The notification came in at 11:47 PM.
Lara was lying on her stomach across her unmade bed, laptop open to a half-finished essay she had no intention of completing that night. Her phone was face-up on the pillow beside her head, screen brightness turned all the way down because the overhead light had started flickering again and she didn't want to deal with it.
She had been scrolling through Instagram for twenty minutes. Then Twitter. Then back to Instagram. The kind of aimless late-night scrolling that felt like nothing and everything at the same time.
The message was from a username she didn't recognize. Just a random string of letters and numbers, the kind that looked like someone had mashed their keyboard and called it a day. The profile picture was blank.
hey
She almost didn't reply.
There were a hundred reasons not to. She didn't know who this was. It could have been anyone. It could have been one of those spam accounts that sent the same message to fifty people and hoped someone bit.
But her essay wasn't going to write itself, and her room felt too quiet, and the flickering light was starting to give her a headache. So she typed back.
who is this
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
someone whos bored and cant sleep
She stared at the screen for a long moment. That should have been the end of it. She should have put her phone down, turned off the light, and at least tried to sleep.
Instead, she wrote: same
The reply came almost instantly. what are you doing up so late
She glanced at the clock in the corner of her laptop screen. 11:52 PM. Not even that late, really. Late was two or three in the morning. Late was when the world got so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat.
could ask you the same thing, she wrote.
work, he said. well. avoiding work. same thing basically
She smiled a little despite herself. There was something about the way he wrote—no punctuation, all lowercase, like he was talking to a friend instead of a stranger.
what kind of work
design stuff. boring. you wouldnt wanna hear about it
try me
There was a pause. She watched the three dots appear and disappear twice before his message came through.
i make websites. freelance. currently supposed to be finishing a layout for a coffee shop but instead im lying on my floor staring at my ceiling
Lara laughed. Actually laughed, out loud, in her empty room.
lying on the floor sounds uncomfortable
it is. but my bed is too far away
how far
like. four feet.
sounds like a serious problem
you have no idea
She turned onto her side, pulling the phone closer to her face. The screen lit up her room in pale blue light.
so you just message random people when you cant sleep? she asked.
i dont know. do you just reply to random people when you cant sleep?
She thought about that for a second. first time actually
lucky me then
There it was. The small escalation. The moment where a conversation could either die or turn into something else. She could have let it go. Could have said yeah lucky you and then well goodnight and that would have been that.
But she didn't.
what were you avoiding before i replied?
the layout. still avoiding it actually
whats wrong with it
nothing. everything. i dont know. sometimes i just sit there and move things around for hours and nothing looks right
She understood that more than she wanted to admit. She looked at her laptop, at the half-written essay about economic theory that she had started and stopped seven times in the past two days.
i get that, she wrote.
what are you avoiding?
She hesitated. Not because she didn't want to tell him, but because she wasn't sure why she was telling a stranger anything at all.
essay. economics. due in two days and i have like 400 words
yikes
yikes is right
whats it about
something about market failures. honestly i stopped reading the prompt like a week ago
classic
She smiled again. It was strange how easy this felt. Talking to someone she had never met, whose name she didn't even know, whose face she couldn't see.
i should probably let you get back to your layout, she wrote.
i should probably let you get back to your essay
Neither of them said goodnight.
The conversation drifted. He asked what music she listened to. She said everything, which wasn't really true, but it was easier than explaining. He said he mostly listened to instrumentals while he worked, stuff without words so he could focus. She asked for a recommendation. He sent a link to something she had never heard of.
She put her earbuds in and pressed play. It was quiet piano music, the kind that made you feel like you were inside someone else's memory.
this is nice, she wrote.
told you
you didnt tell me anything. you just sent a link
thats basically the same thing
its really not
ok fine. i told you it was good. happy?
extremely
She checked the time. 12:34 AM. She had been talking to this person for almost an hour, and she still didn't know his name. Didn't know his age. Didn't know what he looked like or where he lived or anything that would normally matter when deciding whether to trust someone.
whats your name? she asked.
john
just john?
just john. you?
lara
hi lara
hi john
It felt stupid and important at the same time. Like they had crossed some invisible line just by saying each other's names out loud. Not out loud. In text. But it felt the same.
how old are you, lara
twenty two. you?
twenty four
so youre older
by two years. thats basically nothing
thats what all old people say
ouch
She laughed again. Her laptop screen had gone dark, the essay forgotten. She didn't care.
where do you live? she asked.
chicago. you?
boston
so not close
not at all
ever been to chicago?
once. when i was like twelve. family trip
did you like it
it was cold
its always cold. thats kind of our thing
not a great thing
never said it was
The conversation slowed down after that. Not in a bad way—just in the way conversations do when it's late and you're tired and the words start coming slower. They asked each other small questions. Favorite food. (Pizza for her, tacos for him.) Coffee order. (Black cold brew for her, iced latte with oat milk for him.) Last movie they watched. (Some horror thing she couldn't remember the name of, a documentary about climbing for him.)
Normal questions. Normal answers. Nothing that would matter tomorrow.
But it was almost 1 AM now, and her eyes were getting heavy, and she knew she should sleep.
i think i have to actually write this essay eventually, she typed.
probably yeah
so i should go
yeah
A pause.
or, he wrote, you could not go and we could keep talking
She stared at that message for a long time.
tempting, she wrote.
then stay
my essay though
will the world end if you dont finish it tonight?
probably not
there you go
She didn't leave. They kept talking. About nothing, really. About everything. About the coffee shop layout he was still avoiding, about the way she organized her bookshelf by color even though it made finding things impossible, about how he thought pineapple on pizza was fine actually and she told him that was a crime against humanity.
At 2:15 AM, her phone battery dropped to 10%. She plugged it in and kept going.
At 3 AM, he sent her a picture of his ceiling. Just white paint and a light fixture and shadows.
this is what ive been looking at for three hours, he wrote.
looks thrilling
its a masterpiece
i can tell
She sent him a picture of her flickering overhead light. this is what i have to deal with every night
thats actually terrifying
it adds character
it adds electrical problems
tomato tomato
thats not how that expression works
shut up
He sent a laughing emoji. She sent one back.
At 3:47 AM, she wrote: i dont even know what you look like
does that matter?
i dont know. maybe. probably not
do you want to know?
She thought about it. Did she? There was something nice about not knowing. About talking to someone without the filter of a face, without the assumptions that came with seeing someone's eyes or smile or the way they held themselves.
not yet, she wrote.
okay
is that weird?
no. i get it
you do?
yeah. sometimes its easier to talk when you dont have to look at someone
She hadn't expected him to understand that. Most people didn't. Most people wanted to see, wanted to put a face to the words, wanted to turn the abstract into something concrete.
But he just said okay and kept talking like nothing had changed.
At 4:22 AM, her eyes wouldn't stay open anymore.
john
yeah?
i need to sleep
okay
like actually this time
okay
She waited. He didn't say goodnight.
are you gonna go too? she asked.
probably not. still have to finish this layout
youre gonna be up all night
thats the plan
thats a bad plan
probably yeah
She smiled. Her face was half-buried in her pillow, phone pressed against her cheek, the blue light casting strange shapes on her wall.
talk to you tomorrow? she wrote.
if you want
i want
then yeah. talk to you tomorrow
tomorrow, she repeated.
tomorrow
She put her phone on the nightstand, face-down, and closed her eyes. The essay was still unfinished. The light was still flickering. Her room was still too quiet.
But for the first time in a long time, she fell asleep thinking about someone else's voice instead of her own.