Dictionary

Britt waited until she heard the shower running.

His phone sat on the nightstand, screen dark, face up, unlocked. He never locked it. That was the first thing she had noticed about him years ago, the way he handed over his whole digital life like it was nothing. She had loved that about him then. Now she loved it for entirely different reasons.

She opened the Settings app and found the keyboard section. Text replacement. The list was empty. Clean. Innocent.

She started typing.

The first swap was simple. She replaced "I'm fine" with "I'm hard and trying not to show it." She tested the phrasing in her head, imagining him typing it to his mother, to his boss, to her. The thought made her stomach tighten.

Then "okay" became "okay but I'm thinking about your mouth."

"Good" became "good because I'm already leaking."

"Yes" became "yes please make me say it."

"No" became "no but my body says yes."

And "maybe" became "maybe I want you to watch."

She saved each one carefully, double-checking the spelling, the capitalization, the exact phrasing. These were her words now, living inside his phone, waiting to betray him. Heat crept into her cheeks as she worked, a flush that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with what came next.

She placed the phone back on the nightstand exactly as she had found it. Then she went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine.

Lyle came downstairs twenty minutes later, hair still damp, wearing the gray t-shirt she liked. He kissed her cheek and grabbed his phone from the counter where he had left it. She watched his thumbs move across the screen.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, just my mom. She wants to know if we're coming for Sunday dinner."

"What did you say?"

He looked up, already typing. "I said I'm fine, just busy."

His thumb hit send.

Britt took a slow sip of her wine. "Show me."

"What?"

"Show me what you sent."

He turned the phone toward her. The message was already delivered. It read: "I'm hard and trying not to show it, just busy."

Britt read it aloud. "I'm hard and trying not to show it, just busy."

Lyle's face cycled through confusion, then recognition, then horror in the space of two seconds.

"What the fuck," he said, pulling the phone back to his face. He scrolled up, down, checking the thread. "What the fuck, Britt."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You did something to my phone."

"I don't know what you mean."

He was already opening the keyboard settings, scrolling to text replacement. She watched his face as he found the list. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.

"There are six of these," he said.

"Are there?"

"Britt."

"Yes?"

He looked at her, and she saw it. The thing she had been waiting for. Not just anger or confusion, but something underneath. A flicker of interest. A question he wasn't ready to ask.

"Explain," he said.

She set down her wine glass and walked toward him. He didn't back away. He never did. That was another thing she loved about him.

"I installed a dictionary," she said. "On your phone. Every time you type a trigger word, it gets replaced with something else."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to see what would happen."

"What happens is I text my mother that I'm hard."

"Technically you texted that you're hard and trying not to show it. There's a difference."

He stared at her. His ears were red. His throat was red. She could see his pulse beating in the hollow of his neck.

"Delete them," he said.

"No."

"Britt, this is not a joke. I could have sent that to anyone. My boss. My sister."

"You didn't though. You sent it to your mom, and she probably thinks you're just being weird about being busy. She won't ask. She never asks."

He ran a hand through his damp hair. "This is insane."

"It's a game."

"It's not a game if I don't know the rules."

"Okay." She stepped closer. "Then I'll tell you the rules. You keep the dictionary. You use your phone normally. And when the replacements happen, you show me. Every time."

"Why would I agree to that?"

"Because you're curious."

He opened his mouth to argue. She watched the argument die on his tongue. He knew she was right. She could see it in the way his eyes dropped to her mouth, the way his breathing had gone shallow.

"Show me the list," he said.

She took his phone and opened the settings. She handed it back. He read each replacement silently, his jaw tightening with every line.

"'No but my body says yes,'" he read aloud. "That's dark."

"It's honest."

"'Maybe I want you to watch.' Watch what?"

"That depends on what you're saying maybe to."

He set the phone down on the counter. Face up. She noticed he didn't turn it off.

"These are going to be a problem," he said.

"That's the point."

"I mean a real problem. At work. In public."

"You'll learn to type around them. Or you won't. Either way, I get to find out what you're actually thinking when you type those words."

He looked at her for a long moment. She could see the war happening behind his eyes. The part of him that wanted to be offended. The part that was already playing along. The part that was already aroused.

"I'm going to bed," he said.

"Okay."

"You're not coming?"

"I'll be up in a minute. I want to finish my wine."

He walked past her, and she watched him go. His shoulders were tense, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He was hard. She could see it in the way he walked, the slight adjustment he made to his stride, the way the fabric of his sweatpants shifted with each step.

She smiled and took another sip of wine.

When she came upstairs, the lights were off. Lyle was in bed, on his side, facing away from her. She slipped in beside him and pressed herself against his back. The warmth of him seeped through her thin shirt. She could feel the tension coiled in his spine, the way his muscles refused to relax against her.

"Are you mad?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"You can be mad. That's allowed."

"I'm not mad. I'm confused."

