Her Rules

The time difference was six hours.

When she woke up, he was already into his afternoon. When he was eating dinner, she was just starting her shift at the restaurant. When she got home at night and smoked and sat down to talk, it was already late for him. Already tomorrow.

They found their windows anyway.

Late night was when they talked most. After Lily was in bed, after the dishes were done, after her best friend had disappeared upstairs with her son, she would sit on the couch or in her bed and call him. And he would be there. On his couch or at his desk or lying in bed, staying up for her.

He stayed up until three or four in the morning most nights. Sometimes he fell asleep by accident, phone on his chest, the call still connected, and he would wake up to the sound of her saying hello? quietly, like she didn't want to startle him but wanted to check if he was still there. Other times she would just hang up and send him a message that said you fell asleep again or goodnight, old man and he would feel a particular kind of warmth that he hadn't felt in years.

She thought his staying up was sweet. She didn't say that. She said it was stupid. She told him to go to sleep. He told her he would when she did. She told him that wasn't how it worked. He told her that was exactly how it worked.

Those late night calls were different from the rest. Softer. Looser. She would be high sometimes and her voice would get slower and her words would lose their careful structure and run into each other. He would be tired in that particular way where everything feels slightly more honest than it should. They said things at three in the morning that they wouldn't say at three in the afternoon.

Those were the calls where she told him about her childhood. Where he told her about the loneliness. Where they both let the walls down just enough to see through.

On her breaks at work she would call him. Quick five or ten minute conversations from the back of the restaurant, leaning against a wall, stealing time. She would tell him something funny a customer said or complain about a cook who was on her last nerve. He would reply from his desk, in the middle of whatever he was working on, and for a few minutes the distance wouldn't matter.

Those calls were lifelines for both of them. Small proof that the other person was real and thinking about them in the middle of their day. Not planned. Not scheduled. Just a moment where something reminded her of him or him of her and they reached out.

She called him once from her break and he could hear the kitchen noise behind her. Pans and voices and the clatter of plates. She said: Hold on, let me close the door. Then it was quieter and she said: Okay. Hi. I have four minutes.

He said: Hi. Four minutes is enough.

She said: It's not enough. It's never enough. But it's what I've got.

They talked about nothing. What she'd eaten. What the weather was doing. Whether her feet hurt. They were the kind of conversations that mean nothing on paper and everything in context. Just two voices overlapping across an ocean for a few stolen minutes.

When her break was over she would say gotta go and hang up and he would sit at his desk and the flat would feel quieter than it had before she called.

On the nights she couldn't stay up late, which was most nights because she was exhausted from work and kids and life, she would go to bed early. He would be in his morning by then, drinking coffee, starting his day. Those mornings were a gift. She would be lying in bed, half asleep, and she would call him and they would overlap for an hour, maybe two.

Her voice on those calls was different. Lower. Softer. Blurred at the edges with sleep. She would talk slowly, pausing between thoughts, and he would sit at his kitchen counter with his coffee and listen to her drift between waking and sleeping.

She said once, at six in the morning her time: I like waking up and knowing you're already there. On the other side. Like you went ahead and checked the day for me.

He said: I did. It's fine. You'll like it.

She said: Good. I'm going back to sleep.

He said: Goodnight.

She said: It's goodnight for me and good morning for you. I love that. I hate that. You know what I mean.

He did.

Sometimes she would fall asleep on the call. He would hear her breathing change, slow down, and he would sit there listening to it for a few minutes before hanging up. He never told her that. It felt too intimate. Too tender. Like something she might feel self conscious about.

When they couldn't call, which was often, the messages came in small infrequent bursts. A few here and there through the day. Not constant. She had her life and he had his and they didn't need to be in each other's pockets to feel connected. She would message when she woke up properly. He would reply. She would send something in the afternoon between errands or school runs or whatever the day demanded. He would reply when he could.

It wasn't a conversation exactly. It was a thread. A line running between them across the ocean that never broke. Sometimes it was tight and they talked for hours. Sometimes it was loose and they barely spoke. But it was always there.

He liked the loose parts too. He liked knowing she was out there, living her life, and that at some point during her day she had thought of him. Even if it was just for a second. Even if it was just to send a photo of a weird cloud or a complaint about the weather or a single word message that said tired.

He would see that message and know that she was real and she was his, in whatever way two people who had never touched could belong to each other.

Her voice surprised him.

