For better or for worse, I go through a ritual every time I send a risky, vulnerable text where I’m putting myself (and my feelings) on the line: I send drafts of it to various friends (always in different neighborhoods or on different coasts), think about sending it, plan to send it, rewrite it entirely, and get feedback on that revision. The first draft is not meaningfully different from the ninth, but somewhere between drafts four and eight I become so irritated with my own emotionality that I finally have a suitable level of remove. At this point, I think, whatever. It is what it is.

I send the text, put my phone face-down, and quickly find a movie or walk my dog or take a shower — anything to distance myself from whatever I’ve just shared, whatever feelings I’ve just laid bare. Oh, that text? That was written by five-minutes-ago-me, a different me, a woman I’m unfamiliar with, a previous me, and I’m not defined by my past. :)

The minute I share my emotions I want to disown them. I hate to let a feeling linger in the in-between, in that canyon between what I say and what the other person’s thinking, between what they reply and my own insecurity. I’d rather sit in the middle seat of an international flight than have a visible feeling, than let someone know my own emotional needs. (Divorced parents, Leo, clinical anxiety, criminal screentime.) I can claim to be obsessed with logic, but what’s more practical than knowing how someone else feels? What’s more clarifying than knowing, than having the conversation so you no longer have to wonder?

But there’s so much on the other side of being too forward, of being awkward, of letting it all hang out. What makes me so terrified of telling someone how I feel, even though I’ve never once regretted it? I’m happy I told the guy who annihilated my Leo season when he bailed on my open-bar birthday party that I needed some space because I wanted to be more than friends. (I needed that distance! I’m glad I asked for it!) My last relationship began because a boy clearly, and sincerely, asked for clarity. I wish there was an easy way to say, “I like seeing you more than I like seeing anyone else” — if there is, please tell me — but that’s the only way I could get to what I’ve got going on right now. (Relationship status: pleasantly seeing someone who likes watching Housewives and says my Criterion Collection account proves I “know ball.”)

The five Hinge couples who found love in this year’s collection of No Ordinary Love stories didn’t trip into romance; they talked about it. In different ways, they were all willing to be honest with themselves and with each other. To have the difficult conversation, even when it felt clumsy. The payoff for a vulnerable confession, an awkward miscommunication, or a set of stated boundaries was the potential for a relationship full of honesty and trust. Each partner made the terrifying decision to say what they wanted and what they were looking for, even when it felt hard.

My therapist, smarter than me and better at sussing out my emotions, calls saying the thing “gathering information.” Saying the thing can feel daunting, forming the sentences can be clunky, being honest can feel impossible. “Gathering information” is pleasingly clinical, pleasantly impersonal. Dating has a hundred microguidelines, a dozen invisible rules unique to every person. Is that what makes saying the thing so hard, knowing how easily I can decide that some quality or habit is disqualifying? Maybe I will violate someone’s list of icks, trip over their boundaries, ram into their guidelines. But maybe I won’t — saying the thing is the only way I’ll find out.

And as I’m learning, one cringe conversation after another, saying the thing is a way of building a relationship rather than retreating from a relationship. Do you like me? Do you want more of me? Are you as afraid of this as I am? Those questions can feel big and scary in my mind and in my heart, but I really don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to ask them or answer them. (I’ve done that before and eventually we weren’t just on different pages; we were in different genres.) Every meaningful relationship I’ve had or envied began because someone was scared to say something real, but did it anyway.

When I found myself unexpectedly pregnant, I discovered that the buzzing of a particular willow tree in an overgrown garden in Essex, a willow tree planted by a man and woman blindingly in love, relaxed my whiskers almost to the point of numbness. So I began skulking about the man, David’s, garden. It was the perfect situation for a cat like me. I will not bore you with the spiritual hierarchy of the cats in the greater London area (I am aware you may be distressed that this story is being narrated by a cat at all), but suffice it to say there is one, and I occupy a not unprestigious place within this byzantine and occasionally bothersome hierarchy.

On the day I first met the man’s daughter, Roisin, I decided that I would like to be worshipped, not least because I was very hungry, and so I spread myself before her, and then, of course, as I should have known she would, she touched me incorrectly, palpating the buds of my kittens in my abdomen. I knew suddenly that she imagined them as tennis balls, that was the phrase in her head, that I had “swallowed a load of tennis balls,” which was very insulting. My kitten buds were majestic and nothing at all like tennis balls, which only dogs love and are a bad color. I was forced to bite her extremely hard on the hand.

Not all humans take being bitten as well as Roisin did — I give her credit for that. (I have bitten rather a lot of people.) Roisin decided I must be hungry and brought me some stale kibble left over from their last cat. Not long after, I was formally invited into her father’s home, a narrow council house filled with batiks and floor cushions and the agreeable odor of Nag Champa. It was the house Roisin had grown up in and I saw all of it still vibrating in the rooms: baby Roisin sprawled on a quilt, her mother, Maureen, though everyone called her Mo, blowing raspberries on her fat belly; 6-year-old Roisin drawing on the floor, painting on the walls, anywhere she liked because her parents, a DJ and a grassroots art therapist respectively, believed in freedom; 10-year-old Roisin with her little girlfriends collecting worms, making potions and mudpies in the garden; 15-year-old Roisin putting on far too much eyeliner, her hair dyed letter-box red. I saw and liked the wildness in her, almost against my will. As I said, I was only there originally for the tree.

But the following November, a full year after I had joined her father’s household, when Roisin was 22-years-old and freshly out of a bad relationship, she decided she needed to do something about her love life. She had lived her whole life responding yes or no to whoever chose her. This time, she was determined to do the choosing.

Earlier that week, when she was checking Hinge, the same man’s profile had shown up three times in a row in her Standouts. She had never seen another profile appear multiple times on Standouts. It must be fate, a sign from the universe. There was nothing remarkable about the profile itself, Daniel was his name, and he looked handsome and normal, maybe too normal. Roisin’s upbringing had been far enough outside the mainstream that she honestly wasn’t sure how she would relate to a man who was entirely normal. But she sent him a Rose anyway.

Roisin’s own parents, David and Mo, planters of the willow tree, had met on a communal farm, living in yurts, love at first sight. But when David asked to marry Mo, she turned him down. She had been in an abusive marriage before and never wanted to be legally bound to a man again, even if that man was the love of her life. Roisin’s father, his pride a little hurt, nevertheless accepted this, and it turned out, her parents didn’t need a contract to love each other forever, weaving their lives together like a braid, true partners, a love that shaped their whole lives. It seemed unlikely you could find a love like that on a dating app. She felt foolish and childish for even thinking she could. And now she was supposed to go out with this normal Daniel person on Tuesday.

When Roisin stopped by her father’s house that weekend, and I discovered so many brightly-colored thoughts inside her mind, I decided to do a little investigating. (Astrally, of course; in the physical realm I remained quite securely on the roof of the shed in the garden where I liked to keep watch over the willow tree.) I didn’t want her going on a date with this “Daniel.” What if she fell in love and stopped coming to visit us as frequently? She had gotten much better at knowing how to touch me and gave the most delicious skritches behind my ears.

I dipped my paws in and out of their digital streams, reading through their messages, delighted to find she had already told him all about me. About the kittens, six of them, black as spacetime, just like me. And then about taking me to the vet finally, and the vet referring to me as male, and how Roisin had said, “I think you have something wrong here, that is definitely a female cat, she just had kittens a few months ago,” and the vet saying, “Well, this can’t be the same cat then, because this cat has testicles.” And they had to get an ultrasound just to wrap their puny minds around the idea that I was both.

You may be wondering any number of things at this point in the story. Are Daniel and Roisin soulmates? Was it, indeed, fate that caused Roisin to send a Rose to Daniel? Am I, an astrally projecting magical cat, going to interfere with their date to cause it to go well or badly? Will I knock his drink into her lap or will I purr into her ear and suggest a kiss? But you only ask these questions because you are human and your laughably unidirectional experience of time has caused you to become obsessed with cause and effect. You think each moment is a domino tipping into the next, causing a cascade you call destiny.

But that is not how reality works.

Reality works like this:

Roisin is running late and she is feeling shit and her skin looks greasy and she thinks she shouldn’t even go, she should cancel, she is vibrating with hesitation. Like a kaleidoscope, I can see every way she is, or has been, or will be. She is looking at her phone; she is holding a newborn lamb; she is drinking tea by a kitchen window hung with hagstones. All the Roisins, from baby to crone, ride together to this date.

When Roisin first sees Daniel, she discovers he is not normal at all; he has blue hair cut in a sexy mullet, and he is wearing a studded leather jacket. She feels the stakes have been suddenly raised, but she also feels the thrill of a bargain hunter: no one but she knows that this incredible man hides behind that nondescript profile.

When Daniel first sees Roisin, he thinks she is prettier even than her pictures, but it is her voice that catches him off guard. He had been expecting something salty and hard, the voice of a girl who’s the life of the party, but instead her voice is soft and shimmering. He is vibrating with curiosity about her, but he is also vibrating with his mother’s Sunday roast, and he smells confusingly like a church. Who exactly is this man? As they enter the bar, I am frantically wrapping my ghostly body around his ankles, trying to rifle through his childhood memories. Nothing but wholesome road trips and family dinners, no matter how fast I flip through. Even his past relationships seem sweet. Finally, I get to the hardcore concerts, the anguished guitars and racing drums, the indie wrestling shows that blur the lines between fake and real violence, and I understand that there is a hunger in Daniel to understand that which is dark. And while I do admire that yearning, in fact it is the first thing I actually like about Daniel, I have already made up my mind that this is an undesirable pairing. Daniel, I think, is an indoor cat who wants to go outside, and Roisin is an outdoor cat to her very core.

The bar Daniel has chosen is a fake 1920s speakeasy with a solve-a-mystery theme. They sit. They order drinks. Daniel orders some kind of sour with flowers floating in it; Roisin orders a Negroni. I weave in between the legs of their chairs, settle into the shadows created by the table.

The barman brings over their first clue, and as they begin solving the fake mystery, several other mysteries are underway. For his part, Daniel is trying to figure out if Roisin understands that they have actually met before. Just a few weeks ago, he had been out seeing music with his brother and friends when he’d been introduced to the prettiest girl in the history of the world and he had absolutely blown it — not managed to get her number or anything. Then, out of the blue, that very same girl had sent him a Rose on Hinge. And her name, Roisin, meant “little rose” in Irish Gaeilge. Daniel doesn’t believe in fate or signs, but he’d wondered if Roisin remembered him, if maybe that was why she sent the Rose, yet he hasn’t asked directly. He hasn’t asked in part because he is telling himself a story that this date doesn’t matter, that he is playing the field, that this time he will date casually instead of falling in love right away. But Daniel is not adept at casual dating. In fact, he hasn’t dated anyone in three years, which felt healthy at the time, but which he now worries will be hard to explain, like a gap in work history on a CV.

For her part, Roisin is trying to understand why this mystery game seems filled with so many eerie coincidences. The first clue is about a black cat in Essex. (Is this another sign from the universe? I want to tell her not to be silly, but even I am unnerved by my presence in this made-up mystery.)

As Daniel and Roisin talk about their lives, they discover they went to the same university. They interrogate one another, trying to understand how it is possible they’ve never met before.

“But we did, I think we did meet,” Daniel says. He has gotten a small amount of flower petal in his mouth and attempts to pick it off his tongue. Roisin can’t stop looking at the newborn-kitten pink of Daniel’s lips. He describes the night a few weeks ago to her, the band they saw. Roisin does remember going to that show, but has no memory of Daniel.

“I think I must have been quite drunk,” she offers. Was that unappealing to say? That she had been drunk enough not to remember him? But Daniel is sweet and easy about it, and he asks more questions. I want to scream at her: this is not the man for you! You should be with a pirate! Or a disgraced monk! Or at least a drummer! Someone who would bring interesting ghosts around, someone who would stink of cigarettes and death! Daniel, instead, is like if someone made a pirate out of flowers.

When they solve the barman’s mystery, Roisin confesses how amazed she has been by the coincidences between the mystery story and her own life, her cat Manouka, and Daniel smiles, panicking slightly that he will have to explain. “It was me,” he says. “I came early and I told them about your cat and had them make up a special mystery for us.” He is worried that she will think he is trying too hard. Because if he were truly casually dating, as he told himself he was, he would not have come early to convince the barman to make a special mystery out of Roisin’s cat. Pretending to be casual was a costume Daniel wore both for himself and for Roisin. And now it is stripped away.

But Roisin smiles and laughs and inside she is dizzy — dizzy with his blue hair, dizzy with his pink lips, dizzy with the idea that he would plan all this for her. Magic is real, she thinks, when a real boy makes magic happen. She can see the sweetness in him, and instead of being repulsed, she is attracted. All sorts of boring and sentimental futures begin vibrating in the bar. I can see them camping, oh god, and they have forgotten the ground tarp and the rain is getting in and they are freezing cold but they are so in love they don’t even care. In my real body, on the roof of her father’s shed, I can feel the willow tree begin buzzing with sympathy for Daniel and Roisin, and I sense the whole cosmic chord progression shift.

When it is time to go, Daniel waits with her on the street for her cab, and it is quiet compared to the bar and they are alone, or think they are alone. The streetlamps are lit, and Roisin thinks maybe she will play the good girl and not try for a kiss, but Daniel does not want to fail again: he let Roisin go once before without getting her number and miraculously she has come back to him. He can’t afford to overthink it: he reaches for her waist, pulls her closer, and kisses her.

Roisin is picky about the way she is touched, almost as picky as I am, but his hand on her waist, the heat of his skin, every way he touches her is perfect.

Dread and displeasure fill my body. In the “mystery” at the bar, the black cat had gone missing — obviously a veiled threat! I feel the first pulses of a hairball coming on. This blue-haired flower pirate who smells like a church is stealing my Roisin!

The moment the kiss is over, her car pulls up and then she is getting in, it all happens too fast. She is gobsmacked by that kiss — her jaw is actually hanging open, and she covers her mouth with her hand. She knows she should play it cool, but she texts Daniel right away: Thank you for such a nice evening. Honestly, you were so lovely to talk to, made me feel so comfortable and gave super lush kisses.

Should she say that about the kisses? Is that weird? I, growling from the footwell, try to tell her that it is very weird, that she is being grotesque, but she doesn’t care, she presses send, she needs to mention the kiss or she will die.

He texts back immediately: as were you x you seem like the kind of person I could just chat til the cows come home which is usually a good sign haha.

Does he sound crazed? Does he sound stupid? He’s never used the phrase “til the cows come home” in his life, but can’t stop himself from hitting send.

For the next few weeks, Roisin and Daniel roll in these text messages like they are tall grass, the hahahas, and the tbhs, the emojis, my god the emojis, the sparkling stars and the hearts and the alien spaceships. When Roisin is talking to Daniel she feels like she could eat the stars, pop the planets into her mouth like candy, and it is joyous, but the joy also makes her scared. What if she is making all this up? What if Daniel doesn’t feel the same way about her? What if he is just being nice? In fact, she already knows he is very nice, so what if that is all this is: just Daniel being nice, and she is manufacturing all of it in her mind the way that in moments the fake speakeasy had felt like a real speakeasy?

