Three days after the almost caught incident, things went back to normal.
Or what passed for normal now, which was different from what normal had been three weeks ago. Normal now meant checking the app before she did anything else in the morning. Normal meant the specific way her mood adjusted slightly upward when his name appeared on her screen. Normal meant she had stopped pretending she wasn't waiting and started just waiting, without making it mean anything beyond what it was.
She was sitting at her desk trying to finish a paper that was due when the holidays ended, which was soon enough to be stressful and far enough away to make it easy to not think about. Her phone was face up beside the keyboard. She was not watching it. She was watching the document on her laptop, which currently had one paragraph and a cursor that had been blinking in the same spot for eleven minutes.
Her phone lit up.
She picked it up immediately and then set it back down and finished the sentence she'd been writing first.
She picked it up again.
Seth: okay genuine question
Alya: when are they ever genuine?
Seth: this one is. do you actually like the course you're studying or is it just what made sense at the time?
She looked at the question.
Alya: what made you ask that?
Seth: you said something a while back. about knowing what you think you're supposed to want. I've been thinking about it
Alya: you've been thinking about something I said?
Seth: I think about things you say. we've established this
She looked at the laptop screen. The cursor was still blinking in the same spot.
Alya: it's fine. the course
Seth: fine as in you like it or fine as in it's survivable?
Alya: fine as in I haven't figured out the difference yet
Seth: fair enough. what would you study if nobody had an opinion about it?
She leaned back in the chair.
Alya: something to do with writing probably. literature. I don't know. something that doesn't have an obvious job at the end of it which is exactly why it's not on the table
Seth: your parents
Alya: my parents. yeah
Seth: your dad especially or both
She paused.
Alya: both. but my dad has stronger feelings about practical outcomes
Seth: the engineer type
Alya: how did you know he was an engineer?
A beat.
Seth: you mentioned it
She scrolled back through the conversation instinctively, then caught herself. She didn't remember mentioning it. She had a clear memory of mentioning her mother, something about the way her mother moved through the kitchen, some throwaway detail from a conversation about food, but her father's job she wasn't sure she'd said out loud.
Maybe she had. She talked to him every day now. Things slipped out in the spaces between the things you meant to say.
She let it go.
Alya: yeah. very much the practical outcomes type
Seth: and your mum?
Alya: she just wants me to be settled. which means something specific to her that I don't think she's ever fully defined but I know what it looks like
Seth: what does it look like?
Alya: close to home. known quantities. nothing that requires explanation to people she respects
Seth: and you?
Alya: I'm working on figuring out what I look like
Seth: I think you know more than you think you do
Alya: you keep saying that
Seth: because you keep acting like you don't know yourself when everything you say suggests otherwise
Alya: maybe I just talk a good game
Seth: maybe. or maybe the people around you have spent so long telling you what you are that you've confused their version with yours
She sat with that for a moment.
It was the kind of thing that would have sounded like a lot coming from someone performing profundity. From Seth it landed differently. He'd said it the same way he said everything: dry and direct and without fanfare, like it was just a thing he'd noticed and was reporting.
Alya: that's a lot of analysis for a Tuesday
Seth: I have a lot of free time
Alya: the figuring it out era
Seth: exactly. it's very productive actually. I've figured out many things
Alya: like what?
Seth: like the flat light thing. and the pineapple discourse being over. and that you reread books because the book doesn't change but you do
Alya: those are all things I told you
Seth: I know. I pay attention
She smiled at the screen. Turned back to her laptop. Typed another sentence.
They kept going like that, her at her desk half working, him apparently doing something similarly unproductive on his end. The conversation moved the way it usually did, no fixed direction, just following wherever the other person went. He made her laugh twice, genuinely, the kind she had to muffle because her mother was home. She made him concede a point about something he'd been wrong about and he did it with his usual reluctant grace.
At some point he went quiet for a few minutes. Then:
Seth: can I ask you something different?
Alya: okay
Seth: how many people know about me?
She looked at the question.
Alya: what do you mean?
Seth: like. in your life. how many people know I exist?
Alya: …none
Seth: none?
Alya: I told you. you're a conversation I haven't mentioned
Seth: right
A pause. She waited for him to follow it up. He didn't immediately, and the silence had a different quality from his usual pauses: not thoughtful exactly. More like he was deciding something.
Seth: what about on your end? do you know if I've told anyone about you?
Something shifted slightly in the air of the conversation. She couldn't have explained why. It was a simple question. It was a reasonable question. There was no obvious reason for the small, subtle wrongness of it.
Alya: have you?
Seth: my sister knows I've been talking to someone
Alya: the ten year old
Seth: she asked why I was smiling at my phone. kids notice things
Alya: what did you tell her?
Seth: that I was talking to a friend
Alya: and she accepted that?
Seth: she said "you don't smile at your phone for friends" and then went back to her show
Alya looked at that for a moment. It was sweet. It was a sweet thing to share, the image of his little sister clocking him and delivering her verdict and moving on. She knew that. She could feel that it was sweet.
And yet.
Alya: why are you telling me that?
Seth: because you asked what I told her
Alya: no I mean... why did you ask how many people know about you first?
A pause. Longer this time.
Seth: just curious
Alya: about what specifically?
Seth: about where I exist in your life. that's all
She read that twice. Where I exist in your life. It was a reasonable thing to wonder. She had wondered the same about him, in the quiet way she wondered things she didn't fully acknowledge. It made sense that he'd wonder it too.
It made sense.
She looked at the question anyway, turning it over. About the fact that he'd asked how many people knew about him before telling her his sister did. About the specific order of it: asking first, then revealing, like he'd wanted to know the answer before he gave her any information.
She wasn't sure what she was looking for. She wasn't sure there was anything to look for.
Alya: you exist in this app
Seth: and?
Alya: and I haven't figured out the rest yet
Seth: okay
Seth: that's fair
The conversation wound down after that, lighter again, easier, back to the comfortable rhythm she'd come to know the shape of. By the time they said goodnight she'd convinced herself the moment had passed cleanly, that she'd read something into a simple question that wasn't there.
She was probably right.
She put the phone down and turned back to her laptop. The document had three paragraphs now, which was something.
She read back through the conversation. Scrolled up.
She stopped at the part about her father being an engineer.
She read it again.
Then she scrolled further back. All the way back. Through every conversation, every exchange, every throwaway detail and half finished thought and thing she'd said in passing without meaning to make it significant.
She couldn't find it. The engineer detail. She couldn't find where she'd said it.
She put the phone face down on the desk.
He probably just remembered wrong, she told herself. Or I'd said it and forgotten. Things slipped out. That was a thing that happened.
She turned back to the laptop.
The cursor blinked.
She didn't type anything for a while.