The first call came in month three. She had said she wasn't ready for calls and he had respected that and then one evening she just called without warning. He picked up on the second ring and there was a pause on her end. A long one.

Then: Hi.

Her voice was lower than he expected. A little raspy. There was a warmth to it that her writing didn't have. Her writing was sharp and pointed. Her voice was softer. Rounder at the edges.

He said: Hi.

Another pause.

She said: This is weird.

He said: A little.

She said: You sound like you're in a movie. That's annoying.

He laughed. He hadn't laughed in a while and the sound of it surprised both of them.

She said: Do that again.

He said: What, laugh?

She said: Yes. You have a nice laugh. It's annoying too but in a different way.

After that the calls came more naturally. They still texted when they couldn't talk but when they could, they called. Hearing each other's voice changed something. The words on screens had been real but the voices made them solid. Made them land.

The rules came gradually. Not spoken all at once, but revealed like stones at low tide.

No video calls. She wasn't ready for that. He understood. Voice was enough. Voice was already more than she gave most people.

No meeting. Not yet. She lived half a world away and the distance was part of what made it feel safe. He understood that too. The ocean between them was a wall she could trust. It meant he couldn't get to her. It meant she was in control.

No photos that weren't fully clothed. She sent the first one in month four. He was at his desk when it came through and he opened it without thinking and then he just stopped.

It was a mirror selfie. Taken in her bathroom. She was standing in pajama bottoms covered in little pumpkins and a black crop top that covered everything a t-shirt would except a strip across her middle. She was wearing a grey beanie pulled down over her hair and her hair was blonde and thick and wavy and it fell past her shoulders and halfway down her back.

He stared at it. He stared at it for a long time.

She was beautiful. Not in the way that magazines are beautiful. Not polished or posed or trying. Beautiful in a way that made his chest hurt. Real beauty. The kind that doesn't know what it is or doesn't care. She was standing there in pumpkin pajamas and a beanie and a strip of bare skin between the crop top and the waistband and she looked like someone he wanted to know for the rest of his life.

He noticed the tattoo on her arm. Just above her left elbow, on the front. Two small dark shapes he couldn't quite make out in the bathroom light. He didn't ask about it yet. He was still trying to take in the whole of her.

He was smitten. Completely, utterly, stupidly smitten.

He was also intimidated. She was so far out of his league that the league wasn't even on the same map. She was the kind of woman who could walk into a room and every head would turn and she probably didn't even notice because she was too busy thinking about something else. And he was a thirty-eight year old man in a flat in the south east of England who carried weight he didn't want and hadn't had a proper conversation with another human being in days.

He wasn't good looking. He knew that. He had always known that. He had long hair, which some women liked and most didn't, and a short beard he kept neat because it gave his face something to work with. But underneath it he was just a man who carried extra weight and knew it and hated it and couldn't seem to do anything about it. He had average features and a face that had settled into looking tired and cautious and a little sad. He wasn't ugly. He was just nothing. The kind of nothing that women looked past in a crowd.

He sat with the photo open on his phone and felt the gap between them widen. She was beautiful and he was nothing and the distance between those two things was the same distance as the ocean, maybe wider.

But she had sent it. She had chosen to show him what she looked like. He owed her the same.

He went to the bathroom mirror. Took a selfie. Hated it. Took another. Hated that one more. Took a third. Hated it the least. He was leaning against the kitchen counter in a plain t-shirt, a mug in his hand. His hair was down, past his ears, a little messy. The beard was trimmed. He looked tired. He looked his age. He looked like exactly who he was. He could see the weight in his face, in the way his jaw wasn't as defined as it used to be, in the way the t-shirt pulled a little at the middle.

He sent it before he could change his mind.

Then he waited. The longest ninety seconds of his life.

She said: You look like you think too much.

He said: That's the nicest thing anyone's said about my face.

She said: It wasn't about your face.

He said: You're just saying that.

She said: I don't just say things. You should know that by now. I look at that photo and I see someone I want to talk to. That's all I ever wanted.

He read it four times. The spiral didn't stop but it quieted down. Just enough.

He asked about the tattoo a few days later. He had been looking at the photo more than he would admit and the two dark shapes on her arm had been nagging at him. He couldn't tell what they were in the bathroom light.

She said: Oh that. Hold on.

She sent him a close up. Her forearm flat on the table, sleeve pushed up. Just above her left elbow, on the front, were two susuwatari. Soot sprites from Spirited Away. Little round black creatures with eyes like stars. They were facing each other. One of them was grasping a purple star, holding it out like an offering. The other sat watching, settled next to a green star. Just behind the first one, a touch further up her arm, a pink star hovered like it was floating away.

