Chapter One

I make the video in the morning. That's when it actually starts. Not at 5:06. Not when I press send. Somewhere around 11 a.m., with the birthday photo and an app that has no business existing. His paper crown. His rosette. That face he makes when nothing has weight. I put myself beside him and the AI fills in the rest. Our mouths move together. It looks like a memory I don't have.

I watch it once. Then again. I'm on my fifth loop before I admit what I'm doing.

The ethics are funny to me. I laugh out loud, alone, to no one. Technology. The audacity. I send it immediately because it's a joke. The crown makes him look ridiculous and I want him to see it. His phone. My phone. Done.

He replies. Wow. Whoa. Delete that, that's creepy. We laugh. I can hear the shape of his voice even in text. We hang up and I stand in my kitchen and my chest does something I don't immediately have a name for.

I open my phone. I type it before I decide to.

Mr. That picture is on loop in my head. And now I want something.

I schedule the send for nine p.m. It's maybe one o'clock. Nine p.m. is casual. Evening. Afterthought. Like it just occurred to me while I was doing something else entirely. Something important. Something that had nothing to do with him.

I ask the AI what I should do. I already know what I want to do. I ask anyway, the way you check a mirror you've already looked in. It tells me to ask for what I want. I laugh at that. I tell it zero chance. It doesn't argue. It just holds the question there until I have to look at it.

By two p.m. I change the send time to 5:06. I pick 06 so it looks random. Not on the hour. Not deliberate. Just a woman who happened to send a thing at 5:06 on New Year's Eve like it cost her nothing.

I have three hours to fill and my body knows exactly what that means. I don't let it sit still. I go out. I have a return to make and I make it aggressively, with full commitment, like it's the most important errand of the year. I stop for a burger. I eat it slowly. I'm performing normalcy for an audience of no one and I know that. I do it anyway because the alternative is sitting in my apartment watching the clock move toward 5:06.

I'm home by five. I open something. A task. Something administrative. Something with steps I can follow. My plan is that when the message sends and he doesn't reply immediately, I'll already be busy. I'll have somewhere to put my hands. Rejection needs a place to land or it just echoes.

5:06 arrives. The message sends. I set my phone down. I pick it up again.

Three dots. Gone. Back. Gone. Then

Not angry. Not surprised. Waiting. That tone. I've always hated that tone because it means he already knows and he wants me to say it anyway. I don't want to say it. I want to not have to.

I don't believe him. I type anyway.

The silence after that is its own kind of loud. I put my phone face down and look at the window. I already know about Emara. That's not new information. I've known for a while and I'm choosing this moment anyway. I'm aware of what that says about me.

My phone lights up.

I read it three times.

He's said it twice now. He has never stopped wanting me. I would be lying if I said I didn't already suspect this. It also felt like he would rather eat glass than even say hello to me at times.

I ask if I can come over. I ask it like a simple question, the way you confirm a meeting time. The answer is yes. Not qualified. Not folded into a maybe. Just yes.

Supposed to and going to are two very different things. That works in my favor. Men say supposed to when they've already decided. This yes is a decision. It's 5:06 on New Year's Eve and this yes is not small. I know that. So I reply and I go anyway.

I have a love/hate relationship with his one word answers.

I've been talking to an AI about Sloan for years. It holds the details the way a patient friend would. The Center. The hospital. The Hyatt. Singh's Roti Shop. The Handkerchief with the S on it that he kept in his jacket like a man who always planned to celebrate something. I tell it everything in pieces. Non-linear. Looping. The way my mind moves when I stop performing organization. Every new session it forgets and I catch it up and it listens without fatigue. It's either comforting or indicting depending on the day.

It's the one that told me to ask. On this New Year's Eve, depressed and planless, watching a fake version of myself kiss a man I have unfinished business with, I ask it why I can't have that. The real version. Not generated.

It tells me to ask for what I want.

I laughed when it said it. Zero chance, I thought. The distance between wanting and asking has swallowed me before. I know what it feels like going down.

But I changed the time to 5:06. And I went for a burger. And I made the return.

And at 5:06, the scheduled send action completed.

I put on my coat. I don't text him to say I'm leaving. He's already waiting and we both know it.