Briana sent me a friend request.
Instant jolt of adrenaline.
My social media was not easy to find. She’d had to have gone looking for it. Why?
We’d been passing notes back and forth—it wasn’t flirting. She’d been clear with me on that. I’d actually felt a twinge of disappointment when she’d said it.
I mean, I guess I wasn’t really flirting either. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, I just wasn’t that bold. It took a lot for me to make a first move or even to accept that a woman might be open to that. Everything we were doing was more forward than I was usually comfortable with, even on a friends-only level. Maybe it was easier because we didn’t speak to each other? Just the letters. It felt like speaking to each other wasn’t allowed, like it wasn’t part of it. Was this? Being friends on Instagram?
I wasn’t one of those people who collected followers. The only people I let follow me were my closest friends and family. Not acquaintances, not people from high school. Close. The photos I shared were for those who knew me better than anyone, so I never worried about what they thought. But I cared what Briana would think. I cared a lot.
What if I accepted this friend request and she realized how boring I am? Or I somehow failed to meet some expectation of who I was outside of work? What if she simply didn’t like me once she knew me better?
I dragged a hand down my mouth and sat on the back steps. Why was a woman like her even engaging with me in the first place? I wasn’t interesting, I wasn’t fun.
Still, she’d sent the request. She must want me to approve it.
I stared at the notification for another long moment. Then I swallowed hard and accepted it.
I went straight to look at her wall. Her first picture was of her with a gray cat on her lap. He was rubbing his head affectionately on her chin. The caption said “my new roommate.” That must be Cooter.
Farther down the timeline there were a few pictures at a wedding. She was in a black dress, posing with the beaming bride, a redhead.
There were some nature pictures. A trail with light green leaves on the trees. A selfie in front of Minnehaha Falls. She was wearing sunglasses and a gray baseball hat in that one. She liked to hike, like me. There were a lot of pictures in the woods, camping. Superior Hiking Trail.
There was one of her in a bathing suit in a pool. I looked at this one longer than I probably should have. She had a nice figure. It was hard to tell under the scrubs, but she did. She was a very attractive woman.
There was a shot of her in a blue ballgown, like she was headed to an event, seven months ago. She looked beautiful.
As I scrolled down, I spotted a picture of her with her brother from two years ago. The difference was stark. The before-and-after of his illness. He was tan and fit. She looked happier too. She was wearing a wedding ring in this one.
She was married before? Maybe this is what she meant about the last year being hard.
If I didn’t know the situation with Benny, I might not have noticed the weariness in her now. She was beautiful then and she was beautiful today. But I could see the toll it had all taken.
I got a notification that she’d liked one of my pictures. Then another one that there was a comment. I tapped on it. It was my last picture of Lieutenant Dan. She’d written “he’s so cute! ?” I smiled.
Maybe she’d like to meet him. I thought about asking her if she’d like to go to the dog park with me after work one day. I could DM her.
We could message back and forth. Right now. I wanted to.
It was hard to have a running conversation via letters. It took too long. Even on days when we passed three or four notes, I had to wait all day to get a written response to just one question. And then on our days off, there were no notes at all.
The days where there were no notes felt particularly long.
But what to say? What message would I send? “Hey”？ I couldn’t send Hey. It had to be something smart. Or funny. Not Hey.
A notification popped up. I had a message. From Briana.
My heart lurched. I hurried to click on it.
Briana: Hey
My mind started to race. What should I reply? Hey too? Maybe I should ask an open-ended question. That way she’d have to respond so it wouldn’t just be Hey Hey and then nothing.
Another message popped up.
Briana: What r u doing?
Panicking???
I stood and started to pace. I typed into the message bar.
Me: Not much. At my cabin this weekend. You?
I read it over five times before deciding it was good. I changed You to U and then back again. I hit Send and stared at the screen.
No new message came through.
I waited a few minutes. Then I decided to go back to her wall, just to have something to do. But when I got there, I saw a red #1 on the message arrow telling me there was a DM. I went to tap it, but there was nothing there.
Shit. It was the Wi-Fi. My messages weren’t loading. Noooooo.
The cabin had crappy internet. Crappy cell service too. In fact, this was one of the reasons I came up here this weekend, to have plausible deniability when my family couldn’t get in touch to interrogate me. I knew if I’d stayed home, they would have shown up to corner me, so I fled up north. Only now my plan was backfiring because the only person I actually wanted to be able to talk to couldn’t get through.
There were times when I couldn’t get Instagram to load for hours. My cell phone had only one bar unless I went over to the little cabin-themed restaurant down the street to get a signal.
I was going over to the little cabin-themed restaurant down the street to get a signal.
I pulled on my shirt, grabbed my coat and wallet and Lieutenant Dan’s leash. I clipped it to his collar faster than I’ve ever moved in my life and then started running with him the quarter mile to the restaurant. As soon as I made it to their patio, their Wi-Fi connected to my phone and her message pinged.
Briana: Nothing. So bored.
I stood there, panting.
A server nodded to an empty table and I realized how I looked—sweaty and out of breath, like I went jogging in my jacket and work boots.
The server set a menu on the table and I took a seat and stared at the screen wondering what I should reply. But before I got the chance to, she sent another message.
Briana: Can I just call u?
She wanted to talk? On the phone?
I raked my hand through my hair. I did want to talk to her. But this didn’t really give me the time to change mental gears and get used to the idea that it was happening right now. I didn’t really do spontaneity, especially in social situations.
But I did want to talk to her…I wanted to talk to her a lot.
Me: Sure.
I typed in my phone number.
My cell rang immediately. I picked up on the first ring, and then kicked myself for looking so eager.
“Hey,” she said brightly.
This was the first word she’d spoken to me in person since the day over a week ago when she’d told me what cupcakes to bring.
“Hey,” I said back.
“Sorry, it’s just typing takes so long. Better just to talk to you,” she said.
“Yeah. No problem.”
“Okay, so I have to ask,” she said. “And I need you to be super honest. Are you sending me all the butt stuff?”
I choked out a laugh. “What?”
“I have gotten all of the weird butt-stuff patients this week. A zucchini, a headless Barbie, an antique candlestick—and the guy asked me to be careful pulling it out because it was his mother’s—are you sending me these? Do you have an arrangement with the charge nurses?”