What was happening? That was the only question I could think of as I read her text, half aware that I was supposed to reply. I glanced at the other phone I had pushed to the side and read the title.

the hotel manager’s suite

ooh when she opens up the gift bag in the room and there’s fried chicken in there . . . unff

She didn’t bring up the other unmentionables in the bag.

I picked up where I left off in the story, my mind hardly on it anymore. There was only a seed of a thought, one planted when she said she would join me.

mm, I needed this

For the first time, I was able to block out my childhood bedroom, the thought of my grandparents right downstairs. I imagined my hands not on my own body, but on hers instead, after a long day where she was tired or sad and this was what she needed, what my hands, my body could provide for her. I increased the pressure and varied the motion, speeding up.

are you close?

What was happening?

I wish I was with you right now. id get that reforging right out of you no problem

It started off—and this is going to sound lame, but I’ll say it anyway—not so different from a coding high. Then it kept building, like all the stories said it would, and suddenly it surpassed anything coding-related at all, and she was part of it too, her coaxing words, her teasing ways. I could almost feel her next to me, smiling at me with that wide mouth, doing more with that mouth. Wave after wave of pleasure. I certainly had not felt this before, did not know there could be anything like it. I dropped the phone and was gripping my sheets. I could not clench my fist hard enough.

Eventually, my limbs relaxed, my mind slowed. The stories often described a relaxation afterward, partners holding one another, safe in each other’s arms. I became aware of my bed again, my room. Just when it felt like my mind was returning, when I thought to check my arm for the phoenix, the room faded again. My arm pulsed once. But this time I was back with grandmother, who was writing at grandfather’s table.

She wrote in Chinese, in the script I couldn’t read. It didn’t matter, because I felt her words in a way that reading alone would never have allowed, and the feeling transcended all languages—Chinese, English, emojis—an overwhelming love and pride, and finally I could see the words she had written—let’s get ice cream—and I smiled and was pulled back into my room and curled into myself, hugging my arm close to my heart.

Eventually, I picked up my phone and typed carefully. did you only say that to push me over the edge?

Her response was slow.

did it work?