Isn’t it hard to talk about the parts of our lives we live online? It somehow always comes across more superficial than it actually is. One day, you DM’d me: Hey, wanna hang out? The simplicity of it disarmed me enough that what I said in response was of course.

October 7

We met in front of your house. It was lightly drizzling, one of the first cool autumn days. You came out wearing sunglasses, even though it was overcast. Your hair was longer. That made me feel better, because as nervous as I was about talking to you again, it was nice to be reminded that we were both growing our hair out, and probably doing a bunch of other things at around the same time and for the same reasons.

You chose a direction. We walked down State Street making small talk. How’ve you been? Tired. Already? Yeah. By the time we wound up in the cheap coffee shop that the graduate students like, I liked you and you had become a real person to me.

You ordered a big pot of green tea. I found out that you were from upstate New York and that you grew up playing pond hockey before going to an all-boys boarding school.

“That sucked,” you said, and then changed the subject.

I got the sense of a life full of difficulties. Later, you told me, almost in passing, that your dad had been really awful to you when you were a teenager. You didn’t give details, and I didn’t ask for them.

“It’s fine, though,” you said. “I don’t want you to think that I’m, like, in grave danger. I’m not even really dependent on him anymore.”

“Isn’t he paying your tuition?”

“It’s complicated,” you said.

When we hit snags like that, you’d ask me about myself. I answered your questions, sometimes long-windedly, never quite believing what I was saying. You were a good listener, and I wished that you weren’t, because I didn’t have my own biography in order yet, and I wasn’t sure what bits to emphasize and which to let fade into silence beyond reminiscence. It felt like the longer I talked, the more I got lost.

When I got back, it was totally dark. Elena was sprawled on a couch reading Madame Bovary.

“How’d it go?” she called out as I climbed the stairs.

“Fine,” I said, trying to make it sound as though I had downgraded my crush to the appropriate level. “She’s cool, you know?”

Elena gave me a quizzical smile, as though there was some joke I wasn’t in on yet.

October 9