(Humans, I must say, get so touchingly confused by their own hormones. When in reality, they know only a sliver of that divine madness. They see cats in heat, they know how bad it can get, and yet they still think: Am I acting crazy right now? Yes, sweetie, you’re acting crazy, and that’s the whole POINT.)

They go on dates. They sleep together for the first time. Roisin wants to call him love, but makes herself delete it. She knows it is too early to be feeling what she thinks she is feeling. She calls him sweetness instead, then he calls her love, and she feels so happy, she has never been so happy in her entire life.

You know what happens next. You may not have read this particular fairy tale before, but you know exactly what happens next. No matter how reassuring Daniel is, no matter how many hahahas he sends, Roisin is slowly being driven crazy by worrying she might be crazy. She needs to take her craziness to Daniel and just let it all out, pink and wet as mouse entrails on a doormat. Even if that ends it, even if she bursts the bubble of the magic.

When it comes, the day that Roisin will ruin everything, I am sitting on the roof of the shed in a patch of perfect sun.

They went on their first date in November. It is now only December and they know they will not see each other over the holidays. Daniel agrees to video chat her.

“I just need to know,” she says, and I pass through the pixels that make up her face, causing them to freeze for just a moment. “Like if we’re — if we’re just casual, or if —”

“I was going to wait,” Daniel says, “I had sort of planned it for New Year’s Eve, but I was going to ask you to be my partner.”

“Oh,” she says, vibrating with both elation and panic. “Oh no, have I ruined it? Oh, have I ruined it?” She has, she has ruined it, she knows it. And now he will take it back because she has been crazy and brought her mouse entrails and left them on his doormat.

But Daniel only laughs. “Of course not,” he says. “I was going to kiss you at midnight and ask you.”

“Oh, but will you still?” she asks.

The patch of sun touches every hair on my body. All the cats in the world breathe in and then out. A flea, somewhere, bites a dog.

“I will,” Daniel promises. “Of course I will.”

Roisin is close to tears she is so happy. Somehow she has ruined everything and nothing is ruined. Somehow the magic is — sturdy. Sturdier than either of them.

I mean, I could have told them that.

Rufi Thorpe is the author of four novels, most recently “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” winner of the Clark Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the Mark Twain Prize. It is now an Emmy-nominated series on Apple TV. “The Knockout Queen” was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award and a Book of the Month pick, and her first novel “The Girls from Corona del Mar” was long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the First Novel Prize. Her work has been translated into 18 languages. She received her MFA from the University of Virginia and now teaches at The Book Incubator, an online MFA alternative program. She lives in California with her husband and two sons.

I visit Big Ben sometimes.

I know it sounds like a strange ritual, but it reassures me that I live here.

I imagine the clock’s four gold-trimmed faces looming over the crowds, gleaming in the sun. Proud and ostentatious in its permanence, indifferent to my borrowed presence. I wait for it to mark time I’m never quite sure I have, sounding its solemn chime — a sound that feels like London itself. I feel briefly anchored looking up at it, like I’ve slipped into a version of my life that truly fits. In fact, that’s how the whole of London makes me feel, in all its chaos and illegibility and grandeur. This city is so unsure of itself, difference everywhere I look.

I almost miss my stop, distracted by the thought.

Hot air floods over me as I step onto the Northern line platform. The train squeals off into the dark. It’s November but I’m sweating. I have a knot in my stomach, a hollowing feeling that I try to suppress by focusing on my breathing. I stand there a moment — people rushing past me in their puffers and overcoats, lugging suitcases and stubborn toddlers — and count five seconds through my nose, five out through my mouth.

I’m carrying a paper bag from the coffee shop where I work — a fraisier and a chocolate cake, safe in takeaway boxes.

A mouse runs across the tracks and I think of Edward, who is petrified of mice. And rats. Anything furry with a tail.

He’ll no doubt already be waiting for me outside. Always early, always the instigator. Maybe that should comfort me more than it does.

I stand on the escalator, pass digital posters for toothpaste, “Cabaret”, Monzo, hair transplants. In an advert for nicotine gum, a woman presses her hands to either side of her head, her mouth open in a permanent, soundless scream. The walls curve close on either side.

I look up at the glass roof of the ticket hall, certain — as I always am when I leave Clapham Common station — that I belong to a bygone era. There is something about this area I recognize without having lived it: a distinctly British sense of ceremony, of Victorian leisure and eccentricity.

It’s also where Edward lives, so everything here feels like him.

Outside, the domed station stands fat and self-assured. The common is a void of black, broken only by bursts of yellow lamplight.

I zip my fleece up to my chin and hug myself from the cold.

I check my phone — it’s 9 p.m.

The sky is starless, green with the city’s reflected light.

Then, I see him.

Edward stands at the corner of the street checking his phone, likely to avoid having nothing to do with his hands. I remember him telling me — on our third or fourth date — that as a child he would always feel anxiety when he didn’t know exactly what was going on. When his mother was running low on petrol in her car, she would regularly have to give him a step-by-step plan of what would happen if they were ever stranded with an empty tank, to reassure him that everything would be OK. I suspect he feels the same way now.

He hasn’t seen me.

I pause the song I’m listening to and put my earbuds back into their case. A sharp, cold wind drills into my ears.

He’s got that expression on his face — of palpable calm, sheepish but innocent, suggesting the start of a smile at any given moment, like a little boy who’s done something wrong. It’s also a look of preoccupation, of being weighed down, as if he’s just been talking to God in his head like I do sometimes. It’s a look that makes me want to protect him.

I feel a sudden rush of love, that familiar desire to throw my arms around him and kiss every inch of his face — in the middle of his forehead, at the tops of his cheeks just beneath his eyes, in the warm crook of his neck. Then, the deflation of knowing I shouldn’t. Everything had been going so well; whenever I think about his words in that message, the finality of them thrums like physical pain. I can see them now, in their WhatsApp font.

I approach him, adrenaline causing a sudden lightness in my legs.

He’s wearing his blue fleecy jacket, the one with the tartan pocket on the chest. Beneath, the hint of a white T-shirt. Blue jeans. Blue Vans. He looks up from his screen, puts his phone immediately in his pocket.

“Hey,” he says, musically, followed by his automatic laugh. It’s quiet, misplaced, the one he uses when he’s nervous.

“Hi,” I say.

His smile back at me is confused, a bit agonized.

I think about the first time I’d walked up to him and witnessed that same innocuous smile. Or the first time his profile had appeared on Hinge: the photo of him I’d liked, standing at the top of the Basilica with St Peter’s Square and a panorama of Rome, one big, flat terracotta shape, behind him, as well as a hazy line of the surrounding mountains, cutting blade-sharp into the sky. He’s grinning in the photo, wearing a green corduroy shirt, handsome and studious with his little blonde curls and wire-rimmed glasses.

I remember his first message: Do I have to be good at badminton to win you over?, he’d written, in response to one of my photos.

It had made me laugh.

No, just attend, I’d said.

We played a game on our first date. He was terrible, but I liked him anyway.

He’s taking lessons now. I’m not sure he knows how much that means to me. That he finds something I love important.

“Can I hug you?” Edward asks.

“No.”

“OK,” he says.

Guilt lands immediately.

“Shall we go and talk?” I ask.

He nods, and we cross the road to the common. A teenage boy passes us, rapping into his phone. He throws his free arm around, wide-eyed as if possessed by his own manic burst of poetic inspiration.

I feel myself suddenly aware of the damp handle of the paper bag starting to fray between my clammy fingers. The sound of traffic reduces the further we walk from the high street, until it becomes a hum in the distance, low and hollow.

“How was your shift?” I can feel him looking at me as he asks.

“Fine. Busy.” I don’t tell him I’m so tired that I almost fell asleep on the tube. Edward’s an engineer, starts work at 7 a.m. and finishes at 4 p.m. I envy him for that regularity sometimes and often attempt to distract him from his blueprints, wanting to lure him back to bed when I have the day off or I’m waiting for a late shift and he’s glued to his desk.

“Thank you for agreeing to come,” Edward says, with a tone of formal reverence.

We sit on one of the benches along the path without really deciding on it — him on the left, me on the right, less than a person’s width between us. I put the bag in that space. I look at Edward then; he’s buttery under the yellow light of the streetlamp, prophet-like — if prophets smiled like children.

Our breath turns to clouds.

We both face forward. A lone magpie lands on the path — which Edward salutes — before flying off again.

No one is around.

“Right,” Edward says, bending his leg to pivot towards me. “Would you please tell me what I’ve done?”

I know I’ve been distant the last couple of days. Ignoring his messages or giving monosyllabic replies. I look at our hands — mine in my lap, his clasped around his thighs. “You really don’t know?”, I ask.

“No,” he says, with an earnestness I don’t recognize. “I really don’t.”

“I didn’t like what you said.”

Silence again. I feel my words in the air around us, the gravity of them.

“What about?” he asks.

“About the future.” I can’t look at him. I want to confess the pain not only of losing Edward, but of giving up my whole life here, in this city I do not want to leave. He’d helped me realize that. When we’d walked around on our second, third, fourth, fifth dates — holding hands, kissing in the street, Edward running his hands up and down my back as people passed us unfazed, unlike back in Manila, where loving another boy in public might have been tolerated but never accepted.

I think about my mother then, about the fact she still — all these months later — calls Edward my friend.

I want to shout it all in his face.

In the distance, a red serpent of taillights moves slowly along the road, behind the bare trees.

Edward tries to take my hand again. I pull it away. I’d come to London having never visited before and moved in with my sister in Ilford. She’s 38, working in finance. A second mother to me, really. But my visa status is uncertain. I don’t know if this place I love, this city and this person I’ve come to know as home, are going to be for much longer.

I turn back to Edward. “I’ll date you for as long as I can,” I say. “That’s what you wrote. I was telling you I was worried about having to move back to the Philippines after my master’s and you said, I’ll date you for as long as I can.”

I keep my eyes on him this time.

Edward searches for a response, rubs at his jaw as he often does, the tiny sound of his stubble crackling under his fingers.

I’m almost certain that I’m in love with him.

It’s the most awful feeling I’ve ever had.

It’s like floating out to sea knowing I won’t return to dry land. I’m watching the shore reduce and reduce.

Is this what first love is supposed to feel like? I have nothing to compare it to.

“For as long as I can.” I don’t know why I repeat it again. “It’s like you’d decided on our expiry date, and then expected me to just, well, be okay with it.”

“Do you really think that’s what I meant?” he asks with his slightly melodic West Country twang. I love the sound of Edward’s voice — the way he stretches out vowels, the rising intonation at the ends of his sentences so everything sounds like it’s ongoing, as if he’s never quite finished. As if everything in the world is one big question.

He’s smiling at me, but not in the way I’d first interpreted it. It’s like he’s trying to soften whatever has hardened between us, despite not understanding why. I find myself wondering what it must be like to be Edward, who feels so deeply but carries everything quietly. He once told me about a walk he took with his father, brother and sister on the Quantock Hills in Somerset, which is beautiful in that craggy, endless, postcard-picturesque way, just as I imagine the whole of England looks beyond London. The landscape, he’d said, had inspired Coleridge to write “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” He and his siblings built a rope swing, which snapped when Edward was on it. He’d fallen badly but downplayed it. For days he was in pain but he’d said nothing, until his father took him to the hospital and it turned out his arm was broken. It is so entirely him — resilient in a way that almost feels stubborn, never wanting to be a burden to anyone.

But I’m feeling so insecure, certain I’m losing him. It’s agony, seeing him smiling. “This is my life,” I say. “I like you so much. It isn’t funny.”

“I know. I’m not laughing. But — ”

“Do you have any idea how it feels to settle somewhere and not be sure you’ll be able to stay? Living this provisional life, feeling like there’s an invisible rule I’ve broken without even knowing it. You haven’t got a clue what that’s like.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

Silence.

“I just wanted to say,” Edward adds, “that that is not how I wanted my message to sound.”

“Well, it did.”

“My wording was shit.” Edward reaches out his hand — to try and take mine again, I think — but it lands tentatively on my knee instead. He keeps it there, draws invisible squares with his index finger. “I didn’t say it properly.”

Again, he smiles.

“Please stop laughing at me,” I say, crossing my legs the other way, out of reach.

“I meant that I really want to be with you. I want to make the effort, even if you’re not here. I want to make it work.”

Edward’s words take a moment to settle. I feel myself giving way to some weight I’d been bracing against. My shoulders relax. I’m suddenly aware of my breath entering and leaving my body. I realize how much I’d been sweating — it’s cooled on my skin and now I’m close to shivering.

Edward lifts one leg up onto the bench so he can turn fully towards me. He’s over 6 feet and I’m 5-foot-6, so I’m used to looking up at him, used to the stretch when I want to pull him close to me. I’ve always liked it — that difference between us. There’s something in it that makes me feel held without him touching me. And yet he never carries it the way I’d expected — there’s a looseness to him, a slight uncertainty, all long limbs and clumsy movements (just watch him play badminton). His size is something I’m drawn into rather than dwarfed by.

I feel it now, my need to be close to him, to have him pressed against me, my face in his neck, smelling only his smell.

I don’t respond. I’m not sure how to.

“If you have to leave,” Edward says, “and this becomes long distance, I need to know there’s a plan.”

That’s Edward. He needs to repair, to forge a clear path, whereas I find myself withdrawing when things upset me, needing to protect myself. Letting my feelings overrun sense, losing my grip on the world as it is. He’s had a boyfriend before and ended up feeling like he was parenting him. The boy had come from a strict religious background — like me — and they’d drifted apart. Edward had been the one holding everything together, compensating for uncertainty. It breaks my heart whenever I imagine the same distance growing between Edward and me. I understand why he’s being careful with his promises, why he’s practical to the marrow of his bones. And I do think about those four years with his ex — a shared flat, a whole life built together — and how, when the spark died, Edward had said nothing, let them drift apart rather than risk the drama of naming it. His saying what he wants — now, inches from me, staring into my eyes — lands differently.

It feels like he’s choosing me. That he’s not just letting it happen.

Something pulses in my stomach.

“But if I have to leave London, would you still want to be together?” I ask.

“I can’t pretend the uncertainty doesn’t matter,” Edward says. “But I don’t want to lose you. So, I think we should do it. I’ve been so worried you’d lost interest in me.”

“You want to be with me?” I ask. “Really be with me?”

He laughs again, and this time I don’t mind. He takes my sweaty hand. “Of course I do.”

“So, you want to be my boyfriend?”

It’s hope. That hypnotic thing in my stomach.

He nods — a quick, small nod.

I feel myself smiling.

He smiles back, pokes his thumb into the dimple on my right cheek. He tells me it’s his favorite thing about me. “There it is,” he says.

“I brought you something,” I say, surprised by my sudden levity, by how much impact he has. How one person can drag me from my absolute lowest to my happiest with only a few words. How quickly the veil of grief can lift when it’s for something you haven’t lost.

I pass him the paper bag, feeling silly but no longer caring.