"About what?"

He rolled over to face her. In the dark, she could just make out the shape of his features. The worry in his brow. The question in his mouth.

"About why I'm not deleting them myself," he said.

"Because you want to see what happens."

"I could just delete them."

"You could."

"Right now. I could grab my phone and delete every single one."

"But you won't."

"How do you know?"

"Because if you were going to, you would have done it already. You had the phone in your hand. You read the list. You could have deleted them then. You chose not to."

He was quiet. She could feel his breath on her cheek, warm and unsteady.

"Tell me the truth," she said. "When you saw that message you sent to your mom, what did you feel?"

"I felt embarrassed."

"Before the embarrassment. What did you feel first?"

He didn't answer. She waited.

"Your heart rate," she said. "It sped up before you even read the message. I saw it in your neck. You felt something before you understood what had happened."

"Maybe."

"Tell me what it was."

He turned onto his back. She propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at him. In the faint light from the window, she could see the outline of his chest rising and falling, the way his nipples pressed against the soft cotton of his shirt. Her gaze traced lower, following the thin trail of hair below his navel, disappearing beneath the waistband of his boxers. The blanket had shifted when he turned, pooling at his hips, and she could see the shape of him through the fabric. He was still hard. Maybe harder than before.

"It was a rush," he said quietly. "Like a jump scare. Like falling."

"And then?"

"And then I was embarrassed. And then I was confused. And then I was..."

"What?"

"Interested."

She smiled in the dark. "Good."

"Don't say good like this."

"Like what?"

"Like you won."

"You did win. You just don't know what the prize is yet."

He reached for her, his hand finding her hip, fingers curling into the fabric of her sleep shirt. She felt the pull of him, the wanting. She placed her hand over his and moved it away, gently but firmly.

"Not tonight," she said.

"Why not?" His voice came out rougher than he probably intended.

"Because I want you to sit with it. I want you to think about what happened. I want you to wonder what's going to happen tomorrow."

"That's cruel."

"I know."

She kissed his forehead, letting her lips linger against his skin. She felt him exhale, felt the shudder that ran through him. Her mouth brushed his temple, his jaw, the corner of his lips. She pulled back before he could turn it into a real kiss.

"Britt," he said, and his voice was thick now, strained.

"Mm?"

"Please."

"No."

She settled onto her side of the bed. But she didn't pull away entirely. She let her leg drift over, her calf resting against his. The contact was light, barely there, but she felt him react instantly, felt the muscle in his leg tense, felt him shift toward her before catching himself.

She could feel him lying awake beside her, his body humming with tension she had put there. The heat between them was palpable. She could smell him, clean from the shower, mixed with something underneath that was purely him, purely want. She let her hand rest on her own stomach, fingers tracing lazy circles against the thin cotton, knowing he could hear the movement of her hand against the fabric, knowing he was imagining where her fingers were going even if they weren't going anywhere at all.

"Britt?" he said after a long silence.

"Yeah?"

"Are you going to add more?"

"Maybe."

"What would you add?"

She turned toward him, even though she couldn't see his face clearly. "What do you want me to add?"

"I don't know."

"Think about it. While you lie here. Think about what word you're most afraid of typing wrong."

He was quiet. She heard him swallow.

"There's a name," he said.

"I know."

"Inez."

She felt the word land in the dark between them. She had been waiting for him to say it. She had known he would.

"Not yet," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because you're not ready. And because I want you to wonder when I will."

He made a sound. Half frustration, half something that sounded almost like a moan he was trying to swallow.

"Go to sleep, Lyle."

"I can't."

"Then lie here and think about it. Think about what it would feel like to type her name and have it turn into something you can't take back."

She felt him shift beside her. Heard his breathing change, growing heavier, more ragged. The mattress moved slightly as he adjusted, and she knew what he was doing, knew he was trying to find a position that didn't press against the ache she had built in him. She reached out and placed her hand flat on his chest, feeling his heart slam against her palm.

"Don't," she said.

"I'm not doing anything."

"I know. That's why I said don't."

His breath hitched. She felt his chest rise sharply under her hand, then fall slowly, like he was trying to control it.

"Britt?"

"Mm?"

"Can I at least..."

"No."

He groaned, but he didn't argue. She felt him settle, felt the mattress adjust as he found a position that was almost comfortable. Almost. She kept her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat gradually slow, feeling the tension in his muscles gradually ease. But not all the way. Never all the way.

She lay awake for a long time, listening to him not sleep. His body was restless. Every few minutes he shifted, and she knew he was hard, knew he was trying to hide it, knew he was thinking about the dictionary and about Inez and about all the words that were going to betray him tomorrow. She let her thumb trace a slow circle against his chest, a small gesture that could have been comfort or could have been torture. She wasn't sure which. Maybe she wasn't sure he was either.

She smiled in the dark.

The game had begun.