By the third week, the routine was set.
They talked every night. Not just some nights, not just when they were bored or couldn't sleep—every night. It became as natural as breathing, as necessary as the coffee she drank in the morning and the flickering light she had stopped asking the landlord to fix.
Lara's friends noticed.
"You're always on your phone lately," Maya said one afternoon, dropping onto the couch beside her in the common room. Maya had been her roommate freshman year before transferring to a different program, but they still lived in the same building and still pretended they saw each other as often as they used to.
"I'm not always on my phone."
"You're literally on your phone right now."
Lara locked the screen and put it face-down on her thigh. "Happy?"
"Who are you talking to?"
"Nobody."
"Nobody with a name?"
"Just a friend."
Maya raised an eyebrow. She had sharp features and sharper opinions, and she had never believed in letting things go. "A friend. From where?"
"Online."
"Online," Maya repeated, like the word tasted strange. "Like Tinder?"
"No. Just. Random. We started talking."
"So you don't even know him?"
"I know him."
"You know what he's told you. That's not the same thing."
Lara picked at a loose thread on her jeans. "Why are you interrogating me?"
"Because I'm your friend and you've been weird for like three weeks and you won't tell me why."
"I haven't been weird."
"You keep smiling at your phone. Like, weird smiling. Not normal smiling."
"There's no such thing as weird smiling."
"There's definitely such thing as weird smiling. You're doing it right now."
Lara stopped smiling.
"I'm fine," she said. "I'm just talking to someone. It's not a big deal."
Maya looked at her for a long moment. Then she shrugged and changed the subject, and they spent the next hour talking about Maya's new job at a bookstore and the manager who kept scheduling her for closing shifts even though she had asked for mornings.
But when Maya left, Lara pulled out her phone and opened the chat.
my friend thinks im weird, she wrote.
you are weird, John replied. but in a good way
she said i have weird smiling
sounds like a compliment to me
it was an accusation
then she sounds jealous
of what
of your weird smiling
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling again. Weird smiling, probably.
what are you doing? she asked.
eating cereal. you?
lying on my bed. avoiding the world.
nice. what kind of cereal?
cinnamon toast crunch. the superior cereal
thats a bold claim
its not a claim. its a fact
respectfully, fruit loops are better
respectfully, you have no taste
youve never even seen me
i dont need to see you to know you have bad cereal opinions
He sent a picture of his bowl. Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
liar, she wrote. you said fruit loops
i lied to make you mad
why
because youre cute when youre mad
She stared at that message for a full minute.
you dont even know what i look like
i know what you sound like. thats better
She didn't know what to say to that. So she didn't say anything. She just locked her phone and pressed it against her chest and stared at the ceiling.
The light flickered.
At 11 PM, he called.
She answered on the first ring.
"Hey."
"Hey." His voice had become familiar now. The low calm of it, the way he stretched out certain words, the small laugh he did when he said something he thought was funnier than it actually was. She knew his voice the way she knew her own breathing.
"What did you do today?" he asked.
"Went to class. Ate a sandwich that was mostly bread. Watched three hours of a show I don't even like."
"Why would you watch a show you don't like?"
"Because I already watched three episodes and now I have to know how it ends."
"That's not how TV works."
"That's how my brain works."
"Your brain is broken."
"Probably."
She heard him moving around on his end—the soft rustle of fabric, the creak of what she assumed was his bed. They had never talked about where he lived or what his room looked like. She had built a picture in her head anyway. Dark walls. A desk covered in cables and empty coffee cups. A window that faced an alley instead of the street.
"What about you?" she asked.
"Worked on the bakery website. Talked to my mom on the phone for an hour about nothing. Ate frozen pizza for dinner like the functional adult I am."
"You're twenty-four."
"Exactly. Peak adulthood."
"I'm twenty-two and I ate ramen for breakfast yesterday."
"That's not breakfast food."
"It is when you're out of cereal."
"Tragic."
"Devastating."
They talked until 2 AM. Then 3 AM. Then 4 AM.
At some point, she asked him what he was wearing. Not in a weird way—just because she was curious, because she had started collecting details about him the way other people collected stamps or coins. Small things that didn't matter but somehow did.
"Gray sweatpants and an old band t-shirt," he said.
"What band?"
"You wouldn't know them."
"Try me."
He told her. She didn't know them.
"See?" he said.
"I'll look them up tomorrow."
"You won't."
"I will."
"You won't."
She looked them up while they were still on the phone. He was right—she didn't know them. She listened to one song and then another and then another, and by the time she had finished, it was 5 AM and she had accidentally found a new band she liked.
"Okay, they're good," she admitted.
"I told you."
"You didn't tell me. You just assumed I wouldn't know them."
"Same thing."
"It's really not."
"You're obsessed with that phrase."
"Because you keep using it wrong."
"I'm not using it wrong. You're just picky."
She laughed. His voice was getting sleepier now, the words running together at the edges. She was tired too. Her eyes kept closing without permission, and she would force them open again, and then they would close again, and the battle between sleep and staying on the phone was one she was slowly losing.
"John."
"Yeah."
"Don't hang up."
"I won't."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
She fell asleep with the phone on her pillow, his breathing in her ear, the flickering light casting shadows across her room.
When she woke up, the call was still connected.
It was always still connected.