I can’t help but let out a laugh. “With a guy who’s got two women who are in love with him? I mean, I can’t say I felt sorry for him, but I was definitely invested.”

“Good, good. That’s what I was going for.”

“There is a third choice that the story doesn’t bring up. He could pick neither of them. He could wait to find someone who loves him as much as he loves her.”

Gideon shakes his head. “That’s a fantasy. In every relationship, one person loves the other person more. What I’m trying to examine is whether it’s harder to be that person or the one who loves less.”

Every relationship. I think about me and Gabriela. I am the one who loves more, I instantly realize, and that is so much harder.

“Which do you think is harder?” I ask.

“To love less. To think you’ve settled. To have to pretend you love just as much.”

Something in the way he answers and the way he looks at me makes me think Gabriela was right to lecture me about this friendship or mentorship or whatever it is we’re doing here. If I am one of the women in his story, could I be the one he loves more? I’m starting to get a little afraid of the long-term effects of this pandemic. Everyone keeps talking about “long-lasting Adema,” but what about long-lasting loneliness? Quarantine has made me increasingly anxious and paranoid and sad and isolated, but I fear it’s also making me more selfish. When we feel like we’ve had so much stripped away from us, does it make us more inclined to be greedy? To take whatever we can get?

“Did Neda tell you I was coming home this weekend?” Gideon says.

“No…” It feels like a pretty significant detail for my sister to keep from me.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to quarantine here anymore. They don’t think in-person classes will resume till the fall, and my buddy, whose place I’ve been staying at, is gonna go home and forfeit his lease. So… San Jose it is. Hopefully I’ll get more sleep being in the same time zone as your sister.”

“Hopefully.”