Ashley had done a lot of things in a cheer skirt, but she had never done cheerleader phone sex. Not real cheerleader phone sex — not the kind where the words actually leave your mouth. But it was 11:48 on a Tuesday, her hair was still twisted up in the scrunchie from practice, and cheerleader phone sex was exactly what he asked for.

“You’re really doing this,” he said.

“I’m really doing this.” She sat on the edge of the mattress, knees pressed together, and forgot how to breathe. Eighteen years old, and she could scream a routine across a whole football field — but a phone against her ear turned her back into a nervous Teen with a cracking voice.

“Then be my Teen cheerleader,” he said. “Say it.”

“Ready? Okay!” She laughed at herself, then said it again lower and slower, the way she said it in the tunnel before a game. He went quiet on the other end, and that quiet did something to her. She pulled the hem of her skirt down over her knees just to feel the fabric move.

“Tell me what you’re wearing.”

“Skirt. White. Practice one, it’s too short.” She heard her own voice go breathy and hated how much she liked it. “Pom poms are on the floor. Kneesocks. You’re going to make a Slut out of me in a cheer uniform, aren’t you.”

“You’re already a Slut in a cheer uniform.”

“Then say it properly.”

He said it properly. She lay back against the blanket with the phone on the pillow and her skirt bunched up at her hips, and stopped pretending this was anything but the filthiest thing she’d done all month. She counted the beats out loud like a routine — five, six, seven, eight — and he called her a pervert for it. She agreed, because she was.

“Tell me about the game,” he said, and she did, because being asked to talk about herself was the easiest way to get her going. The fourth quarter. The mud. The way the whole crowd had screamed her name when she hit the last stunt. She told him she’d looked up into those stands and thought about exactly this. That made her a pervert too, she said. He told her she was.

Somewhere past midnight she rolled onto her stomach, kicked both kneesocks off the end of the bed, and gave him the whole chant in her best crowd voice. He came apart over the sound of it.

“Same time next week?” he said, wrecked.

Ashley pulled the scrunchie out of her hair and grinned at the ceiling. “Only if you’re lucky.”

It was the number she’d put up on thesincenter.com/ashley/ for anyone brave enough to dial it. Half the people who found it thought she was joking.

She wasn’t.