Chapter 1
Elara
Okay but here’s the thing about Xaviar.
“He didn’thaveto catch her,” I tell Gerald. “She tripped over a tree root. A tree root, Gerald. She’s a grown woman with a sword. She has killed people. And he just—” I make the motion. The catch. One arm, no warning, like gravity is something he negotiates with personally. “He justdidit. Didn’t even look up from the map. Caught her, set her back on her feet, kept looking.”
Gerald says nothing. Gerald is a pothos. But he’s a good listener, which is more than I can say for most people I’ve dated.
I read that scene four times. Then I read it a fifth time, slower, because the fourth time I was rushing and that’s disrespectful to the craft. The author put a comma in the middle of the catch. A comma. Like even the sentence had to pause and recover.
“And the worst part,” I say, pointing at Gerald with my coffee so he understands this is the important part, “is that he’s not even the love interest. He’s thesideone. The author is just handing these out now.Just—” I flick my fingers like I’m scattering birdseed. “Catching women left and right. Off the books. No receipt.”
If Xaviar were real, the whole arrangement would collapse immediately. That’s what nobody tells you. Real men do not catch you without looking up from the map. Real men look up from the map, assess the situation, decide whether catching you fits into their morning, and by then you’re already on the floor with a concussion and a story you’ll tell at brunch.
No. The catch only works because he’s made of paper and somebody good wrote him. If he were real I’d find out he chews with his mouth open, or has opinions about cryptocurrency, or textsk.The single letter. The lowercase one. A war crime.
He’s not real, and that’s why it’s perfect. I have the love of a man who will never disappoint me because he does not exist. This is, I’m fairly sure, the healthiest relationship I have ever been in.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I tell Gerald, who is not looking at me like anything, because he doesn’t have eyes. “It’sfine.I read romance. I don’tdoromance. Those are completely different activities and only one of them requires pants.”
I take a sip of coffee. It’s gone cold but I drink it anyway.
The article is due Friday.
I know it’s due Friday because the email saiddue Friday,and then my editor sent a follow-up that just saidFriday :)and the smiley face was a threat. I know it was a threat because Julie does not use emojis. Julie uses emojis the way other people use the wordfrankly.When the colon-parenthesis comes out, someone is about to lose a kidney.
The piece is called — and I want it on record that I did not name it —“Why Nobody Wants to Meet in Real Life Anymore (And WhyThat’s Actually Healthy).”For Dopamine. Where I work. Where my job is to have feelings about cultural trends in a way that makes people forward the link to their group chat with three crying-laughing faces and the wordliterally.
The problem is that I am the single worst human being alive to write this article.
Not because I disagree. Ideeplyagree. I am the trend. I am the reason the trend has a trend. I meet plenty of people. Online. Where it’s safe and the lighting is good and I can close the tab if it gets weird. The last time I met someone new in real life on purpose was a wedding, and I spent the reception hiding in a coat closet avoiding everyone, so. The data supports my thesis.
The problem is the cursor.
It’s blinking at me. Top left. In an otherwise white and entirely empty document. Blink. Blink. Blink. Just sitting there. Confident. It has nowhere to be and it knows it.
I type:In an increasingly digital world—
I delete it. We are not opening within an increasingly digital world.I have standards.
I type:Let’s be honest.
Delete. Let’s not.
I type:Remember when—
I get up to make more coffee.
This is the part where I should explain that I’m being productive even if it doesn’tseemlike it. My brain needs to wander. And, let’s be honest, some of history’s greatest thinkers did their best work in the shower or on long walks or while staring at a wall.
I am staring at a wall. So really, I’m in excellent company.
I make the coffee. I drink some of it before it’s done, which scalds my tongue, which is fine, that’s just adrenaline now, that’s free focus. While it brews I eat one of the breakfast bars from the box on the counter, the ones with the oats and the little chunks of dried fruit, and I tell myself this is breakfast.
“There are at least three raisins in every bar,” I say, around the bar. “That’s basically a salad.”
I have not had a vegetable since Tuesday. The raisins are doing the work of an entire food group and they’re not even being thanked for it.