“Cake,” Edward says.

“I was going to give them to you anyway,” I say, unsure whether this is true. “Even if this went badly.”

“High-stakes cake.”

I look out across the common again, at the lamps casting their small, neat circles of light across the darkness that stretches all around us. In the distance, a figure passes beneath one, then disappears again.

We sit there, quiet, holding hands.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Me too.”

For the first time in days, I don’t think about being made to leave.

Not this bench.

Not my home.

Not him.

Curtis Garner is the author of the “instant queer classic,” “Isaac,” published in 2024 to critical acclaim. “Orange” is his second novel. Alongside his fiction, Garner’s writing has appeared in “The World of Interiors” and “Attitude.” He manages the publicity and marketing for Thames & Hudson’s successful fashion list, and he reviews novels on Instagram (@queer_novels). Born in Cornwall in 1996, he moved to London at 18 to study Creative Writing and English Literature, graduating in 2017 before beginning a career in publishing. In 2020, he completed an MA with Distinction at Manchester Writing School, where much of “Isaac” was written.

As spring days go, it was a mild one. It was the kind of day that sent New Yorkers from their homes in droves, picnic blankets tucked under their arms and books in their bags, sunglasses shielding faces or pushed back into hair. The kind of day that begat empty Citi Bike docking stations and a clog of activity on the Williamsburg Bridge. It was good weather for falling in love. Isabella and Rebecca had other plans.

At the main entrance of the park, Isabella held the picnic blankets and books in one hand, her anxiety in another. Rebecca held her tongue. The city moved around them. It was their fifth date and they were breaking up, as much as two people who have been on four dates in as many weeks can. Rebecca knew what was coming, she had a talent for spotting the end before it arrived, but she was nervous anyway. Isabella hoisted the picnic blankets higher under her arm, adjusted her bag strap.

“Should we do the long meadow? There will probably be a spot,” she said.

They walked past every type of person in Brooklyn: children on scooters with their parents lagging a few paces behind, people in low jeans and small T-shirts, runners in varying shades of black and neon, a man with thick locs down to his knees. As they made their way to the meadow, a large expanse of green, Rebecca thought of how Isabella might do it. Would she say, This is great, but … or, I’ve really been loving our time together, however … ? There were only so many variations, but the signs were there. More exclamation points, less off-the-cuff musings. It hadn’t alarmed Rebecca initially; they’d both been traveling, Rebecca to Cabo for a bachelorette trip, Isabella to Bard for a party her former classmates threw a couple times a year. But sometimes you just knew. Rebecca had spent the past few months in the same app loop — match, date, quasi-considerate exit. At this point, she would rather a text or a phone call, if only to expedite the process.

They found a spot next to a group of men, with similar haircuts and a portable grill, listening to Ethiopian jazz. They sat politely on either side of the blanket, confirming that this was not business as usual. They weren’t an overly affectionate couple, but in the short time they’d spent together, their bodies already negotiated space differently. They would find each other in the small gaps. If Rebecca sat down, Isabella would scoot close, their thighs touching, but now she was cross-legged on one corner of the blanket, so far that, if Isabella stuck a leg out, there would still be room.

It was clear Isabella was thinking, her pink mouth set to one side. Rebecca spoke first.

“So, how are you?” she said. “How was the party?”

Isabella told Rebecca about the party. She did not tell her she’d spent most of it thinking about what they were doing. There was nothing formal happening, no sworn oaths or promises of forever, but she had felt the expectation building. If she were being honest — and today was the day for honesty — it was freaking her out. She was trying to parse the difference between liking someone a lot and wanting to spend forever with them and could not tell where she landed. The romance novels she loved read like instruction manuals and she feared she was missing a few key components — like her heart whispering, This one. It’s absolutely, positively her. When you met your person you just knew. The sky would open up or there would be something in the way they said your name. There would be a feeling of inevitability, an ease. This hadn’t happened with any of her dates in all her months on Hinge. Rebecca was probably the closest, but love was a zero-sum game. It either was or it wasn’t.

“The party was good,” Isabella said.

“Nice,” Rebecca replied.

This would be difficult. Isabella knew that going in. She didn’t have a bad thing to say about Rebecca. She was kind and considerate. She was stunning, so much so that Isabella sometimes stared, tracing the shape of her with her eyes. She was funny and thoughtful and they had the same taste in TV. Isabella could imagine their days together, days like this where they could read side by side, talking only to relay a line that moved them. She missed it already, but her mind was set. Rebecca deserved certainty, the one thing Isabella didn’t have. Silence settled over them again.

“So,” Rebecca said, her patience fraying. “What’s up? What’s the vibe?”

“I think —” Isabella began. She stared at her hands and considered the best way to say this. “Look, I really like you but I don’t want to waste your time.”

“OK,” Rebecca said. Prepared or not, this was a shock to her system.

“I just don’t feel, like … I think I should maybe have more clarity? I know we’re moving forward and I really like you and love spending time together, but I also don’t know that I’m ready for whatever comes next,” Isabella said.

Rebecca nodded, turning Isabella’s words over. She wondered what she wasn’t saying.

Every date with Isabella reminded Rebecca why she continued to be open to love — the shared looks across a table, the flutter when someone you like walks through the door. She liked that Isabella was both bubbly and a bit serious. Liked that she showed up to their first date in a leather jacket and platform boots, not what she expected but better somehow, cooler than cool. Rebecca was not ready for Isabella to vanish from her life.

“So what next?” Rebecca said.

Isabella said nothing. The next steps were implied. They would part in the long meadow, shadows in each other’s lives. Maybe they would see each other in six months, eyes meeting across a room, a sea of women between them. Isabella sat back on her hands, putting her weight in her wrists. She didn’t love that idea. Meanwhile, Rebecca wondered why they couldn’t be some other thing. She thought of the rest of the people populating her life, friends acquired many ways, some of them exes. She considered where Isabella might fit.

“What if we were friends?” Rebecca asked.

“Friends?” Isabella said. She hadn’t thought about that. They were either together or they weren’t, she gave no space to the in-between. She did not know if it was possible, if her feelings could slough off like dead skin, eventually giving way to a platonic relationship where Rebecca could walk in a room and her heart would stay firmly in place. But losing her felt significantly worse. She didn’t want to lose Rebecca to time. She would rather be uncomfortable than to refer to her in the past tense.

“OK, yeah,” she said. “Let’s be friends.”

“I don’t know, it was too intense, but also not quite right, you know?” Isabella said later. She’d left the park buoyant. After they got past the sticky business of dissolving their romantic connection, the conversation picked up pace. They talked about what they were watching and the time they’d spent traveling. She felt triumphant, having achieved resolution without the grief. She said as much to her friend, Summer, recounting the “break-up” in vivid detail. She lay on Summer’s couch as if she were in a therapy session, staring at the ceiling, her hand resting on her belly. Her feet were tucked under her dog, Freya. Summer sat on the floor, alternating between listening and asking the necessary questions.

“I thought the dates were going well? Every update was deeply positive.”

“They were going well. But I just could see the end. Me hurting her because I wasn’t sure. She deserves me being certain.”

“She doesn’t have to be your soulmate right away,” Summer said. “You know that, right?”

Isabella laughed because she didn’t know if that was true. “I think when you know, you know.”

“Yeah, but how will you know if you don’t give it time?”

“Four dates is time!”

“But what was it? A couple weeks? I mean, trust your instincts, of course, but sometimes it takes a second. Don’t write her off.”

“I’m not writing her off, we’re friends.”

“Have you talked since the park?”

They had not. “A little. No more voice notes though. Which I’m sad about. Those were cute.”

“Friends voice-note. I think you two need to rip the Band-Aid off and hang out. See the vibes. Then give it some time to click, platonically speaking of course.”

“Of course,” Isabella replied.

The opportunity came sooner than expected. A co-worker mentioned the Prospect music festival, and Rebecca instantly came to mind. She forwarded a photo of the event. “Looks fun. Want to go?” she wrote. An hour passed. Then another. Friends invite friends to things, Isabella told herself.

Rebecca was on set when her phone vibrated. She was modeling for a clothing brand that sold dresses you could wear many ways. She assessed the message between looks. Checked her calendar. That Saturday was an expanse of availability. This will be good, she thought. Still, she knew on some level the transition wouldn’t be completely smooth. There was the initial awkwardness of someone sitting in a new space in your life, the potential infinite, but in a different direction. But they would have to start somewhere, right? A makeup brush tapped against her cheek and temple. Powder was applied gently under her eye.

“I’m down,” Rebecca wrote. “See you there.”

The week blitzed by and suddenly Isabella and Rebecca were face to face again, this time as something new. When their eyes met, Isabella felt something inside her flip. Nerves, maybe. Rebecca noted that Isabella looked different than before. The all-black outfits she’d grown used to replaced with a bright green top and a white skort that seemed to glow in the early summer light. It made her feel that lots of time had passed, even though it was just a week. Isabella attempted to ignore the thrumming in her chest. She didn’t think Rebecca would get less beautiful or charming, but rather that declaring them friends would bring her feelings into line.

“Hi,” Rebecca said, her smile bright.

“Hi,” Isabella said.

They walked close together, pressing through the crowd. Park Slope was teeming with people and music blared from every which way. People milled around like ants in a colony, orderly but kinetic, everyone on an unspoken path. Rebecca reached for her hand so they wouldn’t lose each other and Isabella felt a shock of energy between their palms. When they made it to a less dense part of the street, Rebecca let go, and Isabella wished they were still deep in the throng, Rebecca pulling her through.

Friends, Isabella thought. Just friends.

Friends, Rebecca thought. We can do friends.

They eventually found the jazz stage. There was something about the saxophone and its soul-tugging notes that closed the space between their bodies. Isabella let her head rest on Rebecca’s shoulder and Rebecca said nothing, enjoying the feeling of her soft hair. When that ended they migrated to a DJ playing house music and they couldn’t help but dance, their hands intertwined, taking turns spinning and shaking, moving this way and that.

I don’t know if I can do friends, Isabella thought.

It’s not giving friends, Rebecca thought. She tried to assess if she minded. It was a thought for later, one to turn over with her sisters.

“Isabella?” A voice behind them called.

It was a friend from work, the same one who’d told Isabella about the festival.

“Marnie, hi!” she said, hugging her quickly.

“Hey girl, good to see you out here, I’m glad you made it.”

“Me too.”

Isabella gestured to Rebecca. “Marnie, this is my friend Rebecca,” she said, though the word “friend” didn’t sound quite right.

The day was winding down. The sun hung heavy over the brownstones, warming their skin. “I need to take the dog out,” Isabella said. It had been hours, but when they were together time passed quickly.

“OK,” Rebecca said, readying herself to leave.

“Do you want to come?”

“Sure.”

They walked the couple of blocks to Isabella’s place. Isabella’s hand found Rebecca’s. Definitely not friends, Rebecca thought, but she said nothing, letting the moment breathe. She’d asked the universe to bring her everything meant for her, to release her from the need to control. It was an exercise in trusting that good things could find their way to her without her hand on the wheel.

When they arrived at the park, the sun was nearly set, casting orange everywhere. Not yet summer, there was a breeze. Isabella’s dog, Freya, stopped often, interested in the base of trees, the squirrels, other dogs. Rebecca talked like she always did, about the modeling jobs in various states of confirmation. One thing looked like it would work out, another was up in the air. Isabella was engaged but it was clear that she was thinking about something. Weighing an outcome, maybe.

Eventually, she spoke.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Isabella said.

They found a park bench and Freya sat up proud-chested, on guard.

“I think we’re starting to build up a reputation with parks,” Rebecca said with a small smile. The humor smothered the nervous feeling blooming in her belly. “But talk to me. What’s up?”

“I don’t think I can be your friend.”

Now Rebecca’s stomach flipped. A low hum of anxiety danced across her skin. She felt better prepared the second time around, but only slightly. She stared out at the field in front of them and tried not to jump to quick conclusions. Isabella could mean anything by that. The handholding and meaningful looks from earlier in the day perhaps another extended goodbye. “OK, so what does that mean?”

“I want more,” Isabella said.

Rebecca was shocked to hear it. It had barely been a week.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I’m a little surprised, if I’m being honest.”

“I know,” Isabella said, sighing. “I’m sorry for being confusing, but I think I’m finally ready to get out of my own way. Looking back, I realize it had nothing to do with you or how I felt about you and everything to do with me being scared. I needed the week to understand that.”

“OK, but how do I know you won’t change your mind again?” Rebecca said. There were limits to her understanding. “I like you too but I also don’t want us to be in a cycle of renegotiating our relationship every few dates.”

“Because I know that I can commit to this,” Isabella said. “I’m not saying girlfriends tomorrow, but if it heads in that direction I’m willing to walk with you and see where it goes. I don’t want to stop walking with you. But at the same time I also get if you don’t want to because I’ve been confusing.”

“OK,” Rebecca said, exhaling the breath she’d held. There was fear but, at the edges of it, relief. It hadn’t been long enough for her to stop wishing they’d end up in this exact place. She looked at Isabella, counted the moles dotting her face. She thought of the future. She envisioned them on a bench in the botanical gardens, cherry blossoms dancing in the wind, landing in their hair. She thought of Freya curling up on her feet while they watched movies. Trips to blue water and matching tan lines. She liked the idea of it. She could see it clearly. Still, part of her mind resisted, even as her heart tugged at her hesitation. Maybe it’s worth the risk, her heart whispered. “Let’s see,” Rebecca said. “I’d like to see.”

Tembe Denton-Hurst (known on the internets as @tembae) is a writer at “New York Magazine” and the author of the novel “Homebodies,” which the NYT Book Review called a “sharp, charming, and passionate debut.” She also writes the bestselling newsletter, Extracurricular, where she writes about books and the culture surrounding it. When she’s not writing, Tembe can be found on her couch in Queens where she lives with her wife and their two cats, Stella and Dakota.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Carty says.

Raka imagines every possibility of what Carty might say, all of which end in Raka’s disappointment. Why else would Carty’s face be so solemn? This is only their second date, but Raka had been hopeful and excited. She isn’t sure if she’s looking for something serious, but if she were, then it would probably be with someone like Carty. March in New York is cold and gloomy, but her first date with Carty — and the second, until now — had felt like summer, that ineffable thrill that rises with the sun, like the world fits in your palms.

“What is it?” Raka asks.

“I —”

Raka’s Bed-Stuy apartment starts to shake. It’s right over the A/C line, and Carty’s words are stolen by the noise and rumble. Only moments ago, Raka had explained that there was nothing on the walls because the trains rattled them right off. Carty looks at the exposed brick behind the yellow sofa, at the red dust vibrating off the edges.

“I want to talk about something I think is important for you to know,” Carty says. She is aware that, in grasping for the confidence to ask for what she needs, she has adopted the tone and cadence of a funeral director. However, she doesn’t know how else to steel her nerves. Carty takes a breath. “I want to date with rules.”

“Rules?” Raka asks.

