Chapter 1
Danny wakes up in Eve’s bed the morning after the end of the tour with her head on his chest. His arm has absolutely no feeling in it.
He breathes very carefully so she can keep sleeping.
Eventually, the radiator turns on and Eve says, “Bang Clang, stop bullying me,” and pulls the covers over her head, so Danny pats her shoulder and goes to the kitchen to make coffee.
The apartment is hazy gold with morning light. It feels off-kilter. Shannon has moved the silverware drawer to the left. The loose-leaf tea has migrated in front of the coffee beans in the cabinet.
Danny starts a pot. He sprays lemon cleaner on the kitchen counter and wipes it down.
Last night, they came straight here after the show ended.
They did not talk much—he told her it was amazing, and they said how much they missed each other.
But mostly, they kissed, and they had sex, and they kissed, and they fell asleep.
They didn’t try out the app, and Danny did not mention how he’d been feeling—like he was trying to climb up a perfectly smooth wall with nothing to hold on to.
He throws away the paper towel and leans against the counter.
If it was meant to be, it would feel easier.
If it felt easy, it would mean he didn’t care.
Her bedroom door opens. She hasn’t put in her contacts; she’s wearing large, clear glasses. She crosses the kitchen and presses her face into Danny’s chest and squeezes him so tight it’s hard to breathe. He inhales delicately. She smells like her lotion, like grapefruit.
“Hi,” she mumbles.
He carefully touches the back of her head. Lifts a tendril of hair. He can feel the press of her glasses against his shoulder. The warmth of her mouth at his heart.
“Hi,” he says. “How are you?”
“I want to sleep for a hundred more years.”
He smooths her hair down the curve of her head. Draws circles between her shoulder blades.
“We can arrange that,” he says.
“You promise?”
“Absolutely.”
She pulls away to inspect him. “I still feel like plane.”
“You look cute.”
“Like a cute plane,” she says.
“Exactly.”
She rubs her thumb against his cheekbone and comes away with an eyelash.
“Perfect,” she says.
She showers and he sits on her bed with a mug of coffee. The mug, from Our Lady of Perpetual Breakfast, says brEW UNTO OTHERS, which Danny must admit is pretty good.
Eve is singing. Danny feels like it’s weird to listen but also weird not to. He doesn’t recognize the song. He busies himself answering Slack messages on his phone.
When she emerges in a towel, she smells even more strongly of grapefruit. “Do you remember what I was singing?”
“I liked it.”
“Yeah, me too. I turned off the water and it ran away.”
“Something about a canopy?”
Eve waves a hand. She climbs into his lap and pushes his shoulders until he falls back on the bed. Her hair drips against his face, and she wipes away the drop. He catches her wrist.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“Where are you?”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
She rubs at the crease between his brows until he smiles. “Ta-da,” she says, and she kisses his forehead, the tip of his nose, the corner of his lips. “I can see when your brain is going, you know.”
He didn’t know. “Uh-oh.”
“No uh-oh,” she says. “Nothing to uh-oh.”
She slides her hands up his chest and pulls his shirt over his head. She touches her lips to his, then her tongue. He rolls on top of her and the towel falls, and he kisses his way between her legs while she runs her hands through his hair.
It’s morning slow, easy, looking at each other, breathing together. Danny is overwhelmed by the feeling of being consumed. He loves her so much he does not exist outside of them.
After, curled together on the bed, she says, “I hear you finished the app.”
“ ‘Finished’ in the loosest sense of the word.”
“Can we try it?” Eve says.
“Do you want to?”
“You made it. Of course.”
He sends her the link to the beta and pretends he is feeling superchill about all of this. No big deal! Perhaps he should not have had three cups of coffee. When she gets it open on her phone, she tilts her screen away, so he does the same.
“You can’t look at my answers,” she says. “You’d find out how big a crush I have on you. It would be embarrassing for both of us.”
Danny smiles at his phone. He has stared at this interface for so many hours, but now, with Eve suntanned and languid and alive beside him, it seems small and robotic.
He clicks through the survey questions anyway, trying to be honest: About his insecurities—that he cares too much.
About what he values in Eve—the way her brain works, the way she makes him laugh, the sex.
About what he values in himself when he’s with her—a desire to be his kindest self, and the genuineness that only appears with someone kindred.
Some of the questions are quantitative—yes or no, scale of one to ten—and others are short answers, to be analyzed by Bug.
Danny finishes, and Bug appears on the screen to ask if he can have access to Danny’s text history with Eve. Bug assures Danny that he will not store this data: It’s just to crunch some numbers :)
Eve gets there a moment later and says, “Permission to share all our messages?”
“It looks at response time and word choice,” Danny says. “It’s really interesting. We brought on this linguist.”
“This feels . . . Do you think people might worry it’s invasive?”
“We’re not storing the messages.”
“Yeah, but. I’ve sent you racy photos. With, like, a lot of side boob.”
“But we’re not saving them anywhere.” For a moment, Eve says nothing, so Danny adds, “We don’t have to. It’s totally fine.”
“No, no, sure.” Eve taps her screen. “Permission granted.”
“Eve.”
“Danny.” She turns to look at him. Her hair falls across the pillow. “Your brain is going again.”
Quietly, he says, “I’m so tired.”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” she says, “but I’m embarking on something of a hundred-year sleep. Maybe you can embark with me.”
“I’d embark anywhere with you,” he says.
On his phone, he taps Accept. Bug scoots across the screen with a heart-shaped balloon. Calculating.
“Is it going to give us different scores?” Eve says. “Is this a competition?”
“Same score,” Danny says. “We’re in this together.”
She puts down her phone and curls herself against his chest.
They look at Danny’s screen and wait.
It says: 84.
They look at each other. Back at the screen. Danny feels, in his stomach, a sense of weightlessness—of imminent crash.
“Oh,” Eve says. “Well, so it’s wrong.”
“What?” Danny says.
“There must be a mistake.”
“There must—oh. Yes.”
“We’re way better than eighty-four,” Eve says.
“Yeah,” Danny says. “Yes. Like, the best.”
Eve laughs, then she takes his face in her hands and kisses him—his cheekbones and the tip of his nose and his eyelids, and he feels himself shattering and fusing back together.
He has never been so glad to be laughed at.
His body is warm and gooey like honey. She is laughing at his fear.
That’s how silly it is. How ridiculous to be afraid—that this is not good. That this might not last.
“I love you,” he tells her. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I love you forever,” she says. “I love you a hundred.”
Four and a half months, Danny has worked on this project.
Before that, years—years of building this app, this company—and before that, years of studying and tens of thousands of dollars of student loans to be able to do work like this.
Lots of people get to be in love; how many people get to make things like what Danny has made?
And it’s not right. It’s broken. Danny is so relieved.
How silly. How human.
Of course Danny would rather have the love.