of subtle mischief in her tone that made it seem she was always on the verge of saying something interesting. He’d noticed that certain words were clipped when she spoke, and others had a slight waver, but she’d mentioned a disability a couple of times in the past, as well as her wheel diameter, so he figured it was related to that. It didn’t matter anyway, and he personally hated when people asked invasive questions when he was just going about his day.
“This is Gus,” he replied, navigating back to the Reject Squad Ultra video streaming page on his laptop. He chuckled. “So. The band is back together.”
“Oh, we’re a band? What’s our name?” she asked, voice playful.
“The Night Owl Duet,” he replied, then remembered something that she’d messaged him during a live stream. “Neither of us plays instruments or sings, so it’s a very loose interpretation of a band.”
“How about the Sleepy Time Duet? Night owlism is for the young,” Reggie said, laughing. “I’m twenty-eight and my weary bones need rest.”
Gus pursed his lips, even though she couldn’t see him.
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m thirty-two and can stay up until at least 9:30 p.m.,” he said, pleased when she giggled. “Ten if I’m feeling really wild.”
“Well, hopefully you won’t have to be up past your bedtime,” she said sleepily.
It was already 10:15 so Gus was a bit confused, but she’d said in her second email that lack of sleep really messed with her head, so maybe she was just babbling.
“I’m kidding. I usually work until around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. Besides, I wouldn’t mind being kept up by you,” he said. His cheeks flushed as he realized his words might be taken for innuendo, and that maybe they were innuendo. Conversation was flowing easily between them, and he’d forgotten how good it felt. He kind of regretted that they were only talking so that she could go to sleep. “That is, talking to you is better than being kept up by work, which is the usual culprit for me.”
“Same. I feel like a kid who got told that if I kept pulling a face it would get stuck like that, and found out my parents were right,” she said on a sigh. “I’ve spent so many nights working late and now I’m being punished with sleep deprivation to teach me a lesson.”
“Well, I’m here to remedy that. Ready to, uh, have me bore you to sleep?”
She laughed, but it was an exhausted sound. “I think of it more as soothing me to sleep, but please do. This insomnia has really fu—messed me up.”
“Been there.” Gus’s words stopped flowing for a few seconds because his mind had gone off on a tangent of how intimate that word was. Soothing. Lots of other thoughts blossomed from that one, fractal images linked by that core idea that she wanted him to soothe her, and the fact that there were so many ways to do that. His voice, his mouth, his hands . . .
What? Where did that even come from?
“Gus?”
“Oh. Sorry, just queuing something up.” He ran his finger in a circle on his laptop’s trackpad so that his words were not a lie. He didn’t need to have thoughts like this about Reggie. He didn’t even know what she looked like; how could he be imagining what it would be like to touch her? “I have to watch this show to figure some things out for my project. I figured I could just kind of tell you what it’s about while I do. Is that okay?”
“Yes.” Something about the fatigued anticipation in that one word did something to him. For a moment, he felt put on the spot as he had when 26InchRims had first started lurking on his stream. There was a sudden pressure not to disappoint, to do this right or to fail. He considered hanging up, blocking this number and email address. Then he closed his eyes and focused. This wasn’t that serious, plus she seemed to . . . need him. That wasn’t something he’d felt in a long time. Being the one who could help.
“Here we go.” He pressed PLAY and settled back into his crappy office chair, which matched the other crappy furniture in his apartment. “Okay. So the first episode is starting. This is an anime, by the way, which I don’t usually watch.”
“Why not?” she asked in that same sleep-rough voice. “Anime is awesome.”
“Oh no. You had an anime avatar on