Raka longs for the time — perhaps only a minute ago — when she wasn’t so aware of her own heartbeat. She feels it in her throat, in her fingertips. She looks at Carty, in her uniform of black and stacks of silver rings, unsure of what rules could mean. Movies on Wednesdays and dinner on Fridays? No dairy after midnight?

“I mean, I want to date with intention,” Carty says.

Raka’s shoulders relax. Intention. That, she can do. In fact, after many dates with people who’ve dated unintentionally, she’d grown tired of being caught in the crossfire between unintentional people and their unintentional desires. But still, intention is vague: one may intentionally come, just as one may intentionally go.

“I like intention,” Raka says. “But — ”

“Yeah?”

“What’s intention to you?”

“I think it means taking it slow.” Carty says.

“Slow?”

Going slow is one of Carty’s rules. There was little to be celebrated about insomnia, except the long, lonely nights it left Carty to research dating. What would it mean if Carty moved slowly? If Carty didn’t extract herself from her own life to plant herself in another’s, losing herself entirely? The rules were Carty’s invention, her way of nurturing her own best instincts. She takes another breath, reminding herself that Raka seems curious, not skeptical, that all signs point to good.

“It’s a rule, I guess. I don’t want to see each other more than twice a week, for example,” Carty says. “And I don’t think I want to talk all the time. As in, like, texting. I mean, we can text if you want, but I think I prefer meeting in person. But only two times a week. And…”

“And?” Raka asks.

“I think we should hold off a bit before we meet each other’s friends — if it comes to that, I mean. I guess I’m just saying that I want to take things slow. Which I already said. Yeah.”

“Oh,” Raka says. “Sure.”

“Yeah?”

Raka pauses.

“I just want to know — ” Raka bites her lip, wondering how to ask do you like me, without having to ask if Carty likes her. Is there anything worse in the world than asking someone if they like you? No, probably not, and so Raka leads with what she feels, what she can say for certain. “I like you, Carty.”

“I really like you, too.”

Carty thinks of what else she can say, worried it doesn’t seem like she does, in fact, like Raka. She imagines the old cameras in her own living room, things that were built to last. Modern cameras aren’t better, even with technology, because the substitution of hands for machines has made them flimsy and cheap. Carty has always wanted to care for love, to build something that endures. Falling in love has always been easy for Carty, but finding doesn’t always mean keeping. She wants whatever she has with Raka to be different.

“Sorry,” Carty continues. “I think what I’m saying is that I’ve ruined things in the past by going too fast. It’s like I forget who I am, because all I want is to make the other person happy. And I felt from our first conversation that you’re the kind of person I’d like to spend a lot of time with. As in, I’d love to see you all the time. I would.” Carty is picking at her fingernails. “But I also don’t want to mess things up. I don’t know if I trust myself not to mess things up without the rules. So, I want to be, I don’t know.”

“Intentional,” Raka says.

“Yeah,” Carty says. “Intentional.”

“OK,” Raka says. “Let’s take it slow, then. You know, I’m relieved.”

“Really?”

“Come on,” Raka says. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Carty buries her face in her hands.

“Sorry,” she says. “I just wanted to get it right. Was it that bad?”

“What’s it like when you deliver bad news?” Raka asks.

Carty laughs.

“You don’t want to know.”

Raka takes Carty’s hand, bringing it to her side of the couch. She weaves her fingers through Carty’s, wondering if her heart had been beating as hard as her own, whether, if she placed her thumb on Carty’s wrist, she could feel the mark of her nerves. Touching her, it feels strange that this person who began in pixels is now sitting in front of her. Raka’s first introduction to Carty was on YouTube. She’d watched an online dating show in which Carty was a contestant. Carty hadn’t come across well, and the comments let her know it, but Raka smelled injustice. When they matched on Hinge, Raka broke her own rule — to never message first — by writing, hey, and then broke another rule — don’t double message — with, I saw you on YouTube and I think you got a bad edit. Raka knew from the moment she met Carty that it had, in fact, been a terrible edit.

Raka holds on to these chance encounters on separate corners of the internet. For Raka, love has always been entwined with kismet. When Raka’s mother was young, before she met Raka’s father, she had a recurring dream where she saved a drowning boy from a lake. Her father also had a recurring dream before he met Raka’s mother, in which he was drowning in a lake before being rescued by a girl. For Raka, love existed on the plane of cosmic interference, and she felt the same when she first met Carty. So, if a good love story meant some rules, then Raka could learn to follow them, especially if they were for the greater good. As far as Raka knows, nobody in “Romeo and Juliet” was texting. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West weren’t always together, either — why else would they write all those letters?

“Maybe I can take you to Grand Central later?” Raka asks.

Carty lives on the outskirts of New York City, and so if Raka is under constraints, she will at least do what she can to make the date last longer. She joins Carty on the subway and up to the ticket barriers in Grand Central, all to have a little more time with her. She will continue doing this for the rest of the month, and the month after that, and the month after that.

Raka’s in the elevator, heading up to the top floor of a Bushwick loft. She’s going to what Carty calls Garyoke, named such because Carty’s friend Gary — described to her as a tall Bulgarian filmmaker with an impressive mullet — has a karaoke machine. Nervous, because it’s the first time Raka will meet Carty’s friends, after a few months of following rules and another few months of bending them.

As time slipped towards summer, the rules had melted with the call of the sun, bending in shape and demand. When Carty would come to see Raka at her new apartment in Astoria, no longer above the subway, she would often stay for two days. They’d become regulars at Pochana, where Carty would order in Thai. And at the Italian bakery, too, where Raka liked the jelly cookies. By the end of the second day, Carty would say she had to go, and Raka would plead for her to stay.

“Come on!” Raka would say. “One more night.”

“I want to,” Carty would reply. “But no.”

Carty always won, but it was never much of a fight. The rules had made for a happier and more confident Carty, a gentle reminder that she could be with Raka without the penalty of self-abandon. Still, for Carty, the right thing wasn’t always the easy thing. Carty wanted to stay longer — forever, even — but she knew that the rules were working, that whatever she had with Raka was flourishing. So, Carty drew a line: two days was a bend, but three would be a break. In any case, she was never gone for long.

Now it is August, and Raka still finds that there are ways in which she’s been more open: Carty has, in fact, met Raka’s sister and her friends, but Raka has yet to meet any of Carty’s. Raka tries not to see it as a personal defect, though she can’t help but sometimes wonder: Am I just really embarrassing? She loves Carty. She hasn’t said it yet, but she does, and with those feelings of love come feelings of fear — that Carty doesn’t feel the same, that there is something wrong with Raka. The asymmetry has haunted her, but Carty’s invitation to Garyoke, an attempt to correct the balance, is haunting Raka, too. She questions her yellow dress, her orange-shaped-and-colored-earrings. She thinks of Carty’s black wardrobe that, on adventurous days, will accommodate green, and wonders if she looks OK.

What Raka doesn’t know is that Carty, waiting for her in Gary’s loft, is anxious to the point of nausea. Not because Raka is embarrassing, but rather the opposite. Carty can’t bear to lose her. Part of being in love means the possibility of being hurt, and no rule can protect you from that. She keeps thinking, What if Raka meets my friends and decides I’m really embarrassing?

The elevator opens, and Raka sees Carty smiling, laughing, at the other end of the bustle. She looks at the spectrum of color — everything between her yellow and orange and Carty’s black and silver — and starts to feel OK.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” Carty says, finding her.

“I’m so happy to be here.”

The I love you is on Raka’s lips. Both of their lips, in fact, though neither says it. Raka feels a hand on her arm.

“I’ve been dying to meet you, Raka,” a woman says, and from her bright, expressive voice, her short hair, Raka knows that it’s Carty’s friend, Yuka, an actress and singer who goes to clown classes.

She whisks Raka away from Carty, neither Carty nor Raka happy nor ready to part, their eyes never quite losing contact, even from across the room. Soon, Raka is confronted with people who tell her things about herself, what they’ve heard of her. How she studied civil engineering before becoming an actor, and her childhood in California. None of this, Raka realizes, is a sign that Carty finds her embarrassing. In fact, when facts of her biography are repeated back to her, they are told with a sense of residual pride, which Raka knows began with Carty.

Soon, Raka is next to Gary, whose mullet is indeed impressive.

“Do you want to sing something?” he asks.

“Yeah, why not!” Raka says. “What should I sing?”

“We’ve got ‘Love on Top’ queued,” Gary says. “Do you want to do that?”

It seems too big a play for Raka at a party where she’s a plus-one. Still, she can’t help but say to herself, fuck it.

“Let’s do it. But let me find Carty.” Raka spots her in a corner and takes her by the hand. “We’re singing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Come on,” Raka says. “Let’s do it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

The familiar pa-pa-pa-da plays, and Carty takes the mic, unsure of herself. She sings into it, holding it between herself and Raka — a whole foot separating them in height — moving in a clumsy two-step that is ill-suited to the greatest songstress of the 21st century. Then, the discomfort stops. It has to, because they have reached the chorus, which demands their full attention, singing the words they cannot say. You’re the one I love, you’re the one I need. They are safe in the insincerity of song, the pretense of lyrics, though every word is meant, and every word is their own.

Carty supposes that, for those of us who are brave enough to say what we want to say, there’s plain talking, and for those of us who aren’t, there’s Beyoncé. They draw the crowd in, and it seems like everyone at Garyoke sings the final chorus with them, a sigh of blissful relief when it ends. The doors to the loft open, and people trickle up to the rooftop, golden hour over Bushwick. Carty and Raka lie on their backs, over the dusty concrete.

“I know I’ve already said it,” Carty says, holding Raka’s hand, what’s left of the sun on their faces. “But I’m so happy you’re here.”

“I’m happy, too.”

“You got whisked away by Yuka.”

“I did,” she says. “It was like speed dating your friends with a very assertive chaperone. She was so great. I barely said three words before she turned to me and said” — Raka’s face goes stern — “I’ve decided I like you.” Raka laughs, so does Carty.

“You’re so Shakespearean.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a compliment. I just mean the way you tell stories,” Carty says. “It’s so theatrical. I love it. And you’re so good with new people. You make everyone seem interesting. Sunshine Raka.”

Carty places a thumb on Raka’s cheek, lost in her eyes. Those large, hypnotic almonds.

“Most people already knew about me,” Raka says.

Raka smiles, so does Carty.

“Who else did you meet?” Carty asks.

“Everyone,” Raka says. “Angela?”

“Amanda?” Carty asks.

“No, Angela.”

“Angela?”

“You don’t know her?” Raka asks.

Carty shakes her head.

“You’re kidding me,” Raka says. “I was speaking to her for ages. I lied and said I’d heard so much about her. She must be so confused.”

They laugh, so much that they start to cry. Each of them imagines that one day they’ll be friends with Angela, that they’ll look back on this and laugh even more. It makes both Carty and Raka happy, thinking about their future. Raka opens her eyes and looks at Carty. She wants to say it, she is about to say it, but then Carty opens her mouth.

“There’s something I want to tell you,” Carty says, again, so serious.

“Oh, God,” Raka says. “What is it?”

“I love you.”

Raka feels herself go breathless, and then she smiles so wide it hurts.

“I love you, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” Raka says. “I mean it.”

They smile, then kiss, and as they separate Carty notices how the light catches Raka’s eye. She thinks of her old cameras again, wishing she had one here. She’d like nothing more than to take Raka’s picture.

Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Malaysia and now lives in London. “Bellies,” her debut, was nominated for six literary prizes and won the Polari First Book Prize. “Disappoint Me,” her second novel, won the New Adult Book Prize.

With all the piqued interests, the meet and greets, and the rehearsed anecdotes that don’t read as either too overshare-y or too forgettable, modern dating can start to feel like you’re interviewing for a job you’re not entirely sure you want. A Groundhog Day of the same questions, the same answers, the same carefully calibrated version of yourself — competent, charming, just vulnerable enough to still seem human, but not enough to be inconvenient.

You sit across from someone explaining the bullet points of your personality like it’s the skills section on your C.V. Strengths: emotional availability (on a good day), three meals cooked from memory, owning a plant that is, just about, still alive. Weaknesses: overthinking, occasionally rambling, an inability to flirt naturally. We’re all performing a lovableness in order to be loved, and somewhere in the process, our humanity leaks out.

One day at home, Elena, a woman with a remarkable tolerance for disappointment, was rifling through Hinge. She had been single for a few months now, occasionally feeling the familiar tug towards the emotional intimacy of two people rather than one. She had been on what she describes, without a hint of exaggeration, as hundreds of dates: “I feel like I’ve done the whole gamut,” she says. “Hinge … in-person dating … speed dating. You’re running through the same things, and you can tell people are going through the motions.”

Throwing the proverbial penny into the love fountain and getting zero return on investment, Elena stopped expecting anything from the dating circuit. She didn’t retreat in a dramatic, lying-on-the-floor-listening-to-“Nothing Compares 2 U” way. She just quietly, practically, and wholly built a life that was full in and of itself. It was a good life, and it was hers. “I was very comfortable being alone,” she says. “If I’d spent the rest of my days on my own … I would have been perfectly happy.” This is how Elena ended up on a dating app with, crucially, not quite no hope, but low hope.

Michael had been on Hinge for two weeks when he met Elena. Unlike many of his male counterparts slowly assimilating to the echo-y call-and-response of modern dating, he’d endured the apps strangely untouched by the whole shebang. Not because he was naive, exactly, but dating simply hadn’t occupied a huge amount of brain-space for him. Michael had spent the previous years focused on family and work, not so much avoiding dating as enjoying living. It took his therapist casually asking why he wasn’t dating for him to realize he didn’t really have a reason.

When Elena found him, what struck her wasn’t his inexperience so much as his absence of performance. There was no familiar sense of somebody optimizing themselves into desirability. The pictures with his cats were straight up silly. Michael’s answers to the profile prompts wandered, they elaborated, they felt like talking to a friend. Michael asked: Teach me something about your obsessions. What works of art do you always find yourself returning to? What hobbies threaten to engulf every aspect of your life? Elena was immediately charmed. She felt she was looking at somebody who had spent enough time alone to know what mattered to him, a person who had already done some of the emotional work.

Michael had a similar reaction. Elena’s profile left him feeling equal parts curious, impressed and slightly intimidated. “What an amazing, realized person,” he remembers thinking. “I want to know more.”

Michael and Elena’s first date wasn’t romantic, all eye contact and footsie and perfectly timed laughter. It was a meet and it was cute, but it wasn’t completely romcom. There was, instead, much ado about, of all things, a mushroom dish. Michael chose the restaurant after a brief but intense research project. “I was scouring Reddit,” he says. “Like, where do I take this wonderful woman?” The answer, unfortunately, was somewhere that serves mushrooms stone cold, soaking in oil, too much garlic, and some worryingly nondescript herbs.

Buoyed by first date nerves, they both mouthfuled the mushrooms in polite silence, two people who have agreed, without saying it out loud, to choose endurance over rudeness (such is date etiquette). Elena didn’t want to be the person complaining at the outset of a date, marking her out as dissatisfied. A dropped stone of displeasure could ripple out into the first date and become who is this person I’ve just met? Despite similar concerns and the general anxiety attached to first dates, newly-dating Michael was compelled to speak, to name his displeasure as the mushroom coated his tongue. “I’m not going to lie,” he said, gesturing to the fungi paddling in a lake of fat. “This is terrible.” Elena laughed, struck by the realness and truth of his words.

