Chapter 26 - Other People
The first time June saw the photograph, she barely paid attention to it.
Which was unfortunate.
Because Elliot clearly had.
It appeared while she was waiting for a train.
One of those long afternoons when everything seemed to involve standing somewhere and waiting for something else to happen.
Waiting for trains.
Waiting for emails.
Waiting for deadlines.
Waiting for life to catch up with itself.
She was scrolling mindlessly through stories when a familiar name appeared.
Elliot.
June paused.
Mostly out of habit.
The photograph showed a restaurant.
The second showed food.
The third showed a girl.
Not posing.
Not looking at the camera.
Just laughing at something outside the frame.
The story ended.
June continued scrolling.
The entire interaction lasted less than five seconds.
By the time her train arrived, she had already forgotten about it.
Or at least she thought she had.
Three days later, Elliot sent her a message.
Not about the girl.
Not about the restaurant.
Not about anything remotely related.
A photograph of a terrible parking job.
June laughed immediately.
Some things never changed.
The conversation lasted fifteen minutes.
Then twenty.
Then nearly an hour.
By the end of it, they somehow found themselves discussing a project June was struggling with.
Again.
Predictably.
At one point, Elliot disappeared for several minutes.
Then returned.
"Sorry."
"For what?"
"Dinner."
June stared at the screen.
Then blinked.
The explanation felt oddly specific.
She hadn't asked where he'd gone.
She hadn't even noticed.
"Oh."
Several seconds passed.
Then another message arrived.
"With the girl from the story."
June frowned.
The train station suddenly felt louder.
Not because of the sentence.
Because of the speed.
The explanation had arrived before the question.
Before curiosity.
Before anything.
Almost as if Elliot had anticipated it.
June read the message again.
Then typed:
"Okay?"
The reply arrived immediately.
"What?"
"What what?"
"You sound confused."
"I am confused."
Several seconds passed.
Then:
"I thought you'd ask."
June laughed.
Actually laughed.
The assumption felt absurd.
"Why would I ask?"
A long pause followed.
Long enough that June briefly wondered whether the conversation had ended.
Then another message appeared.
"I don't know."
The answer felt suspiciously incomplete.
June noticed.
Then ignored it.
As she usually did.
"Is she your girlfriend?"
The reply arrived so quickly it was almost funny.
"No."
A pause.
Then:
"We went out a few times."
Another pause.
Then:
"She's nice."
June smiled.
For some reason, that sentence felt more honest than anything else he'd written.
She's nice.
Simple.
No overexplaining.
No excuses.
No unnecessary details.
Just nice.
The conversation drifted elsewhere after that.
Projects.
Work.
Life.
The usual things.
Yet something about the exchange remained with her.
Not because Elliot was seeing someone.
That part seemed completely reasonable.
If anything, June was surprised it hadn't happened sooner.
What stayed with her was the explanation.
The immediate need to clarify.
The complete absence of defensiveness.
The strange sense that Elliot wanted her to feel comfortable before she had even become uncomfortable.
The realization followed her for several days.
Then eventually faded.
Life had a way of doing that.
Everything faded eventually.
Weeks passed.
Another story appeared.
Another girl.
Not the same one.
A different one.
This time June didn't even pause.
She tapped through automatically.
The way people flipped through pages of a magazine they weren't really reading.
The story disappeared.
Life continued.
Later that evening, a message arrived.
Not from Elliot.
From one of her friends.
The conversation wandered through several unrelated topics before eventually reaching dating.
As conversations always seemed to.
"What happened to that online guy?"
June stared at the screen.
"What online guy?"
The typing indicator appeared immediately.
Then:
"The one you've known forever."
June frowned.
It took her several seconds to realize who her friend meant.
"Oh."
Just:
Oh.
The realization surprised her more than it should have.
Because there had been a time when Elliot would have been the first person she thought of.
Now he required clarification.
The thought lingered.
Briefly.
Then vanished.
The same way most things did.
Outside, the city continued moving.
Inside, another deadline waited.
Another project.
Another version of the future.
And somewhere, beyond the edges of June's increasingly crowded life, Elliot continued becoming a person instead of a possibility.
The strange thing was that June barely noticed.
The stranger thing was that Elliot never stopped noticing her.
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