Page 89 of The Art of Catching Feelings

He got to the beginning of the text chain again, and this time he wanted to keep going, all the way to that very first message that had started it all. So he redownloaded the Instagram app on his phone, barely waiting for it to finish updating before he opened it up to check his DMs.

There were a bunch since the last time he’d been on, and he didn’t even bother to delete them, just scrolled through until he reached the bottom of the unread ones to find her message. When he didn’t see it, he scrolled back up, stopping when he saw her little profile picture of the rubber duckie on top of a stack of books.

There was a new message. He sat up straighter, reaching to put his beer on the table next to him without even looking, which was probably why it immediately wobbled and fell to the ground, the bottle miraculously intact but cold amber liquid puddling on the concrete.

The little gray words under her profile name saidSent 9w.Did that mean it had been sentnine weeksago?

He was almost afraid to open it up. He couldn’t believe these words had been sitting here all this time and he hadn’t known; he couldn’t believe in only a few minutes he would be done reading them. He clicked to open the message.

I had a chance to do this once before, but I made a mess of it. So, I’m going to try again. I hope you read all the way through to the end, but if you don’t, I understand.

My name is Daphne Brink, and I am your heckler.

First, I want to clarify a few things. I didn’t know anything about baseball. Literally nothing. So the idea of me heckling you…I mean, it’s ludicrous. It would be like me heckling the world’s greatest opera singer about their vibrato. It would be like you heckling a champion whistler.

Chris snorted.

I was also incredibly drunk. Which is not an excuse, I know, but let’s just say I was not in a great place emotionally. I’d signed my divorce papers a couple days before, and I was at the game with my best friend, sitting in seats that my brother had originally intended to use to try to get me and my ex back together. That’s a long story, I won’t bore you with it.

Chris had spent so long thinking about all the connections between Duckie and Daphne, all the little points where she’d lied to him or where he should have figured it out, that he hadn’t thought about all the near misses. All the ways that he might never have met her at all—if she hadn’t been at that game, if she hadn’t heckled him, if she hadn’t DMed him in the first place. How could he fault her for all the bad parts, when he wouldn’t go back to have it any other way?

When we started talking, it felt so good. Maybe it was just that I was lonely. Maybe it was just that it had been a long timesince I felt like I really wanted to know a person, to have them know me. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with you at first. But I think I fell for you at least a little bit from that first message about your pug Otis. That is objectively a very cute dog and dog name, so you knew what you had there—but also I loved that you immediately made that connection, that you’d be texting a stranger about your childhood dog at eleven thirty at night.

I only realized after we’d been talking for a bit that I’d left out the most important paragraph of my initial message, the one that explained who I was and why I was contacting you. The whole point had been for me to apologize about heckling you at the game. I’d only added the rest of it to try to make it more interesting, to show you that I was a person, too, and was just responding to my own pressures and acting out in a way that had nothing to do with you. But I’d deleted that opening bit and hadn’t added it back in, so now you just seemed to think that I was a really kind person who cared enough to reach out to you because I saw that you were upset on TV.

I know I should’ve just told you then. But I thought, what’s the harm? It’ll be better for him to think some kind stranger reached out to him than to have to think about his heckler again. And selfishly, I liked talking to you. I didn’t want our conversation to end. We’d chat this one night, and that’d be it.

Except we kept talking. And Chris, when I tell you how much those conversations meant to me, I really mean it. They brought me back into myself in a way I don’t even know that I can fully explain. And that was probably selfish, too, that I allowed them to keep happening even though I knew I was only getting in deeper and making things worse. By now, I really didn’t want you to know I was the heckler, because I worriedI’d lose you. So when you asked me my name, I couldn’t give it to you, in case you were able to connect the dots.

(Duckie is a nickname my brother called me when we were kids, by the way. And although the handle is supposed to be like Duckie’s Books, I can tell you that the “S” stands for Sarah.)

Daphne Sarah. It made him feel almost dizzy, suddenly having all this information he’d wanted for so long. He’d wanted her name and a picture when he’d been texting with her anonymously; he’d wanted to ask her more about her divorce when they’d been together in person but didn’t know if that was breaking their rules.

Chris tried to imagine how he would’ve reacted if, somehow, Daphnehadjust come clean with him when he’d asked for her name. No doubt he would’ve thought it was weird that she’d taken so long to clarify that point. He might’ve been embarrassed, clammed up a bit, worried that she was acting in bad faith and trying to catch him out in some way. Maybe it would’ve ended their relationship right there, another near miss.

Then you can start to piece together the rest of it. I didn’t set up the interview, or the sideline job…but yes, I took them both partly because they gave me a chance to see you. Only then it got even more complicated, and I felt like everything was so tangled up I’d never get the knot undone. You asked me if I remembered the night we talked on the phone—of course I remember that night. I knew it was dangerous, I knew it was wrong, and still I wanted it so badly that I convinced myself it was okay.

Once he’d gotten past his initial reaction, the knowledge thatshewas the one on the phone that night had only made the memory ten times better. He could also see how vulnerable it must’vemade her feel, could understand why it had made her pull back the way she had. Especially when they’d started working together more.

I really didn’t want to stop texting with you, but I knew it was for the best to try to make as clean a break as possible once I took over the sideline reporting duties. And then I thought I could keep it professional between us as the reporter, and you’d never have to know that we’d had this whole other relationship beyond that.

I recognize how shitty that sounds now. I see how it was always destined to blow up. But at the time, I didn’t know what else to do.

And maybe it could’ve been okay—not great, but at least okay—if I’d left it right there. You’d briefly wonder about this anonymous person you’d chatted with for a few days, but you’d move on. I’d do my job as the Battery reporter until Layla got back, and then I’d move on.

But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I couldn’t leave YOU well enough alone. I shouldn’t have propositioned you in that bar, I shouldn’t have let you take me back to my room, I shouldn’t have let any of that happen.

He remembered the way she’d been after that first time. He’d come out of the bathroom and she’d been subdued, clearly retreating back into herself in a way that closed him out. At the time, he’d just worried that she regretted sleeping with him, that she was worried about her job or already second-guessing the rules they’d set for themselves. Now, of course, her reaction made a lot more sense.

From there it was easy to tell myself that the damage had been done, so what was the harm in just one more time? One more day, one more chance to be with you. And maybe I fooled myself along the way that I was somehow making the rightchoice for you, too, because if I could make you happy, it couldn’t all be bad, right?

Then there was that night that you told me about Tim. It meant so much to me that you trusted me with that, that you would share memories of him with me. When you talk about him, I can see how much pain you’re in, but I can also see the way your face lights up when you tell a story about who he was. I can tell how important he still is to you.

Chris realized he’d been holding his breath, and when he let it out, it came out shallow and shaky.

But it also felt so wrong—that you were telling me something I already knew, that I was having to pretend I didn’t already know. That’s the part I’m the most sorry about, the part that I don’t know if I can forgive myself for. I certainly can’t blame you if you don’t forgive me. I said in that very first message that I don’t pretend to know what you might be going through, and even now, when you’ve told both versions of me, I can’t pretend to know. It’s devastating.

You hold yourself in such tight control. You keep so much locked inside. And maybe I did use both the text messaging and our real-life relationship as a way to try to crack you open a bit, and that was wrong of me. I just wish you could see what I see when you let go of that control, when you’re laughing with Randy in the dugout or when you’re showing a kid how to field a ground ball on a bounce or when you can’t sit still for five seconds while I draw perfectly shaded abs on you. Sometimes I think you believe you don’t deserve that joy, but you do.

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