This near-throwaway comment could have been such a small, seemingly inconsequential moment between dinner companions — a completely unremarkable remark — but mere dinner companions Michael and Elena were not. Michael’s honest aside was indicative of something important: it broke the tone.

Michael didn’t like the mushrooms. Michael said he didn’t like the mushrooms. And suddenly, in the midst of all the dual self-calibration, there was a perceptible lift; everything felt easier. The pressure to be your best tip-top self left the table, the oily mushrooms becoming a social lubricant, a gateway to real opinions, expressed with gusto. Michael and Elena weren’t polite people on a first date; they were actual people who happened to be on their first date. Michael had spent time finding the just-right restaurant, with the understandable expectation for just-right dishes, and this slight stutter in proceedings had sent the two strangers into a culinary camaraderie. They stopped being two strangers who met on Hinge asking each other how long they’d been on Hinge and morphed into a pair discussing their favorite places to get less oily fungi, crisper pizzas, deeper lasagna.

Their first date, a shared plate of an evening, disappeared like good pasta, an al dente back and forth of antipasti and affection. It ended with an awkward hug, not a kiss, simply because Michael suddenly realized it was time for the kiss and started overthinking the kiss, and before he knew it, the moment for the kiss was behind him.

Michael and Elena got into separate cars, and Elena reflected. No kiss … that’s interesting. It created a certain uncertainty. Michael seemed like he liked her. He liked her, right? She was getting more and more sure. She didn’t need reciprocity, a declaration of feelings, but she also didn’t want the date to end, not just yet. “I just wanted to keep talking to him,” Elena remembers thinking.

Elena deliberated the rules of engagement, generously, for about 30 seconds before picking up the phone. Calling so quickly, so unabashedly felt objectively unhinged. There are ancient rules about this sort of thing: Thou Shalt Play it Cool. There are entire ecosystems built around pretending you don’t care as much as you do. Elena ignored all of it.

Michael answered the call and they talked. They really talked. About family, friendship, children, the kinds of questions usually rationed out carefully over months and months of dating. Elena found herself telling Michael about the occasionally tumultuous dynamics within her family, but also how deeply she loved them. She spoke about her friends, the people who had shown her that life could still feel joyful and meaningful outside of romance, with near-religious zeal. Michael asked questions that belonged specifically to her, not in interchangeable, recycled first-date prompts. The conversation stopped feeling introductory. It felt like two people trying to understand each other properly.

After their phone call, Elena found herself thinking about Michael constantly. She remembers crooning to her sister about Michael for hours after the date, replaying tiny details with forensic enthusiasm. There was a momentum that felt exhilarating and just the right amount of trepid.

A few days later, Elena debated whether asking Michael to hang out again so quickly made her seem too eager. Modern dating culture trains people to ration their enthusiasm carefully, to stagger affection into manageable morsels. But, after an entire day spent thinking about him anyway, Elena decided she didn’t care.

She invited Michael to a park where they did something risky: they talked honestly, moreish-ly exchanged information, aspiring to that particular sense of continuity when two lives suddenly, joyously, intersect. A strange accelerating intimacy, before societal conventions could interrupt proceedings.

Elena talked about her last relationship. She told him how her ex had been hanging out with another girl, and it was all a secret. Elena couldn’t understand why it needed to be secret if it was innocent. Michael listened. He didn’t have a secret secret but he had omitted something when Elena had asked him about his day. He didn’t mention a date with another girl that morning. A normal man-who’s-new-to-Hinge date. Telling Elena didn’t seem appropriate, it wasn’t appropriate. But it was, if not dishonesty, a deliberate exclusion, a way to start date three with Elena on the right foot, to keep the dating boat on course.

As Elena talked more honestly about honesty, something in Michael — something newer, something he’d only just learned to trust — pushed forward. Over his lifetime, Michael had spent too long listening to a different voice, the anxious one, the one that says: don’t say too much, don’t get it wrong, don’t make things complicated. “My brain is always trying to keep me safe,” he says, “but my body just knew.” He listened to the new, microscopically louder voice, and decided to speak up.

“In full transparency,” he remembers gently telling Elena, “I just want you to know I went on a date with somebody else this morning.” There it is: the undramatic, unloaded truth. Elena, thrown by the revelation, kept walking; a thousand thoughts crashed on the shore of her brain. Logically, she understood it, of course she did, but … “My heart fell through my chest,” she says. The understatement of the century.

Inside her, logic battled feelings, head and heart dueled it out. They were early. This whole thing was early. They were, technically, nothing. A veteran dater and a newbie. He was allowed to date other people. Not even allowed, he should date other people. Emotionally, though, the logic of having just met dissolved. “I just wanted to talk to him,” she remembers, but she didn’t say that out loud. Instead, she performed the socially correct response. “That totally makes sense,” she told him. “You should meet other people.” They moved on. Or tried to. The other date a silent incision between them.

An hour later, they were still out, talking about other things, about any other things, but something had changed. The hill felt more like a tilted floor and Elena could feel herself slipping. She said nothing as the earth moved. Michael noticed because he notices things. He noticed the break in the tenor, the synergy, the overlapping of Venns.

For Michael, it would have been incredibly easy to leave it there, to let the moment pass, to preserve the version of the date that is a smooth pebble — uncomplicated, unjagged, heading steadily towards something pleasant but possibly forgettable. Instead, he went back, that voice he’s still now learning to trust, navigating him through an untimely swell in the third-date ocean. He broached. He turned to face Elena. “I just want to give you space to process it,” he told her. “To feel anything you feel.” Michael’s is a very specific kind of sentence, one that requires attentiveness, sure, but it invited something almost avant-garde in the realm of early dates: reality. Elena paused.

Elena had a choice. She could continue performing the version of herself that is reasonable, unbothered, easy to date. The version of herself that’d been on hundreds of dates, dated hundreds of dead-end douchebags, stomached hundreds, if not thousands, of disgusting mushrooms. The version of her that was currently still out there, still looking, still dating after all the incompatible misfires. But the version of herself that had been dishing out ever so slightly less Elena — just to ease proceedings — was tired. Tired of holding back, tired of tiptoeing around her truth. She could have remained this former, dating-roulette Elena, or she could say the thing. The thing she really feels, regardless of the dating matrix we’ve all become so accustomed to. The truth, the uncomfortable truth.

She turned to Michael, looked him in the eyes, and decided to say the thing before it necessarily felt safe to say the thing. She said the thing because she had to say the thing: “I don’t think after meeting you that I want to see anybody else.” And then, because, well, she’d come that far, “I don’t want to be compared to other people. I don’t want to feel like I’m on ‘The Bachelor.’” Naming discomfort out loud on a third date seemed risky, the kind of risky you avoid at the dawn of a new person. She rocked the boat or at least nudged it off the much-charted, CV-safe first-few-dates course. An off-script ad-lib. A leap. “It felt like I was laying my heart out,” she says. “And offering it to someone who could just … smash it.” Is vulnerability in its purest form a sort of unprotected bravery? A transmission without the guarantee of a return call, a jump without guarantee of a soft landing?

It landed. Of course, it landed because Michael is Michael. Elena’s call was returned. Not softly, exactly, but cleanly. Michael didn’t receive it as pressure, but as an invitation. “I felt relief,” he says. “Not pressure, not confusion. It was an invite, rather than an instruction.” He paused, because the honesty deserved more than an instinctive, quick-fire answer. “I wanted to reciprocate that honesty, and that necessitated some time to truly understand how I felt,” he adds. “I felt like I owed that to her, and also to everyone else I had met in those two weeks on Hinge.”

Michael told Elena as much: “Thank you for sharing that with me. I see why you feel that way. Can I have some time to think about it? As soon as I know, you’ll know. I don’t want you to sit in this feeling longer than you need to.” And Elena, somehow, didn’t retreat. “Yeah,” she said. “That totally makes sense. I appreciate it.” The mutual relief between them was palpable. The hill tilted back. They were third date off-piste because neither of them was pretending anymore. Dating apps suggest abundance. But when you’re standing on a hill, in the dark, with someone who has just told you exactly how they feel, all those options start to feel superfluous.

After walking around the park, Michael was suddenly ready for the kiss. Michael’s appetite for the kiss was the opposite of his appetite for the mushrooms. This was the moment for the first kiss. They both felt it. I want to kiss her. “I want to kiss you,” he told her. Without missing a beat, Elena looked him dead in the eye, sincerity at the forefront, “I’m not going to be the second person you kiss today,” she rebuked. Elena might be falling head over heels in love, rewriting the rules of courtship, coloring outside of the lines, but she hasn’t lost her sense of self completely.

After spilling her guts on the hilltop, Elena spent the next day in an emotional holding pattern. She circled but never spiraled. She did the right thing, surely? If it’s not meant to be, that’s OK, isn’t it? Michael texted, asking to call her after work. “I remember thinking, this is either really good news or really bad news,” she says. The rest of the working day felt like eons, the low-grade hum of anticipation. Don’t get your hopes up, don’t overthink this.

A few hours later, Michael called from his car and told her, “I thought about it. I talked to the other girl … and I told her that I feel like I have a good shot with someone else.” There was no drama, no grand declaration, just a decision. They had a good shot. It sounds so simple, but it’s not. Two people with their heads screwed on, and their feet on the ground, very quietly taking off. “The goal for me was never to be on the apps to just be on the apps,” Michael remembers reassuring her, “I just wanted to meet someone. And I met you.” Gulp.

What makes Michael and Elena feel different is how it all started. Not with perfection, or even certainty, but with a series of small, slightly uncomfortable decisions to be honest. None of it is particularly grand, per se. But it is, collectively, rare. “I just want to see someone and be seen by them,” Elena says. A straightforward idea in theory, until you realize what it actually requires. You have to say the thing. The big, should I, shouldn’t I thing. You have to say the thing even when it’s too soon, and too inconvenient. You have to say the thing when it’s much easier to just … not. You have to say the thing, and then see what happens.

Raven Smith is a London-based, “Sunday Times” bestselling author and columnist whose work revolves around social commentary known for his irreverent tone and eye to catch something unique in the banal he has developed a legion of fans.

His first book, “Raven Smith’s Trivial Pursuits,” was published in 2020 and his second book, “Raven Smith’s Men” was described as “Wise, sharp and naughty” by “The Observer” and published in 2022.

In addition to his popular Vogue column he produces weekly, Raven is currently developing his third book while hosting red carpet premieres and writing for clients including MUBI, “Cultured” magazine, “Mr Porter,” and “Esquire.”

He lives in London with his husband, daughter and cat, Hastings.

The music still echoed in Tyla’s ears as she walked in the direction of the bar. She double-checked both the map and her messages in case Jerome texted. She was only a little nervous. Thankfully, they’d have something to talk about over dinner and drinks. She’d just come from a Billie Eilish listening party, and Jerome was a musician.

Over a year ago, she downloaded Hinge after the end of a four-year relationship. It had been one of those “over before it ended” kind of breakups. Then she matched with Jerome. This led to a sparky, fun first date where they bonded over food, music, and a few shared vices. Perhaps she had talked too much, but she found herself on a second date with him anyway.

Tyla racked her brain as she approached the Brooklyn bar, where she would be meeting him tonight. She considered what details from their second date were important. They had both spent too much time on their phones, she remembered with a wince. She had shown up to that date feeling distracted, still in the midst of a very non-linear healing process. She was in her “messy era,” as she liked to call it. 

They’d kissed at the park at some point, which made things feel salvageable, but then Jerome said he needed a break from dating. She had to remind herself (more than once) not to take his hiatus personally. The way he asked for space was so sincere and admirable — the fact that he knew what he needed made him more attractive. He would be hard to forget.

It had been six months since they last met. There was no question of whether or not Tyla was into him. During those six months, she’d been the one sending DMs, listening to his music, liking his photos. Even amid three dysfunctional “casual” relationships, her soul feeling plucked from her body, Jerome was always in the back of her mind. The question now was whether this was more than a fling. Tyla decided to be realistic. Chemistry online didn’t always translate to real life, even if they’d kissed. Even if she’d played his songs over and over again.

She thought about how much she’d talked on the first date, her awkwardness and lack of presence on the second. 

Maybe I’m too much for him.

Tyla’s easy to talk to, he reminded himself. He kept checking the door to see if she had arrived. The bar was dimly lit, filled with people both seated and standing, the fireplace crackling across the room. He looked over the menu while he waited, hungry after a long shift. 

He hadn’t seen Tyla since their last date, so naturally his nerves were dancing. But, after six months of singledom and serious introspection, tonight felt like a small celebration. He needed somewhere safe to land, a low-pressure interaction to ease him back into the dating world. Tyla felt like the right person.

On their first date, he’d mentioned being gluten-free. She hadn’t batted an eye, ordering mussels, octopus carpaccio, caviar pearls. They shared a love of eating. They had a lot in common, actually, but she was also very different. Smarter than him, maybe one of the smartest people he’d ever met. An encyclopedia of a person. She’d told him all about her work in obstetrics, her thoughts on internet and pop culture. A lot of people were talkative. Very few were actually fascinating. Tyla was one of those rare people: beautiful and interesting, inside and out. He remembered showing his friends her Hinge photos, still in disbelief that they’d matched.

Before he downloaded Hinge and met Tyla, he had gone through two intense breakups, one after the other. He hadn’t known if he was ready to start dating again, but he did anyway. Only by meeting new people did he realize just how destabilized he felt. He was forced to confront himself: his difficulty expressing his boundaries, his inability to communicate his intentions. In a strange sense, his break from romance was a chance to start anew.

Even during his self-imposed soul search, she had remained in his thoughts. The messages she sent, the videos she posted. He remembered the ones she took from the J train. The sun setting behind the bridge, some song playing in the background. One time, it was his song. His heart had swelled.

When Tyla entered the crowded bar, they hugged. He felt something unusual within himself: steadiness. Weird, he thought. Weird but good.

He seems different, Tyla noticed. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was clear Jerome’s break had done him good. As he pointed to the menu and suggested what they might order (she hadn’t forgotten about his gluten allergy), she noticed he was still a little shy. He glanced away whenever he spoke.

They had tried to meet up once before, but he’d gotten a gnarly injury at work. Now, Tyla asked to see his finger. He held it out, and she studied the scar. “I’m back in commission,” he’d texted her. It had been a funny thing to say, but it was also sweet. 

Of course, she’d had her sights set on him from the beginning. She had been disappointed enough by their pause to poke him on social media here and there. Maybe she had herself to thank for being able to see Jerome again. For knowing what she wanted and, in her own way, going after it.

They ordered deviled eggs, bread and butter, and an assortment of cocktails. She told him that she wanted to take him to a few spots tonight, maybe meet up with friends, maybe run into others. He didn’t seem to mind.