The work was delicate. Precise. The colours soft against her skin. The purple and green and pink sitting together like they belonged there, like they had always been there.

He said: That's beautiful. I love that.

She said: Spirited Away is my favorite film. I watch it when I'm sad. The soot sprites make me feel like the small things matter. Like even the tiniest pieces of the world have a job to do.

He said: What's the story with the stars? The colours.

She said: The purple one is being held. Like it's a gift. The green one is just there. Resting. The pink one is leaving. Floating away. I like that. Nothing is stuck. Everything moves. Even the things you're holding.

He thought about that for a long time. He thought about her choosing to put something on her skin that meant nothing is stuck, everything moves. He thought about what that meant for someone who had been stuck in so many ways for so long. He thought about what it meant for him, sitting in his flat, waiting for something to change.

He said: You're talented. You know that.

She said: I drew it myself. The artist just traced it.

He said: You drew it?

She said: I draw a lot. I didn't tell you that?

She hadn't. He filed it away. Another layer. Another piece of her to hold.

He said: The one holding the purple star out. That's you, isn't it?

She went quiet for a while. Then she said: Maybe. I don't know. I think so. The one giving something away and hoping the other one stays.

He said: The other one stays.

She said: You're annoying.

He said: I know.

The second photo came in month seven. Her standing on the back step at dusk. She was wearing a red laced top, fully fitted, and a pink floral skirt that fell to her ankles. Her hair was down, no beanie this time, and the wavy blonde of it caught the last of the light. The silhouette of her body was visible against the fading sky. The curve of her waist. The line of her hips. The way the skirt moved a little in the breeze. It was a fully clothed photo and it made his chest tight.

He didn't say anything sexual. He said: You look incredible. Truly.

She said: Don't do that.

He said: Do what?

She said: Say things like that. I don't know what to do with them.

He said: You could just believe me.

She said: I'm working on it.

He said: You look peaceful too. That suits you.

She said: Don't get soft on me.

He said: Too late for that.

She didn't reply for an hour. Then she said: I saved the photo you sent me. The one at the counter. I look at it sometimes. Is that weird?

He said: No. I look at yours too.

She said: Which one?

He said: All of them. Especially the pumpkin pajamas.

She said: Oh my god. I knew I shouldn't have sent that one.

He said: I'm glad you did.

She said: Yeah?

He said: Yeah. It's my favorite. You look like yourself in it. And yourself is a wonderful thing to look at.

She went quiet for a while. Then: Nobody has ever said that looking like yourself is a good thing. Not to me.

He said: Then everyone else was stupid.

The third photo was in month nine. Her in a bookstore. She was wearing a green dress that came to her knees and a black cardigan over it. Her hair was down again and she was holding a book in front of her face. All he could see was her eyes above the cover. They were smiling even though her mouth was hidden. The cardigan covered her arms and he couldn't see the soot sprites but he knew they were there. He knew the purple star was being held out and the green one was resting and the pink one was floating away.

He said: You look like you belong in a bookstore. Like if someone looked up the word bibliophile in the dictionary your photo would be there.

She said: Did you just call me a word I have to look up?

He said: It means someone who loves books.

She said: I know what it means. I'm just giving you a hard time. You're very literary for a tech guy.

He said: I contain multitudes.

She said: Now you're quoting Whitman at me?

He said: Maybe.

She said: Okay that's actually attractive. Don't tell anyone I said that.

He said: Your secret is safe with me.

She was clear about her boundaries and she enforced them without apology.

She told him she didn't want to talk about her daughter's father. Not because it was a sore subject but because it was a closed one. He existed. He took Lily when it was his turn. That was all she was willing to say.

She told him she didn't want to talk about sex. Not directly. Not yet. She said it wasn't about him. It was about her and the fact that sex had always been complicated for her and she didn't want to make it complicated between them before it had a chance to be simple.

He said: That's fine. There's no rush.

She said: You keep saying that. No rush. No hurry. No pressure.

He said: Because I mean it.

She said: Why? Most men would have moved on by now.

He said: I'm not most men. And I'm not going anywhere.

She said: We'll see.

She said it like a challenge but he could hear the vulnerability underneath it. She wanted to believe him. She was just afraid to.

