I come above ground in Brooklyn and my phone chirps in my pocket. It’s a message from Eliot that he sent an hour ago when I didn’t have service. I nearly take a thumb off hastily unlocking my phone. I’m surprised to see that it’s not a voice message. It’s a text. My first ever from Eliot.

My eyes blur with tears halfway through reading it and I stop, lean against the brick side of a bodega, and try again. “Hopeful,” this text says. Hopeful. It’s a word that fits him so perfectly, it could be his middle name. He’s in his apartment right now feeling hopeful. Even after I ditched him on the street, he’s thinking the best of me. He still wants me.

But how would he feel if he knew the choice I’ve made? How would he feel if he knew that I’ve decided to make his world a little worse just so I can make mine a little easier?

Hopeful. The word haunts me every step of the way home.

Chapter Twenty

Eliot

It’s been days since I’ve talked to her. But I saw her on the street the day after learning who she was. She’d been standing in front of our closest bodega talking to one of our neighbors. I would have backtracked and avoided them but she caught sight of me, so instead I just awkwardly waved and went past. The expression on her face was . . . I don’t know.

Shortly after that I uploaded the next chapter of my webcomic and spent a stupid amount of time deciphering the comments in the hours afterward. Could she have left a comment of some kind? A code for me to decipher? What would her username be? Could she be happypants2018? Probably not. Or what about justiceforbuffy?

I’m guessing no.

A few days after that I ironically found myself in the middle of dispensing romantic advice to Fred. I warned him that I’m a fraud and an amateur and no one should ever listen to me in matters of the heart, but he was insistent. Apparently he’s been flirting with a cute girl through a customer service hotline and he needed help with what to do next.

“Be honest,” I told him. “Tell her everything. Don’t keep secrets because you think it’ll improve your chances.”

What I don’t tell him is that even if he’s completely honest and shows her pretty much everything, this woman he has a crush on is still a living, breathing, complex person who lives within her own complicated brain and is guided by her own complicated heart and getting to know someone is almost impossible.

I know, I know, nihilism is not a good look on me.