Jerome liked observing Tyla. He didn’t mind the idea of going bar to bar, watching her be out in the world. Tyla was one of the warmest people he’d ever met. Now at a different bar, their second location of the night, surrounded by tiki statues and sipping some tropical cocktail, he watched her banter with an acquaintance. She turned back to him with a grin. 

She is so good at being herself, he thought. He smiled at her.

“What?” she asked, laughing. 

He shook his head, deciding to share what he was thinking later — that she had a way of charming other people, turning them from strangers into friends so easily. She’d done that with him, after all. 

He hadn’t set any intentions for the night. Just to be present, to enjoy. But now something in him was sharpening. The fog in his mind was clearing, parting for something that looked like understanding.

Now, as he listened to Tyla talk, he realized: I could listen to her talk forever.

I’m yapping way too much, Tyla noted. But it had been a long time since she felt this comfortable on a date. Her past relationships left her in a state that could be best described as despair. It was the kind that left one hopeless, best prepared for disaster, and nothing else. She could sense her skepticism, driven by that hopelessness, tugging at her as she played pool with Jerome. 

It was easier to choose cynicism. But she did not want to turn bitter and distrusting after those other relationships. What she loved most about herself was her heart, which she was determined to keep open. Those experiences, somewhat ironically, had been helpful. They allowed her to get closer to herself.

He handed her the pool stick. She took a shot. As the ball snapped and knocked around the table, she allowed herself to imagine that darkness rolling out of her body.

She thought about her first kiss with Jerome again, at the park. Can I kiss you? he’d said. No one had ever asked her that before. At the time she was still raw, still susceptible to those patterns she knew she needed to escape. She had thought the question was a bit silly, maybe unnecessary.

Jerome took his shot and won a point. She watched him walk around the table, change his angle.

Tyla realized the question had not been silly. Perhaps she had to get used to the goodness that existed in this world, the goodness that Jerome had shown her.

Jerome pocketed another ball. Two in a row. Tyla’s jaw dropped. He liked impressing her with his pool skills, especially since she was much better than he was. The steadiness he felt within himself was translating to the game, like a beam of focus magnifying what mattered.

He was still hesitant. Both in pool and in life. He missed the shot and handed Tyla the stick. His hesitation, he knew, was simply the ghost of everything he’d ever experienced before.

He had been hurt. He knew it had held him back. Playing games, being withholding — none of that had ever felt right to him. Now he was sure of what did. 

He thought about how time had passed, how things changed so quietly and incrementally, until he found himself at this point. How, during those six months, he witnessed the true power of time. It could present itself as an obstacle, but ultimately, it was a compass. It was meant to be followed, surrendered to.

What’s right for you will find you. He’d heard that statement before. These things would always fall into place, as long as you were patient. Having witnessed this for himself, he felt very wise.

Tyla scored a point. Nearly all of her stripes were pocketed. He still had a few solids left. They sipped their drinks and discussed their next move — where they would go, who they might run into. 

Jerome turned back to the pool table, wondering how long the rest of the game would take. They could always forfeit, finish the last of their drinks, and carry on to the next place. 

Instead, Tyla kissed him. 

He kissed her back. 

The game wasn’t going anywhere. They could always pick back up where they left off.

Upasna Barath is a Brooklyn-based writer and performer. A former Steppenwolf Theatre Literary Fellow, she writes plays that explore identity, humor, and the absurdity of intimacy. She co-wrote and starred in the short film “Little Slut,” and her debut novel, “Comedic Timing,” was released by 831 Stories in January 2025.

Juno was just finishing up at the restaurant, their fingers still smelling of garlic and cilantro, when the notification came in. Opening Hinge and looking through Aissata’s photos, their stomach contracted: Long blond braids, a smile both confident and kind — exactly my type. I can’t believe they sent me a Like. Juno sent one back and walked to their car, an old green van their friends call The Pickle. The night was cool, even for December, but driving home was easy at this hour. The streets were almost empty. 

Should I reach out, or better wait? A red light flashed at a junction, they stepped on the brake. Reaching for their phone, they scrolled through Aissata’s profile again, and something made them frown. “Looking for short-term relationship.” Juno couldn’t help but think back to their last few dates, how avoidant many of them felt. They sighed. The red light was taking forever.

A breathy pop song hummed in a room across town. Pink fairy lights draped across a vanity glowed like seductive eyes, and Aissata was lying on their bed, staring at their phone. 

C’mon, Juno. There was something about this one, about the way they held themselves in their photos that felt like they knew who they were. Plus, they were beautiful. But no reaction to the Like except a lazy Like back, and Aissata wouldn’t be the one doing all the work if the other gave them so little.

I guess they’re not into me. They put their phone down, flipped over onto their belly. They were exhausted, but they didn’t want to go to sleep just yet. Picking up their phone, they opened up the apps again. The fairy lights glowed and glowed.

No point speaking to people when my energy’s so low, Juno thought that winter. The days were short and the nights too dark, and all they wanted after their late shift was to sleep and wake up to spring. No mental space for meeting strangers. And yet, sometimes they thought back to Aissata, even went and took a peek at their photos.

Still so hot. Maybe some other time.

Winter was dreary that year, but Aissata hardly saw it pass — figuring out their next steps took up so much time. They knew they had to save money to be independent. And even if they were still not out to their parents back in Oregon, moving home was the easiest option right then. They bought their plane ticket, terminated the lease. 

It had been five months since that silent match, and now Aissata was about to leave. It didn’t make sense to meet anyone now. But revisiting Juno’s photos one night made a tingling feeling run through them, all the way to their fingertips. “Works evening shifts, into late-night stargazing,” said the profile. No, it didn’t make sense. Aissata’s fingers moved all by themselves. 

“so are we hanging out at midnight?”

Juno couldn’t help but smile. Funny how things come around. May in bloom, light stretching out the days, and in comes a message from just the one. Juno liked how direct it was, how familiar. This time they didn’t hesitate.

“plsss when are you free?”

The next night they clocked out from work and sped home in The Pickle, excited for the midnight date. They showered, put on their favorite shirt — flannel, plaid — then waited on their bed. Aissata had promised to send their address, but no message came. Juno kept on checking their phone. It was a stormy night, suddenly, and through the open window they watched the ash trees sway from side to side. Am I being stood up? It was past midnight, and still no answer. Juno put down the phone. I guess I’m never hearing from that one again. The trees rustled in the wind, their shhhh like a sulky whisper. So much for avoidant dates.

Aissata woke in a sweat. They stared at their screen, their mind hazy, trying to figure out what time it was. 1 a.m. No no no — this can’t be happening. They had only meant to take a short nap before the date, even set an alarm. I must have slept through it. Ugh I just blew my chance. Opening the chat with Juno, they began to type frantically. 

“hi! god i’m so so sorry, I promise this is not an excuse, but I genuinely just …”

Soft morning light streamed in through the window. Juno was surprised by Aissata’s message. They didn’t need to write if they didn’t want to meet up. But then again ... They sat up in bed, looked at the ash trees outside. They were all still then, leaves reflecting the new light. 

C’mon. Only one way to find out.

Parked in front of Aissata’s that night, Juno checked their hair one last time. Some more hairspray, then they were ready. A figure appeared on the swing porch in an ankle-length cardigan. Juno got out of the car and walked up to the porch, heart pounding in their chest. Aissata was even more beautiful in person than in their photos.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

The first hug: For an instant, fingertips rested on flannel. I love that they’re taller than me, Aissata thought. And that wolf cut, and those rings! 

“Come in.”

It was a lot, but Juno liked what they saw: the overflowing bookcase, the collages on the wall, the little prayer rug, the pink lights. Already it felt like the inside of Aissata’s mind, already it felt good to be in it. They talked about their gender journeys, their obsession with “New Girl” (they’d both seen all seasons), their role as the eldest “daughters” of their families. Juno was funny and charming. I feel like myself around them, Aissata thought. Maybe this is more than just a hookup.

Time began to crash, speeding up and slowing down. Before the two knew it — before they could run out of words or kisses — the clocks said 6 a.m. and Aissata had to leave for work.

“I feel like it’s time to talk about …”

Their third evening together in a row. Lying entwined on Aissata’s bed, a Reneé Rapp song playing in the background. Juno looked up, eyebrows raised. 

“Talk about what?”

Aissata sat up, reached for the words. On their first date they had mentioned to Juno that they were planning on moving, but already that night felt like a long time ago. 

“How we feel about me leaving. My flight is in ten days …”

Before they could even finish, Juno buried their face in a pillow and began to cry. It only really hit them then, the déjà vu of it, the cruel sitcom twist.

Why is this happening to me again? Juno explained about their first relationship. How they’d drifted apart after one of them moved away. How they’d sworn to themselves never to do long distance again. 

“People are different when they’re apart,” they said, wiping their eyes with the sleeve of their sweatshirt, not looking at Aissata. “You can’t replace someone’s presence with calls or photos.” 

Aissata nodded, waited for this tide to pass. Then they took Juno’s hand and led them outside onto the swing porch. The night was deep, the sky thick with stars blinking down at them. Looking at Juno, it hit Aissata that they’d never felt so safe to love. I’m not letting this feeling go. 

“You know, my move isn’t forever,” they said, trying to sound reassuring. “I’m just going for the summer, maybe a little longer. After that I’m free. We could figure something out then — together.” 

Juno looked up, surprised, but Aissata’s eyes left no doubt they meant it. They had a way of making the difficult seem easy, of seeing beyond fear. For a moment they both sat in silence, their eyes drawn up into the night. The stars looked like they were glued into place, but Juno knew they were moving all the time, forever rearranging themselves. Maybe we can’t know how things will turn out, they suddenly thought. Maybe this is too good to let go. 

Their hands found each other, and together they left the porch, back to the sanctuary of Aissata’s room. It occurred to them both that soon it would be time to leave this place behind, to move everything into boxes and tape them shut — the books, the prayer rug, even the fairy lights. But in that moment, everything was still how it needed to be. Two people in a luminous room, slowly turning toward each other.

Editor’s Note: After finding their way back to one another, Aissata and Juno got married in March 2025.

Tomasz Jedrowski is the author of “Swimming in the Dark,” a queer love story set in 1980s Communist Poland. The novel was selected as Book of the Year by The Guardian and NPR, and was picked by Dua Lipa for her monthly book club, Service95. It’s currently being adapted as a play and as an opera.

January. The West Village. Midnight, at least. There’s a chill in the air, but I don’t feel it, wrapped as I am in the electric buzz of the bar. Tonight, anything is possible. Tonight, New York spreads her arms wide and cracks open a propitious smile. Tonight, miracles could happen. My friends and I bar hop, leaping from place to place. Carefree club kids and this is our playground. The night is an outline. Shape and color, sound and sweat, just passing through. Fleeting glimpses of a thousand lives wash over one another. Something pulls me toward the bar. Thirst or the riptide of fortune? Who’s to say? Out of the blur, a smile splits the haze. A pair of eyes linger just a hair too long. I linger too. Look away. Back. Smile. Away again. I don’t remember walking over, but now he’s in front of me. Say something. Say anything. “Hi.” It’s all I can muster. It slides into the ocean of sound we swim in. “Hi.” He says it back and I am caught. But now another voice, close in my ear. “We gotta go.” Our friends have left, no time to loiter. I’m pulled out, down the street to drags and dives as we swoop through the swirling mist of a winter night fast becoming a frosted morning. And I wonder: What in the world just happened?

Stop looking at him. But how can I turn away? Beauty itself, bobbing just out of reach. Stop it, he’ll see you. But I want to be seen. By him, at least. An extra second passes and his eye catches mine. Soft features seem to dance as the hot lamps of the disco lights cast vivid jewels across the sloping angles of his face. He looks to the bar then back at me. I can’t stop staring, nor do I want to. I want to drink it all in. But then he is moving toward me, the bodies around him twirling out like a school of frightened fish, silver flashing from hands and throats. “Hi,” he says and it’s so casual, so nonchalant that I know this moment must be significant. “Hi,” I say in return, flicking through the thousand questions that leap half-formed in my mind. But now a friend appears at his shoulder and before I can ask his name, he’s spinning back into the crowd. Away from me. I scan the room for a final look at him, as a single question escapes from the milieu and lodges itself somewhere in my chest: Who on earth was that?

Time passes, as it tends to do. The world changes and so do I. I date. I dream. I stop dating, stop dreaming. Take some time. Take a breath. In … and out … I realize that love, in my 20s, was a bit of a wash. Learning how to love, learning how to love myself, mistakes on all sides. Sometimes it felt like me and the guys I was with were not only on different pages but in totally different books. Each of my five past relationships taught me a heap of lessons but I needed a break. Am I ready yet? It’s been two years since I last went on a date. Four, since I glimpsed a face that propelled me across a crowded bar toward … a stranger? We didn’t even exchange names. But here I am, almost half a decade later, and I feel like I’m ready to dip my toe back into the cool waters of the New York City dating pool. I’m centered, grounded. I feel like myself again. I’m thriving. I take a deep breath. And I’m ready to dive in.

When do you accept that a moment, however special, was just a moment? I thought about that moment often in the months after, replaying it in my mind and wondering: What if? What if he’d stayed? What if I’d gotten his name? His number? What then? At times, I question if it even happened. If he felt the same spark I did. But the memory fades and becomes exactly that: a single memory in the long history of a life lived. Dating in LA is … well, it’s like most things in LA: a ton of auditions, a few callbacks, but still no starring role. It’s felt like people want the “boyfriend experience” but haven’t been willing to put in the work. I’ve been hurt and the walls I’ve built to protect myself have started to close me off. Stop expending so much energy on this. I decide to pull back a little, keep the faith but leave it up to fate. I’m visiting New York for Memorial Day weekend and on a whim, I open Hinge. I tap through a few profiles not expecting too much, when out of nowhere an unmistakable smile leaps from my phone screen. I’ve seen this man before …

“Hi.” It’s as good an opener as any. It worked before. But this time I get a name and when we match, I can even ask a follow-up question. “Do I know you from somewhere?” It can’t be. But it is. I know it and he knows it too. “I was thinking the same thing,” comes his reply. We start chatting back and forth. I feel this immediate connection and I think he feels it too. He is so genuine and open. He doesn’t shy away from telling me who he is, what he’s looking for, how that split second in the bar echoed in his mind just like it did in mine. I’m overcome by the desire to know all I can about him.

I scroll through his profile and confirm my suspicions. It’s Tony! Not that I knew he was Tony before, but now I do and here he is, beaming up at me. I stare at his perfect smile, read his adorable answers, and begin to realize that my initial attraction to him all those years ago wasn’t just a fluke. This guy is special. And we’ve found each other again. We chat a little and waste no time. From the second I see him slide into the restaurant the very next day, sleek and playful, I’m smitten. He has this megawatt smile that completely takes me aback and back to that half-forgotten night. It’s surreal. Time seems to collapse between now and that moment all those years ago. What strikes me is that, despite his magnetism, he seems so grounded, so fixed in the here and now. He is almost singularly focused on getting to know me. And so, over dinner, that’s exactly what he does.