He adored her. He didn't say that word either, not the big one, but he found other ways to let it live between them. Small ways. Steady ways. The kind of things that build up over time like sediment until one day you look down and realize there's a whole landscape there.

He told her she was brilliant when she wrote something that made him think. He told her she was funny when she made him laugh. He told her she was a good mother when she talked about Lily. He told her she was strong when she talked about the things she had survived. He told her she was beautiful when she sent photos. He told her she was worth waiting for when she said she wasn't ready.

He didn't say it all at once. He said it in pieces. Scattered through conversations like seeds. Some of them landed and some of them she brushed away and some of them she held onto without telling him.

She would say stop or you're too much or I don't know what to do with that but he could tell that part of her wanted to hear it. Part of her needed to hear it. Nobody had told her these things, or if they had, they had said them as currency, transactional, expecting something in return. He said them because they were true and because he wanted to and because she deserved to hear them and that was all.

He thought she knew. Deep down, underneath the walls and the tests and the careful distance, he thought she knew what he felt. The word he didn't say. The thing he carried for her that was too big for the space between them. He thought she could hear it in his voice at three in the morning when he was tired and honest. He thought she could read it in the messages he sent her in the morning when she was still asleep, the ones that said things like I hope your day is good and you've got this and I'm here if you need me.

He didn't need her to say it back. He wasn't waiting for a transaction. He was waiting for her to be ready. He knew she wasn't. He could feel it in the way she pulled back when things got too tender, the way she deflected with humor when he said something that landed too close. She wasn't ready to feel what he felt and he understood that and he didn't resent it. He just hoped. Quietly. Patiently. The way he did everything with her.

He hoped that one day she would be ready. That one day the walls would come down far enough for her to feel it without being afraid. That one day she would look at him, really look at him, and feel safe enough to let herself fall.

Until then he would wait. And he would tell her she was brilliant and funny and strong and beautiful and worth every mile between them. And he would mean it. Every time.

He told her about his own fears one night. It was three in the morning for him and nine at night for her and the call had that soft, unguarded quality that came with the late hours.

He said: Can I tell you something?

She said: Always.

He said: I get insecure. About this. About you. Sometimes I read something you write or I hear you talk and I think you're so much more alive than I am. And then I think about your life and how full it is and how loud it is and I think about my flat and how quiet it is and I wonder why you'd want to talk to me at all.

He didn't say the part about the photos. About how looking at her made him feel like he was standing next to something luminous and wondering why it would want to stand next to him. About the weight he carried and the hair he was too old to wear long and the face that wasn't worth sending across an ocean. He didn't say any of that. But it was part of it.

She didn't reply for a few minutes. He started to regret saying it. The familiar spiral. He had shown too much. He had been too honest. He had-

She said: Stop.

He said: What?

She said: I can hear you spiraling from here. Stop it. You think my life is full? It is. It's full of work and kids and noise and stress. You know what it's not full of? Someone who actually listens. Someone who reads what I write and hears what I mean. Someone who doesn't make me feel like I'm too much or not enough. You do that. You do that every day. So don't tell me you're not enough when you're the only person who makes me feel like I am.

He was quiet for a long time. His eyes were stinging and he told himself it was because he was tired.

He said: Thank you.

She said: Don't thank me. Just believe me.

He said: I'm trying.

She said: I know. Me too.

His insecurities didn't go away. They were old and deep and they lived in the place where past relationships had left their marks. The women who had called him boring. The women who had said he was too quiet, too careful, too distant. The mother of his child who had looked at him like he was a disappointment she was trying to tolerate.

And now there was a new insecurity. The photos. Her face. Her hair. The strip of skin in the first photo. The red lace in the second. The green dress in the third. The soot sprites on her arm. The way she looked in a beanie. The way she looked without one. The knowledge that she was beautiful and he was not and that beauty might matter to her eventually even if she said it didn't.

But he kept adoring her anyway. He kept telling her the things he saw when he looked at her. Not just the surface. The way her eyes changed when she talked about something she cared about. The way her writing softened when she forgot to be careful. The way she laughed, rare and sharp and genuine, like she was surprised by it herself. The way she was with Lily. The way she was with her best friend's son. The way she carried everything she carried and still had room to be kind.

He told her these things and she deflected and he said them anyway. Because they were true. Because she should know. Because nobody had ever told her without wanting something in return.

He carried all of it. The insecurities and the adoration and the word he didn't say. He carried it into every conversation. Every silence. Every moment where she said something kind and he had to fight the voice in his head that said she didn't mean it, that she would figure out who he really was and leave, that everyone always left.

