14 in Boston. She's either up early or she never went to sleep. The fact that she's checking at this hour means she's worried. The worry is justified. The worry is always justified.

Yeah. Good night actually. Couldn't sleep.

Liar.

I'm fine, Noor.

Fine is not a feeling. You taught me that.

I did teach her that. Junior year, after Devon, when she asked how I was doing and I said fine and she threw a pillow at me. Said fine was a wall, not a window. I needed to pick an actual word. I told her I felt scraped. She accepted that. We ate pad see ew on the floor of her dorm room. I told her about the scraping. She listened without fixing it. That was the night I understood what friendship actually meant.

I feel hopeful, I type. And then delete it. And then type it again. And then send it before I can delete it again.

The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

That's either really good or really bad and I need more context.

It's a person.

Oh god.

It's not like that.

It's always like that. Who.

I stare at the screen. The truth is a sentence I can't type. He's a crisis line operator. I've never seen his face. I changed my shirt for a phone call. I told him I wished I could see him and he said he thinks about that too. None of that fits in a text to Noor. None of that survives the translation from feeling to language without sounding like the thing she's afraid of, which is me walking toward someone who understands me without checking the ground first.

I'll tell you when there's something to tell.

Milo.

I promise.

You better.

I plug in the phone. I go to bed. Bean follows, jumping up, circling, pressing against my legs. The warmth starts at my shins. My eyes close. His voice is still in my head, the low rumble, the one that said I think about that too, and the words replay in the dark while my body settles into the mattress and sleep comes from a direction I don't expect, which is from the center, from the inside, from the place where the fear usually lives.

The fear isn't there tonight.

His voice is.

Chapter Eight: Brantley

Midnight is four minutes out and my hand is steady on the desk.

The floor is empty. Mark took the early half and left at eleven. Gina's station is dark. Anders handed me the midnight block the way he always does, because I'm the one who never complains about the hours, the one whose evaluation scores run highest on the floor, the one who volunteers for the shift nobody else wants. The system shows me logged in on the work line. My personal phone lies face down beside the keyboard, screen dark, the recorder one tap from live. I switched to the cell on the third call. The work line feeds the center's archive. The cell feeds me.