It started normally enough.
They'd been talking for about an hour. Nothing heavy, just the comfortable back and forth that had become its own kind of routine. He'd sent her a voice note of his sister saying something devastatingly accurate about a TV show they'd both watched, and Alya had listened to it three times because the sister's delivery was genuinely perfect and also because hearing his laugh in the background of it did something small and annoying to her chest.
She didn't examine that. She sent back a string of skull emojis and moved on.
Seth: okay can I ask you something?
Alya: you always ask that before you ask anyway
Seth: this time I'm actually asking first
Alya: …okay
Seth: can I see you?
She read it once. Read it again.
Alya: you've seen the photo
Seth: I've seen a photo. cropped. from a specific angle. in lighting that I'm pretty sure you chose on purpose
She put the phone face down on the bed.
He wasn't wrong. She had chosen on purpose. She had chosen very carefully and specifically on purpose and the fact that he had identified this from a single image was both impressive and deeply inconvenient.
She picked the phone back up.
Alya: what's wrong with good lighting?
Seth: nothing. I just want to actually see you. you don't have to if you don't want to
Alya: I know I don't have to
Seth: okay
Seth: so...
Alya: I'm thinking
Seth: take your time
She put the phone down again.
She looked at the ceiling. Then at the window. Then at herself in the dark mirror of her phone screen while it was still face down, which was not helpful.
The thing was, and she was aware of how completely unreasonable this was, it wasn't that she didn't want to. It was that she wanted to in the careful, measured way she wanted most things, which meant she needed a minute to figure out how much of the wanting to act on and how much to keep on her side of the line.
She picked the phone up. Opened her camera.
The first one was fine. Acceptable. The kind of photo that conveyed I exist and have a face without conveying anything else. She looked at it for three seconds and deleted it.
The second one was worse somehow. She looked stiff. She looked like someone who was aware of being photographed, which she was, but she didn't need the photo to announce it.
She moved to sit by the window. The evening light was coming in at a low angle, the kind that made everything look warmer than it was. She held the phone slightly above eye level, tilted it a fraction, waited for the light to catch right, and took the third one.
She looked at it.
It was good. Not aggressively good, not trying too hard good. Just her, actually, in a way the first two hadn't been. Her hair was doing something slightly chaotic on the left side that she'd normally fix but in the light it looked less like a problem and more like a thing that was simply happening. She was looking just slightly away from the camera, not enough to be posed, just enough to look like she wasn't performing.
She stared at it for a long moment.
Then before she could talk herself into the fourth one she sent it.
The typing indicator appeared almost immediately. Then stopped. Then appeared again.
Then stopped.
She put the phone face down.
She counted to ten.
She picked it back up.
Seth: your light knows what it's doing
Alya: it's just the window
Seth: the window and whoever decided to sit next to it
She looked at that for a second.
Alya: …thank you
Seth: the thing on the left side of your hair
Alya: I know. it does that
Seth: no I like it. it looks like you stopped fighting it
She reached up and touched the left side of her hair without meaning to.
That was a specific thing to notice. Not you look pretty in the general direction of her face. Not a comment on her eyes or her smile or any of the things people usually reached for. He had looked at the photo and noticed the one thing she'd almost cropped out, the one thing she'd considered fixing three times and left alone, and he had said he liked it because it looked like she'd stopped fighting it.
She sat with that for a moment.
Alya: you looked at it pretty carefully
Seth: I told you. I notice things
Alya: most people don't notice things like that
Seth: most people are looking at what they expect to see
She didn't respond immediately. She was still sitting by the window, the light still doing its warm evening thing across the floor. Outside the mountains had gone to their own deep gold, the shadows long and dramatic the way they got right before the sun committed to setting.
She looked at the photo again. Then at herself in the camera, in the same light, at the same angle.
She took another one. This one she wasn't thinking about. She just took it, the way you do something before you've decided to. She was looking directly at the camera this time. No angle. No slight away glance. Just straight at it, one eyebrow barely raised, like she was daring it.
She sent it before she finished deciding to.
Seth: …
Seth: okay
Alya: what?
Seth: nothing. just. okay
Alya: that's not a response
Seth: the first one you were comfortable. the second one you weren't thinking about it
Alya: and?
Seth: the second one is better
Alya: better how?
Seth: it looks like you
She closed the app.
Opened it.
Alya: how would you know what I look like?
Seth: I'm figuring it out
Seth: you said tell you when I figure it out
Alya: I said tell me when you figure out what my face communicates
Seth: same thing
Alya: it's really not
Seth: Alya
Alya: what?
Seth: you sent the second one without me asking
She had absolutely nothing to say to that. It was a fact and it was accurate and she had no reframe for it that would hold up under any real scrutiny.
Alya: the light was good
Seth: 😂
Alya: goodnight
Seth: the light was good 💀 goodnight Alya
Seth: hey
She waited.
Seth: thank you. for both of them
She read that twice. It was a simple thing to say. She had no idea why it landed the way it did, somewhere behind her sternum, quiet and warm and slightly inconvenient.
Alya: goodnight Seth
She put the phone down and didn't pick it back up.
She sat by the window until the light was completely gone and the mountains had dissolved into the dark, and she thought about the fact that she had sent the second photo without finishing the decision to send it, and that he had noticed that, and that I'm figuring it out was technically a chapter that was still open.
She thought about the second one looks like you and that she had no way of knowing if he was right because she wasn't sure she knew what she looked like when she wasn't thinking about it.
She thought about that for longer than she intended to.