When I walk into the restaurant and see Sam waiting for me, my heart skips a beat. The part of me that suggested I was ready to date again sings, I told ya so! Our shared memory was not just some fever dream. That spark, that moment in the bar, was real, and by some technological miracle, that spark has returned. Over dinner we breathe life into the ember, and it becomes a flame. There is so much to know about him. I want to know it all. We have so much in common, in so many ways. I see myself reflected back at me and for maybe the first time, I think I like what I see. He is effervescent, bursting with a current of energy that makes me want to grab hold of life. And at the same time, there’s this realness to him, a sense of a truly genuine guy who is present and interesting and interested. The date ends too soon. We agree on a second date while Sam is still in town. One of his friends is throwing a magazine launch party in Brooklyn. Very Samantha Jones. We meet for dinner again before the party and he tells me about his love of horror movies. I confess to my undying love for “Scream 2,” and we swap takes and recommendations back and forth. We float out of the restaurant and into the party, totally fixed on each other.

This guy is the best plus-one ever. So engaged, so full of life, so attentive. Walking around this party with him on my arm, I begin to think that maybe I could get used to this. Friends and strangers are as impressed as I am by his ability to click with almost anyone. I am more taken by the man I am getting to know. As we waltz around the room chatting and laughing, we learn everything we can about each other. I try not to think about the fact that I am leaving in the morning. I try not to think about the fact that I live a six-hour flight away. I try not to think about the fact that I’ve never had a serious relationship before, but suddenly, with Tony, it’s starting to feel possible. Right now, all we have is tonight. Anything that comes after would be a bonus. Right now, we are here. Hand in hand, whirling through the thick current of night and into a sunny May morning. Hand in hand, we walk to get food — breakfast sandwiches as big as your head — and stutter our tentative goodbyes. “See you soon,” Tony says to me. And I hope he means it.

I feel seen. Listened to in a way I don’t think I’ve felt before. That connection I felt when we met continues to deepen despite the fact that we haven’t been able to see each other again yet. I’m kinda intimidated by the strength of my own emotion. It’s a strange combination of wanting to explore where this feeling goes and the fear of starting something serious again. Am I getting in the way of my own happiness? The thought rolls around in my head, uninvited and unwilling to leave. We’ve only met three times and one of those was over four years ago. Can I really be feeling this way about Sam already? But I am. It’s real and I can’t deny it. Sam is amazing and is so open and clear with me. But I still have questions. Ones I’m too afraid to ask. The fear fills in the blanks for me. It dredges up old experiences and makes me question whether Sam is on the same page. I’ve done this all before. The feeling of falling then coming up short when the fit doesn’t feel quite right. I want to reach through my phone screen, hold his face in both my hands and ask him, Is this as real for you as it is for me?

Tony has this stupid hat in his closet. It’s shaped like a goose. And I couldn’t love it more. He says it was for some costume party but he never ended up wearing it. We’ve been bonding over movies lately, so we put a bunch of our faves and stuff from our “To Watch” lists in the hat. Whenever we’re bored, we pull a movie from the hat and watch it together on a call. It’s been so incredible to get to know Tony, I am learning so much about him. About his childhood down in Virginia, his time touring as a musical theater performer. About how gentle and kind and thoughtful he is. This guy is amazing. But usually when people get into long-distance relationships, they’ve spent at least some time together first, right? I’ve never really done this before, never got to the stage where it feels so important. Does he even wanna get into something so difficult? So expensive? So … logistically complex? I know my walls are up. I’m projecting old fears onto Tony but I wish I could march around to his house, look him in the eye and ask, Do you like me as much as I like you?

Just before the Fourth of July weekend, we hop on a video call. It’s easy, comfortable. Although we’ve both been busy, juggling work, packed social lives, and being dads to our two very different dogs, when we find time to chat, it’s like no time has passed at all. Talking to Sam is the easiest thing in the world. He sees me in a way I’ve always wanted to be seen. Listens in a way I’ve always wanted to be listened to. We chat about our plans for the weekend, and I realize we both have a few days open. Sometimes in life, when you really want something, when something seems this good, you’ve got to take a risk. “Book a flight,” I say. “Come see me this weekend.”

I can’t believe he just asked me that. Of course I’m gonna go. You gotta answer when opportunity knocks like that. We end the call, and I book the next flight out to NYC. When I land, we drop off my stuff at Tony’s place and head straight out to Coney Island. It’s a magical day. We grab watermelon margaritas on the pier, and it starts to sink in that he’s right here beside me. We run around the theme park like little kids, hopping on rides, challenging each other to one-on-one laser tag. We laugh so much it feels like we’re gonna burst open. We take the train back to Tony’s place, wrapped in the day, cheeks flushed from the excitement. Fireworks doesn’t even cover it.

No one told me that falling in love would be this easy or this complicated. We bonded so much over the things we have in common that I worry we’ve ignored our differences. I was raised by Black Southern Baptists in Virginia, which doesn’t exactly map onto Sam’s experience as a white Jewish guy from the New York suburbs. Even though we came from different places, I don’t feel a gap between us. It’s like we’re looking in the same direction, just from different starting points. Where it matters most — the things we want, the things we value — we’re right beside each other. We both want something real. Something sturdy enough to last through the hard days and soft enough to feel like home. Maybe that’s the real miracle: finding someone whose heart beats at a rhythm that sounds like your own.

I feel this sense that, somehow, even with all the different roads we took to get here, we’re meeting at the same destination. It’s not just chemistry or attraction anymore. It’s something steadier, something that feels like a real foundation. And with Tony flying out to LA soon for two whole weeks, the energy between us is pure excitement and relief. Relief that, for once, timing and luck and life are all on our side. That soon, it won’t be screens and airports between us, just air.

When I step through Arrivals I see Sam waiting for me. The warm summer day buzzes with anticipation. Sam’s short film has been accepted into a film festival in Hollywood. I meet his sister and her boyfriend and it’s just as easy as everything else with Sam seems to be. We get our picture taken on the red carpet and it feels like we’re the ones in a movie. The lights go down as Sam’s film starts and I hold his hand as I get a proper glimpse of the artist I’m falling for.

Tony is the perfect person to have on my arm for this moment. The red carpet, the premiere. I am so glad this has all fallen into place. But I jokingly remind Tony that my life isn’t always this glamorous, this picture perfect. He gives me a look and a squeeze of the hand that lets me know that even without all this, he’d be here. Then suddenly someone is calling my name and our film has won its category. I’m overcome with emotion and I just keep thinking: Is all this real?

When he asks me the first time, I don’t have an answer. I know what I feel, but I need to be sure.

When I ask him, he says he needs some time. I give him time, but I don’t know how much I have. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to ask him again.

I take some time. Get centered. Ground myself in the knowledge of what I feel in my heart. I take a deep breath. And I’m ready to dive in. So, this time, I ask him, “Will you be my boyfriend?”

I’m flying to New York to stay with my boyfriend. It’s a simple sentence. I try it out a few times. Rolling it around my mouth. I say it out loud. To a few close friends and family. A simple sentence that holds so much. Over the past few weeks, it feels like we’ve broken through some sort of barrier. It’s like saying “I love you” made us realize we had to say all the other stuff too. We get real with each other. If we’re going to make this work, we have to communicate. Separated by an entire country, all we have when we’re apart is our words, so we gotta use them. I’m learning how to open up. Tony is patient and endlessly kind. We both have insecurities, doubts that seep into the present. If we keep these parts of ourselves hidden, we are standing in the way of the future we’re trying to build.

Having Sam stay for a whole month feels like winning the lottery. Here’s this wonderful guy, who I’ve been separated from for so long. And I get to wake up and see his face every day. For four whole weeks. We make the most of every second we have together. Whether it’s a rainy day trip to Woodbury Commons to pick out new outfits, or a bar crawl with our friends through Hamilton Heights, or a lazy Sunday morning snuggled up with our dogs, we know that every moment counts. I meet Sam’s parents and I get a peek at the wonderful recipe that created the man I love. After months of to-ing and fro-ing from coast to coast, carving out time for video calls and long-distance date nights, we finally get to slow down. We relax into a new and welcome domesticity. Wandering through my neighborhood discovering new favorites and old loves. Grocery shopping and cooking each other our favorite meals. Our dogs snuggle up together on the couch. One night we make a pilgrimage to the bar where we met, only this time we are together in the throbbing crowd and when the night ends we walk out hand in hand into cool fall air.

I don’t believe in “lost time.” When we first laid eyes on each other in that hazy bar, neither of us were ready for what we have now. We met each other exactly when we needed to. Tony has taught me to open up and for the first time, I truly know that I’m worthy of the love he shows me. I used to think I needed to change in order to find love, but Tony never allows me to forget that I’m already enough. We throw a beautiful 15-person dinner followed by karaoke for Tony’s birthday. Surrounded by family and friends, celebrating him and each other, the moment feels like a really important milestone.

We never go for more than three weeks without seeing each other. And we never leave each other’s cities without knowing when the next time will be. It feels safe, soft, and solid. I don’t think I understood what real love looked and felt like, until now. I never felt confident enough, strong enough. But now I see the world in a different way. I hear things in a different way when Sam says them. When we met, it felt like we were both so ready. We hit the ground running. And we’ve been scampering through life together ever since. For the first time in my life, when Sam tells me I’m beautiful, I believe it. We are helping each other write a new story. And this is just the prologue.

William Rayfet Hunter is a British-Jamaican author, essayist, and poet from the North West of England. They write about love, power, and the messy parts of being alive. Their debut novel, “Sunstruck,” was published in May 2025.

When Ola showed up at the front door of Lia’s apartment in London, she immediately thought that he was dressed a little too casually. It was an unorthodox first date, him coming over a day after they matched on Hinge, but it was still a first date, after all. I have my work cut out for me, Lia thought to herself. 

But when she invited him over, Lia had told him to “come as you are.” Ola was tall and gregarious; he’d told her that he played on an intramural football team. Maybe those football-cuffed jogging bottoms and trainers were what he’d worn the whole day? 

Lia’s hair was usually in long box braids, but she hadn’t gotten it done in a while. That day, uncharacteristically, she threw on a wig. I want to look casual, but not too casual, cuz I’m at home — what’s the outfit for that? Lia hadn’t been in the apartment for more than a month, but she tidied up quickly to host that night.

A cosign from a mutual friend was enough to get her past the ick of seeing that one video of Ola dancing on social media. This was going to be her last attempt at dating — Lia decided that well before they matched. Men in London are unserious! Remember the man who surprised her with the reveal that his ex was pregnant with his child … absolutely not! Lia was feeling a little bit eager and a little bit whatevs when she told Ola to come over to her place and that she’d cook for him.

Lia’s building was nice. There were cute local shops outside, and a concierge downstairs. Ola felt like that Quinta Brunson meme: She got money! Was it OK that he didn’t? 

When they video chatted the night before, he wanted to be upfront about having been laid off recently, and he was still looking for work. Ola wasn’t certain he’d measure up. He only realized after they hung up that he had accidentally talked at Lia for an hour. He knows he’s a bit of a yapper. But he wanted her to know that he was ambitious and driven, that he wasn’t out of a job for lack of trying. 

Ola approached Lia’s apartment door. He’d taken a break from dating as he grieved his mother, who died in 2017. When he was ready to start looking for “the one” again, he had trouble finding his footing. His openness was perceived as being too eager. Before he responded to Lia on Hinge, he was going to give dating one last chance. Ola didn’t have a “type,” but Lia’s profile made her seem so striking: Black, beautiful, inquisitive, confident.

Ola was in her apartment and a plantain was on the stove. Lia had big-upped her cooking when they were on the phone, but she actually didn’t love cooking for other people. She was nervous, and she could see that Ola was nervous, which made her more nervous.

Ola was talking at her again, like he had when they video chatted. It didn’t bother her at all. Usually, she was the one oversharing as someone else played it cool. The man in her kitchen was so open: his mother died a few years ago, and the way he talked about missing her was so vulnerable. OK, so he wasn’t making six figures, and didn’t have a job, and he couldn’t drive — split-the-check TikTok would have a field day here. But it didn’t matter to Lia. She still wanted to give him a chance! She was so at ease getting to know Ola that the plantain started to char on the stove.

Ola could hear himself talking again, going off on tangents as he’s wont to do. But Lia was such a patient listener. He could tell that she was embarrassed about the burnt plantain, but he was happy to eat her food. He looked down at his joggers. He’d picked them because he wanted to show Lia the real him. He felt totally seen by her ... and the food wasn’t so burnt. They sat on Lia’s uncomfortable sofa, and she turned on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” Ola looked at her and said he didn’t want to see anyone else, that he only wanted to get to know her. She nodded and said the same. They deleted Hinge then and there.

When Ola left, Lia felt such a buzz of energy. She wanted to call someone — not an “I just met the one!” call but a “So there’s this guy that I think is very fun ...” call. Her grandparents were the first to pick up the phone. She told them about the Nigerian man she was interested in. Her grandfather said he spoke a bit of Yoruba … Lia took it as a good sign. 

Not long after that date, Lia accompanied Ola to his friend’s flat for a party. It was there that they made their relationship official. In the car home, Lia felt giddy. They were side by side in her bathroom, each brushing their teeth, when she said she loved him. He said it back that night, but the next morning it felt even more real, not just a post-party buzz. Ola told her he loved her, so casually, so naturally, before he laced up his trainers and headed out for a run in the park.

Ola said he was driven, and Lia believed him. A personality quiz at her job said she was a “developer,” that she was uniquely skilled at helping realize potential. She reviewed his resume and helped him practice interviewing. After months applying for jobs, Ola’s confidence was gone. She revved him up with renewed energy. He said he’s ambitious, so I’m going to hold him to that, she thought. If he could just get to an interview, Lia knew he was so talented that he could have any job he wanted.

Ola didn’t mind the extra set of eyes. He could get advice from his friends, but he’d never found himself in a partnership quite like this one. Lia had grown up upper-middle class, and gone to private school. She was only working part-time, but she was very ambitious! Her grandfather was a diplomat and her parents owned property. Ola appreciated how willing she was to get into the trenches with him. He’d felt a little insecure about his ADHD — it made keeping track of where he’d applied and when he was set to interview more difficult. That stuff was easy for Lia, and she was happy to help out. Ola had been a little down on himself while looking for work, his usual joviality could run cold in the face of all that uncertainty. Lia lightened every mood.

Was it because Lia and her sisters had been the only Black girls in their mostly-white secondary school, or was it because she barely knew how to two-step that she always felt self-conscious? Like she’d always be perceived as somewhat serious? Ola’s friends were dynamic and interesting, and he had so much personality on the dance floor. Even when she was feeling shy, one of the things she loved about Ola was how he always brought her in — into the joke, into the conversation, into his level-headed certainty.

When he finally landed a job, months into their relationship, they went on a proper date. Lia wore a leopard-print dress and treated him to their dinner at a tapas restaurant. Ola felt weird, like he was coming off too reserved. The intensity of the last few months of his life had given him whiplash: single, dating, job searching, employed, suddenly in a very serious relationship. He needed to come up for air. He was yapping again, trying to introduce the idea gently … should they take a bit of a step back? This is already the longest relationship I’ve ever been in, he thought to himself.

