Deeper

Month ten. Month eleven. The year was closing and nothing had changed and everything had changed.

He was deeper in now. Deeper than he had been at month three or month six or month eight. The feelings had stopped being something he watched and started being something he lived inside. Like a house he had walked into and then forgotten where the door was. Not because he wanted to leave. Because the house had become the world.

He noticed it in small ways. The way he had started saying her name in his head when he thought about her. Not her username. Her name. The one she had given him in month six and he had held onto like a gift.

He noticed it in the way he had started rearranging his life around her. Not obviously. Not in a way anyone else would see. But his evenings were shaped around her calls. His mornings were shaped around her messages. His cooking was shaped around what she might like. His music was shaped around what she had recommended. She was in everything. In the fabric of his days. Woven in so thoroughly that pulling her out would unravel the whole cloth.

He noticed it in the way he had stopped wanting to be anywhere else. His flat used to feel like a waiting room. A place he existed between things. Now it felt like the place where he talked to her and that made it enough. That made it home.

She sent him a drawing in month ten.

Not a photo of herself. A drawing. She had been talking about her art in fragments and he had asked to see something and she had resisted for a week and then sent it without warning.

It was a pen and ink sketch of a window. Just a window. Simple lines. A curtain pushed to one side. A plant on the sill. Outside, just darkness. But the darkness had texture. It had depth. It wasn't empty. It was full of something you couldn't see but could feel.

He stared at it for a long time.

He said: That's beautiful. You're really talented.

She said: It's just a window.

He said: It's not just a window. It's a feeling. You drew a feeling.

She said: Don't analyze my art. I'll send you something else and you'll ruin it.

He said: I'm not analyzing. I'm telling you what I see.

She said: What do you see?

He said: Someone looking out at the dark and not being afraid of it.

She didn't reply for a long time.

Then she said: You see too much.

He said: I see you. That's all.

She said: That's everything.

He thought about her constantly. Not in an obsessive way. Not in a way that consumed him or stopped him from functioning. But in a way that was simply always there. Like a song playing in another room. You can't make out the words but the melody is there, running underneath everything, colouring the silence.

He would be in the shower and think about her. He would be cooking and think about her. He would be reading and think about her. He would be working and something would remind him of something she said and he would stop and smile at his screen like an idiot and then go back to what he was doing.

He thought about her when his son was there. When his son was playing trains on the floor and laughing at something and he would think about Lily and about the way she talked about her daughter and about what it would be like if their kids existed in the same space. Two small humans. Different ages. Different worlds. He thought about whether his son would like her. He thought he would. She was funny and sharp and kind underneath it and kids could feel that. They could feel the kindness underneath the sharpness.

He thought about her when his son wasn't there. When the flat was empty and the trains were put away and the small shoes weren't by the door. He thought about her then most of all because the emptiness had a shape and the shape was her absence.

He told her things he hadn't told anyone.

About his father. Who had been quiet and distant and had died when he was young and whose death had left a hole that he had spent his whole life trying to fill or ignore or pretend wasn't there. He told her about growing up feeling like he was too much and not enough at the same time. About the relationships that had taught him to be careful. About the mother of his child and how it had happened and how it had ended and how the ending had been quieter than the beginning and somehow worse for it.

He told her these things at three and four in the morning when the world was dark and the phone was warm against his ear and her breathing was the only sound. He told her in pieces. Never all at once. The way she told him about her childhood. In fragments. In slivers. Trusting her with each one and waiting to see if she would hold it or drop it.

She held every piece.

She said once: You don't talk about yourself much. You listen to me talk about myself all day and you never. I don't know. You never ask for the same.

He said: I'm not great at talking about myself.

She said: I know. That's why I'm telling you to. Because you listen to everyone else and nobody listens to you and that's not fair. Not even to yourself.

He said: You listen to me.

She said: I do. But I want more. I want the parts you don't give me. The parts you keep. I want those too.

He said: Those parts aren't pretty.

She said: I didn't ask for pretty. I asked for real.

So he gave her real. Slowly. Carefully. The way he did everything. And she took each piece and held it the way he held hers. With both hands. With care. Without flinching.