He didn't tell her about all of it. Not yet. But he told her enough that she knew. And she handled it the way she handled everything. Directly. Without coddling. But with care underneath.

She said once: You know what your problem is? You think quiet means empty. Your life isn't empty. It's just still. There's a difference. And stillness isn't a bad thing. It's just hard to find someone who knows how to be in it with you.

He said: Do you know how to be in it?

She said: I'm learning.

She told him about her best friend in more detail as the months went on. The way they had met. The way they had become family. How her best friend had been the one to push her to go back to school. How they had built a system that worked for both of them and both kids.

She said: People don't get it. They see two women living together with kids and they make assumptions. But the truth is we just figured out that doing this alone was impossible and doing it together made it possible. She's my family. The real kind. The kind you choose.

He said: That sounds like a good arrangement. You're both doing something remarkable.

She said: Don't get poetic. It's just survival.

He said: Survival can be remarkable.

She said: You're doing it again.

He said: Telling you the truth?

She said: Yeah. That. Stop it. Or don't. I don't know.

She said it like she was annoyed but he could hear the softness underneath. She wasn't used to being seen. She wasn't used to someone noticing the effort and the strength and naming it out loud. He did it anyway. Gently. Consistently. Not to overwhelm her but to make sure she knew.

She said: She's my person. Few people are that important. She saved my life and I don't say that dramatically. I mean it. Before her I was drowning and she just showed up and started swimming and didn't let go.

He said: I'm glad she did. The world is better with you in it.

She said: Okay now you're definitely being too much.

He said: I'm being exactly enough. You'll get used to it.

She said: I put you in the maybe column and that's already more than I give most people.

He said: I'll take the maybe column. That's a good place to be.

There were things they didn't talk about.

They didn't talk about what would happen if they met and it didn't work. That possibility sat in the corner of every conversation like a piece of furniture they both pretended wasn't there.

They didn't talk about how much it would hurt if one of them walked away. They both knew. That was enough.

They didn't talk about the fact that they had never seen each other move. Three photos and a voice. That was all they had. He would sometimes close his eyes during a call and try to imagine her in the room. The way she might gesture when she talked. The way she might hold her cup. The way her hair might fall. He was always wrong, he was sure. The real version of her would be nothing like the version he had built in his head.

She told him about the restaurant. The grind of it. The characters she worked with. The customers who were rude and the ones who were kind and the ones who left their entire life story in a tip jar.

She said: There's this guy who comes in every Tuesday. Orders the same thing. Sits in the same booth. Always reads the same book. I asked him about it once and he said he reads it over and over because he's afraid of forgetting what it felt like the first time. I think about that a lot.

He said: That's sad and beautiful.

She said: Most things are.

She told him about the nights when the kitchen was backed up and the customers were angry and she had to keep smiling while everything fell apart. She said she was good at that. Keeping the smile while things fell apart. She had been doing it her whole life.

He said: You don't have to smile for me.

She said: I know. That's the point.

The months built on each other. Each one adding something. Each one making the distance feel both smaller and larger at the same time. Smaller because they knew each other better than people who saw each other every day. Larger because knowing someone that well without being able to touch them was its own kind of ache.

He would sit in his flat at two in the morning, waiting for her to call after putting Lily to bed, and he would think about her in her kitchen, half a world away, and he would feel the distance like a physical thing. Like a weight in his chest. Like something pressing against his ribs.

He wanted to be there. Not even for anything specific. Just to be in the room. To exist in the same space. To hand her a plate or pour her a drink or just sit on the couch while she did whatever she did in the evenings.

He wanted to be ordinary with her. That was the thing. He didn't want grand gestures. He wanted the small, boring, beautiful ordinary. The things that only matter when you adore someone and don't matter at all when you don't.

He thought she knew. He thought she could feel it in the way he listened. In the way he remembered the small things she mentioned once and never again. In the way he told her she was brilliant and funny and beautiful and worth waiting for. He thought she could hear the word he wasn't saying underneath all the words he was.

And he thought, or hoped, that one day she would be ready to hear it. One day she would be ready to feel it. One day the walls would come down and she would let herself fall and he would be there to catch her.

Until then he waited. And he adored her. And he told her the truth about who she was, quietly, consistently, the way you water something you want to grow. And he hoped.

So he held it. The way he held everything. Carefully. With both hands.