Three months in, they started sleeping on video calls.
It wasn't planned. It happened the way most things happened between them—slowly, naturally, without anyone making a conscious decision. One night, John said he wanted to see her face. She said okay. He sent the video request. She answered.
And there he was.
Not a photo. Not a description. Him. His actual face.
He had dark hair that fell across his forehead in a way that looked accidental but probably wasn't. Brown eyes that were darker than she expected. A small scar above his left eyebrow that he had never mentioned.
"You have a scar," she said.
"Fell off my bike when I was twelve."
"You never told me that."
"It never came up."
She studied his face the way you study a map of a place you've never been but want to visit. Every detail felt important. The shape of his jaw. The way his nose was slightly crooked, like it had been broken once. The small mole near his mouth that she wanted to touch.
"Now I feel weird," he said.
"Why?"
"Because you're staring."
"I'm not staring. I'm looking."
"Same thing."
"It's really not."
He laughed, and she watched the way his face changed when he laughed—the crinkle around his eyes, the way his shoulders relaxed, the small shake of his head like he couldn't believe she was real.
"You're pretty," he said.
She looked away from the camera. "You don't have to say that."
"I'm not saying it because I have to. I'm saying it because it's true."
Her face felt warm. She pushed her hair behind her ear, a nervous habit she had never been able to break.
"Can I see your room?" he asked.
"My room is messy."
"I don't care."
She turned the camera around. The mess wasn't that bad—just clothes on the chair, books stacked on the floor, the flickering light casting everything in uneven shadows.
"Your light is still broken," he said.
"Landlord doesn't care."
"You should fix it yourself."
"I don't know how."
"Send me a picture. I'll tell you what to do."
"You're going to walk me through fixing a light?"
"I'm going to try."
She smiled. "Okay."
They spent the next twenty minutes with her standing on a chair, phone propped against a stack of books, following his instructions. The light required a new bulb—that was it. Just a new bulb. She had been living with the flickering for months because she had never bothered to check something so simple.
"It works," she said, staring at the steady glow.
"Told you."
"You're annoying."
"You're welcome."
She sat back down on her bed, picking up the phone and pointing the camera at her face again. He was smiling. She was smiling too.
"Now I can see you better," he said.
"The light was fine before."
"The light was terrible before."
"The light had character."
"The light was a safety hazard."
"Tomato tomato."
"There it is again."
She laughed. He laughed. And they stayed on the call until she fell asleep, her phone propped against her pillow, his face on her screen.
The video calls became the new normal.
They would talk for hours—about work, about food, about nothing—and then one of them would get tired, and instead of hanging up, they would just... stay. John would prop his phone against something on his end—a stack of books, a water bottle, whatever was nearby—and she would do the same, and they would fall asleep watching each other breathe.
It should have been strange. It should have felt invasive, too intimate for two people who had never met.
But it didn't.
It felt like home.
"You're weird," she told him one night, at 3 AM, both of them lying in their respective beds, phones propped up, faces illuminated by screens.
"Why am I weird?"
"Because you just lay there and stare at me."
"I'm not staring. I'm looking."
"Same thing."
"It's really not."
She threw a pillow at her phone. It bounced off the screen and landed on the floor.
"Did you just throw something at me?" he asked.
"Maybe."
"That's aggressive."
"You deserve it."
"For what?"
"For being you."
He grinned. She wanted to reach through the screen and touch his face. Not in a romantic way—or maybe in a romantic way, she didn't know anymore. Just in a human way. Just to feel if he was real.
"Tell me something I don't know about you," he said.
"Like what?"
"Anything. Something you've never told anyone."
She thought about it. There were a lot of things she had never told anyone. Too many, probably. But she wasn't ready for those. Not yet.
"I'm scared of the dark," she said.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. Not like... terrified. But I don't like it. I sleep with a nightlight."
"You're twenty-two."
"I know."
"That's kind of adorable."
"It's embarrassing."
"It's not. It's human."
She looked at him on her screen—the soft glow of his phone lighting up his face, the way his eyes were half-closed like he was fighting sleep.
"What about you?" she asked. "Something you've never told anyone."
He was quiet for a long time.
"I don't think I'm a good person," he said finally.
She waited.
"I try to be. I want to be. But I don't think I am. I think I'm selfish and lazy and I don't care about things the way I'm supposed to."
"Who told you that?"
"Nobody. I just know."
"John..."
"It's fine. I'm not upset about it. It's just true."
She didn't know what to say. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. That he was good, that he cared more than he knew, that the fact he was worried about being a bad person probably meant he wasn't one.
But the words wouldn't come.
So she just looked at him. And he looked back.
"Don't hang up," she whispered.
"I won't."
"Promise?"
"I promise."