You’ve wasted my time, Lia thought. She was irate. Had she really buoyed his confidence all those months only for him to get a job and decide he wanted something different? On some level, perhaps, Lia could only see her investment and what she’d given up to choose Ola’s love. If you want to go on a break, that’s a breakup, and we’re done, she thought. Or we’ll try and work through what the issues are. She knew she had a tendency to come in hot-headed and guns blazing, but she was furious.

Lia had imagined a romance with someone more established, more mature. Her last relationship had been with a white English guy, who checked some of those boxes. And yet, even after four years together, Lia had never felt totally relaxed around his family. He still didn’t get that she’d wash bundles in the sink or how much she loved her lotions.

Ola was the center of attention in every room, he was so good at drawing people near him. He wasn’t great at budgeting but set aside money from his paycheck to send home to his dad, whom Lia adored. Ola regularly took three trains to come over to her apartment. Of course he loved her. She saw past Ola’s imperfect delivery — he was scared. They both wanted to be together forever. He thought a brief pause — just to regain perspective! — could get them there.

I knew that I didn’t know how to explain it, Ola thought. He didn’t want to break up. He regretted bringing it up at all. He loved Lia, and their relationship. But he didn’t want money to hold them back. It bothered him that they couldn’t afford a vacation, or a fancy dinner, or a big party for Lia’s birthday. There was still a voice in his head saying that he wasn’t where he should be, and he wanted the best for Lia and to be the best for Lia.

But where should his life be? Money wasn’t what gave Ola’s life purpose. He grew up in government housing and had only just gotten a job again after a period of unemployment. I have a lot of love to give to people because of my mother, because of the way she loved others, he thought. He loves community and family — what his mother loved, too. He couldn’t give Lia fancy gifts but he could give her his time and his attention.

Lia saw it Ola’s way: what actually mattered to her was spending time with the people she loved. That meant having Ola come over to her flat, curling up together on that uncomfortable sofa, watching TV, and trying not to burn their dinner. Navigating Ola’s job search made her get even closer to him. Their fight about what constitutes a “break” and what constitutes a “breakup” helped her communicate in ways she never had before. With Ola, she could be open.

Now, on Wednesday nights, Lia works late on a side hustle. Ola is almost ready for bed when she gets home, but he still meets her at the bus stop to escort her for the three-minute walk from the bus to their front door. He’s still wearing joggers, sometimes even slippers. Five years into their relationship, Lia doesn’t mind at all.

Hunter Harris is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Times, GQ, and other publications. She crashed a party with Usher and shadowed the cast of HBO’s “Succession.” She writes Hung Up, a newsletter about movies and TV with over 175,000 readers, and co-hosts the Wondery podcast “Lemme Say This.” Previously, she was a staff writer at New York Magazine and wrote on HBO’s “Gossip Girl.”

Caitlin takes her time with the outfit. After several jacket/purse/boot combinations, she lands on white bomber/tan crossbody/brown cowboy, respectively. She sighs with relief — the hardest part is over. Boots and all, she lays on top of her duvet, and waits.

Any minute, Tian will text her saying he’s left the house, and she will leave at exactly that moment. Everything will go according to plan. 

She taps her phone, sees the background photo of her two cats. Opens Hinge. Looks at his photos again. Yes, good. Skater vibes, fashion sense. Trilingual! Well-traveled. Maybe even better traveled than she is. Her type. 

She already knows she likes him. They’ve been talking for two weeks — he’s the last one she texts before she goes to sleep and the first one she texts when she wakes up. One would think that knowing each other would make the first date easier, would ease the nerves. But one would be wrong.

She knows some of her anxiety stems from other circumstances, ones out of Tian’s control. Her job, for starters. She’d expected London’s fashion industry to be artistic and glamorous, but it’s just late nights and early mornings, and a schedule that’s to blame for why she and Tian haven’t met yet. He’s been busy too, and as a result, they’ve scheduled this date like a meeting, holding time on their calendars weeks in advance. Is this normal, or does it mean they’re already bad at prioritizing each other, treating their relationship like a job? Is the whole thing over before it’s begun?

Then, of course, there’s the trip she has scheduled next week. She’s supposed to go to Mexico City, and it’s just like any other vacation … except it’s with her ex. She’s not involved with said ex anymore (aside from the cats they co-parent together) but Caitlin doesn’t want to explain all that to Tian at this stage. It would imply she comes with baggage — packed-to-the-brim, past-the-weight-limit baggage — and Tian seems like someone who could travel the whole world with only a carry-on. She doesn’t want to show him that she overpacks just yet. 

She’s thought about canceling the trip, but each time she has the urge, she stops herself. That would be absurd; she hasn’t even met Tian in person. Canceling a vacation to a city she can’t wait to see on the chance that she’ll have chemistry with a guy from an app?

Calm down, she tells herself. Relax.

The phone vibrates. She sits up. Reads the text as she’s walking out the door.

“i’m almost here” 

“sorry forgot to text when i was leaving lol”

Shit.

She runs.

Tian leans against the wall of Euston Station, one leg bent. He lifts the bent leg up, shimmies his shoulders down the wall a bit more.

When will Caitlin get here? He wants to be in the right position when she comes up that escalator. He switches legs, puts his sunglasses on, tries another pose. Reverts back to the first one again.

He should have texted her right when he left the house. Admittedly he makes mistakes like this often, but it’s never a reflection on whether or not he cares about a person; his mum always asks him to text her when he lands, and he’s never once texted her when he lands.

And this girl isn’t just any girl. This is the girl he’s been video chatting with because her schedule was as jam-packed as his was, and he liked her too much to wait until they could hang out IRL. The girl who knows he’s a history nerd and still wants to talk to him. The girl who messaged him first on Hinge, asking what animal he would be.

“people describe me as a street cat,” he replied. “you?” 

“omg same,” she said. “as mum to two cats i guess it makes sense”

“got room for one more?” he asked.

She took a beat to reply, then said exactly what he hoped she would, “i do x”

The conversation was more honest than it seemed — Tian really does embody a street cat, bouncing from city to city, his gut deciding where to go next. Impulsivity has always been part of his charm, but recently he’s been longing for stability with someone else, a consistent companion. It’s a normal thing to want, but the desire conflicts with everything he knows about himself. Is a street cat even cut out to settle down? 

Regardless, he really likes Caitlin. She seems like someone who might be open to an adventure, but also craves structure and admires ambition. He wants to show her that side of himself, explain his vision for a travel business, but then he’d have to tell her about his plan to move abroad, and that he likely won’t live in the U.K. for more than a year. He could always ask her to move with him, but that would be crazy. 

She’d never say yes.

But what if … she did?

Caitlin wipes sweat off her brow. It’s an especially cold October day, and her jacket is the kind that traps heat the second you step onto the Tube — too wrapped up in nerves to take it off, she’s been roasting the entire 40-minute ride. The train pulls into the station and she sprints onto the platform, panting and fanning her face as she runs. She makes it to the extra-long escalator knowing he’ll be waiting at the top, grateful for the extra few seconds to recover.

I’m drenched, she panics. He’s going to think I’m a mess.

Ooh, she’s cute, he thinks. And so put together too. 

The date is less of a date and more of an odyssey, an epic saga with different stories unfolding in every scene. There’s the cafe where they swap tales of near-death experiences, where he only orders a coffee because he’s so nervous; how could a person eat at a time like this? There’s the hour walk where Caitlin tells him she dreams of quitting her job someday. There’s the Tate Modern where she tells him she’s never seen “Before Sunrise,” and he gasps so loud that they get shushed by a museum guard.

When they head outside again it’s night; somehow time has kept moving even as they’ve stood still. They walk along the Thames, and though it’s fall, the stars gleam with the zeal of a summer sky.

They take a break, sitting on a bench under a lamppost. Tian can feel himself about to drop a historical anecdote, but a voice in his head tells him to rein it in. He considers it, but no — that’s who he is. Better she know him through and through, his authentic self, then assess if she can stand the heat.

“Do you want to know a fun fact about this specific lamppost?”

“Do I ever.”

“People call this a ‘dolphin’ lamp, but it’s actually a sturgeon.”

“Wow,” Caitlin says. Is this her dry humor, or does she actually like his trivia? Is she feigning interest, or does she actually like … him?

Should he kiss her? He wants to kiss her.

When will he kiss me? she thinks. I don’t mind the lamp stuff, but come ON.

Now he’s hanging off the post like Gene Kelly, and as if reading her mind, he swings toward her. Their lips touch, then both pull back, pleased with the effortlessness of what will hopefully be the first of many.

She likes him. Really likes him. Maybe she should cancel her trip after all.

After one date? Don’t be absurd.

What’s even to say he likes her?

He likes her, a lot a lot a lot. It’s fast but he knows. Who cares if it’s only their first date? It’s an endless adventure, a Linklater fantasy come to life. At some point he’ll have to catch the train home, but not yet. Not yet not yet not yet. 

The lack of food catches up to him. They find a tapas spot, grabbing a welcoming table with red pillows. Tian orders in Spanish, then hears the waiter say “tá bom” and switches to Portuguese.

Espero que isso me faça parecer legal, he thinks. I hope this makes me look cool.

God he looks cool, Caitlin thinks. And he doesn’t even know it.

Casually speaking multiple languages? Is this waiter a paid actor, or is Tian just that good? Being around him makes her feel like a springy and spontaneous version of herself — an unmoored Caitlin filled with creative chaos, reaching all of her potential yet soaring higher still. 

After three hours, they leave the restaurant, searching for excuses not to call it a night. They walk to a Tesco, buy canned mojitos. Rain starts falling, and they take cover on the National Portrait Gallery steps, where they kiss again. 

“Come back to mine?” she asks. 

“I have to catch the train,” he says.

She can tell he’s just trying to be respectful, as if he’d decided beforehand that he wouldn’t try to go home with her. She understands that — she doesn’t want to ruin this either. But maybe if she asks again …

“We can watch ‘Before Sunrise,’” she says. 

The magic words.

“Deal.”

The next morning, Tian leaves in the afternoon. He expects not to hear from her much while she’s in CDMX, but they talk constantly. Listening to her fawn over the city makes him imagine traveling with her, and he can’t get the idea out of his head. 

They have their second date the day she returns, and he says “I love you” in front of a Jollibee at Leicester Square. The location could have been more romantic, yes. They’ve only known each other a month, also yes. But she says it back, so maybe everything is just right.

They bask in the reciprocity for a moment, but then he can’t help himself.

“Would you ever move?” he asks. “To Asia, for a year or so? With me?”

She doesn’t recoil, but thinks for a moment.

“What about my job?” 

“You hate your job,” he says.

“True,” she laughs. “But what about my cats?”

“Bring them! More the merrier.”

“I can’t,” she says, her voice suddenly quiet. “I co-parent them.”

He cocks his head. This is new information.

“With who?” he asks.

Caitlin looks down, avoiding his gaze.

“My ex.”

Tian tries to make sense of the pang in his gut. He’s hurt, but hurt by what? It’s not that her ex is still in the picture. No. He trusts her. Maybe it’s the fact that he, a street cat, is being constrained — and by house cats, no less. 

Ordinarily he’d run away right now, but he feels compelled to lean toward her. Is this what it feels like to be tethered to something? To someone? 

“Can I meet them?” he asks.

“My cats or my ex?”

He swallows hard, pushing through his resistance.

“How about all three?”

The next six months are a blur, mostly rearranging plans so they can see each other. During Fashion Week, she works more than 80 hours while Tian watches her cats. Whenever she gets a second to daydream with him, the two of them talk about his business, the potential to build something together. She sees it: Their future.

She does want to move. And she does want to quit her job. But wanting and doing are different things. She’s afraid of the hard conversation with her manager. She’s afraid of leaving her cats with her ex for a year (think of the children!). And though all of this is absolutely true, maybe it’s not the whole truth — maybe she’s also afraid to cut the cords to her existing life and take the leap. Because if they jump, where will they land?

Whatever the reason, she procrastinates. One more month turns into two, turns into six. And finally, Tian asks her if she’s serious.

She takes a deep breath. She wants to travel. She wants to work for herself. Most importantly, she wants to do it with him.

“I’ll talk to my manager tomorrow,” she says. She’s said this before, but this time it’s true.

Their flight to Bangkok leaves at 2 p.m., so he goes to her house at dawn to help her pack. Piles of clothes sit around the room, Caitlin between them, overwhelmed.

“Why do you need heeled boots?” Tian asks. “And three pairs of white trainers?”

“I just do.”

They roll up her shirts and stuff socks into purses, making space however they can. When they’re done they try to shut the bag, but it flops half-open.

“I packed light,” she insists.

“Very,” he replies. 

Together they sit on the suitcase, their weight pushing down on its contents until the zipper slides effortlessly along the seam. 

Caitlin exhales, standing the luggage upright.

“I’m really gonna miss your cats,” Tian says.

“Me too.” She smiles, then grabs his hand. “Let’s go.”

Jen Winston is a writer and bisexual whose work focuses on dating, queerness, and the millennial condition. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book “Greedy: Notes From a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much,” which was named a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2022.

If you were to ask my wife Debbie the story of how we met, she would tell you a rather charming and romantic story of persistence and pursuit with a woman who didn’t realize she was being persistently pursued until after the fact. It took more than a year, and it was only when she finally emailed me and asked if she could take me out on a “proper date,” that I understood her intentions.

If you were to ask me the story of how my wife and I met, some of the details would be the same, but many would be different, because that’s how love works. I was clueless and then, when I finally got that fateful email, I was so charmed by the phrase “proper date,” that I wrote back and said, “Sure.” In retrospect, I am not at all certain how we managed a successful first date given the brevity of my reply, but here we are.

We met first at a book event I was doing and after, we went to dinner at a midtown steakhouse. I picked the restaurant, and as we walked in, it was loud and crowded. There was live music, and you could barely hear yourself think above the din. I immediately regretted my choice and worried that the evening was going to be a disaster as we shouted across the table at each other. At one point, I spilled water on Debbie, and I wilted inside because any chance of seeming cool vanished, instantly.

But then, and this is where our stories are the same, we had a lovely time, made plans for a second date and, on the street outside the restaurant, before we parted ways, Debbie asked if she could kiss me and I said yes and then we did and it was spectacular.

Nearly seven years later, we write our love story every day as we build and nurture a life together. And that story is stronger because, in the beginning, we had our individual stories and our unique perceptions of every word exchanged, every gesture made, every moment of connection. And still, we were able to navigate the tender anxieties of early romance and hold on to the new relationship, reaching for each other across the bridge between the stories she was telling herself and the stories I was telling myself, the obstacles of time and distance, and the occasional misunderstandings.

That’s what successful dating is — two people finding a way to tell a shared story that can blossom alongside the histories we bring into new relationships, the doubts and fears and hopes and yearnings we carry with us. The five couples featured in No Ordinary Love were all willing to risk diving into the unknown when they matched on Hinge. They had enough hope to believe something promising was on the horizon. They made connections, even as the people in each couple were telling themselves very different stories about their shared experiences. And now, they are writing perfectly imperfect stories together.