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You still there?

I exhaled a shaky breath before I wrote back.Yeah.

Does that scare you, Kiri?

I could see her face in my mind, but it was the face I’d known when we were both younger and more foolish. The only times I’d ever seen her be vulnerable were those hushed nights on a crappy thin mattress on the college campus that had hosted the cheer camp. I figured she’d just grown out of it, or she was better at hiding it.

You don’t scare me,I lied.

I think I do.

There was a pause as she typed out another message.You scare me.

I almost dropped my phone. What was happening?

Has your phone been hacked?I asked.

I could almost hear her laugh in my mind as she sent me a laughing emoji.

No, I’m just tired and lonely. It happens sometimes.

I didn’t know what to do with this version of Echo either, so I decided to wing it. Dom was going to be furious, but he wasn’t in my shoes right now dealing with this.

You can’t talk with one of your five thousand assistant coaches?I sent.

It was a little rude, but she’d been rude as hell to me, so it was fair.

I don’t want to talk to them. I want to talk to you.

My response was one word:why?

She typed for a long time and I could tell she was deleting things and then typing again.

Because sometimes I wonder what would have happened after cheer camp. If we hadn’t gone our separate ways.

That wasn’t exactly what had happened. We’d promised to keep in touch and I’d sent her messages and emails and she ghosted me. Pissed, I gave up and figured she just wanted a fling. I’d been bitter for a long time about that, but got over it eventually when I went to college and was drowning in beautiful girls who could take my mind off that one-week stand.

You were the one who stopped talking to me, but whatever.

I hoped my tone was evident.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t out to my parents then. I didn’t know what to do.

I did remember her talking briefly about her parents in those quiet moments as the sweat dried on our skin and we talked about the universe and our places in it as only you can do when you’re sixteen. She’d been pretty quiet about her family, though, and I’d been too lust-crazed to ask deeper questions. We also hadn’t had a whole lot of time alone together anyway. Most of our days were taken up with dance practice and stunting and trying to throw new tumbling passes and our bodies were sore and worn out by the time the sun went down and we collapsed into bed.

I didn’t know that. I thought you just got tired of me and moved on to someone else.I said.

I didn’t.

Wow, a lot was happening and it was blowing my mind. I wasn’t sure how many more revelations I could handle in one night. We were both exhausted and I wasn’t in the right space to use my common sense.

She sent me another message.I mean, eventually I did date someone. Several someones. I’m not a fucking nun.

There she was. I snorted.

Some nuns did fuck each other, you know.I said.

I hoped that startled a laugh out of her.