Chapter 11
When Eve returns from her walk, she finds Danny sitting at the edge of the bed with his phone on his knee and his head in one hand.
There is a lag. They should go to each other right away, but instead, they hesitate.
“Hey,” Eve says.
“Are you okay?” Danny asks.
“I didn’t actually get hit by a bus.”
“No, I mean—you’re soaking wet. And with everything that’s been happening . . .”
Eve peels off her leggings, which hit the tile with a wet slap when she throws them toward the bathroom. “I went for a walk. Did you get an earlier flight?”
“It’s pouring. Yeah, I was on standby. People keep calling me asking about you. Newspapers, even.”
Eve grabs a towel from the back of Danny’s desk chair and wrings out her hair. “Not dead,” she says. She turns because her eyes are suddenly burning. She hears a creak as Danny stands, and then he is wrapping his arms around her and she is burying her face against his chest. “Did you know?”
“About what?”
“It’s not just the bus video.”
“Shannon told me,” he whispers into her hair. “I’m sorry. For all of it.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m mad at you.”
“I figured.”
“I’m not actually mad at you. I’m mad at the world.
I’m mad that an algorithm wrote better songs than me.
I’m mad that they were stupid songs but people liked them better.
I’m mad that all my sentences die at the halfway point because I’m getting used to outsourcing my brain to a machine.
I’m mad that when you’re upset, you tell your phone instead of telling me.
But I’m not mad at you. I’m just—tired.”
Danny rests his hands on her hips, his thumb running along the hem of her shirt. She feels him lean his forehead against her shoulder. Kiss the cold skin.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s not your fault. It’s just the way the world is now, isn’t it?”
“No,” Danny says. Eve tilts her chin up, and that’s when she sees how stricken he is—the way he looks like he has not slept in a month, the stubble and the red in his eyes.
“You’re right. I talk to my phone instead of talking to you.
I created an app for the express purpose of not needing to seem like an anxious little freak because I want to talk to you all the time.
All across the world, I’m enabling anxious little freaks to not talk to the people they love. ”
“Are you okay?” Eve says.
Danny hands her his phone. She looks at him, and he nods, so she lifts it. Opens it. She knows the passcode. It opens to his last used screen, a Bug chat screen, and Eve reads the latest message as Danny watches.
Bug: I recommend that you don’t wait to talk to Eve about this.
It’s unlikely the situation will get better on its own.
What if you tried sharing something small that opened the door to bigger conversations over the next few days?
This may allow you to measure Eve’s response and gradually build trust.
“What is this?” Eve says.
“Every day, I talk to Bug about my problems. And every day, Bug tells me to talk to you. But I don’t.
Because I just keep talking to Bug. Which is easier.
It’s like going on social media instead of going to dinner with friends, or watching porn instead of having sex.
It’s this patch that feels just barely good enough, so you keep putting off the thing that will actually fulfill you. ”
Eve touches Danny’s temple; the hair neatly cut above his ear. “What problems, exactly?”
Danny takes back his phone. He turns off the screen, then sets it face down on the dresser. He takes a breath; she watches him hold the words in his mouth. Outside, the rain continues to pound against the windows.
“My dad is dying.” Danny says it looking at the window. The words are soft and even, like he has already turned them over a thousand times.
“What?”
“And he won’t talk to me about it. He won’t talk to anyone about it. I called some of his friends and none of them know anything.”
“Oh, Danny.”
Danny shakes his head once, turning against her fingers. She keeps them there, on the stubble at his jaw, the soft curve of his ear.
“I know your parents are—awful, sometimes,” he says.
“But they’re healthy, and married, and they live half an hour away.
And I don’t know how to talk to you about any of this because I’m just angry you’re not more grateful that you have them at all.
And because when you talk about my dad, you act like he’s the greatest, easiest parent anyone could have.
I love him so much. But he’s also needy and passive-aggressive and so averse to conflict he won’t even talk to me about being sick.
Your parents keep you at arm’s length by being assholes.
But my dad keeps me at arm’s length, too.
It’s just a different sort of arm’s length. ”
“I’m so sorry,” Eve says softly. “Danny, I’m so sorry.”
“My dad is too anxious. And I’m like my dad.
I know that. My dad is always pushing me away because he doesn’t know how to have a normal fucking relationship with anyone.
So of course I don’t want to tell you about all this.
I don’t want you to become responsible for my emotional needs.
I don’t want to do to you what my dad does to me. ”
Eve wraps her arms around him. Traces the line of his spine with her thumb. “You’re allowed to need me. We’re allowed to need each other. Okay? That’s how this goes.”
They sway like that in the shadow of the drizzle through the window.
“I’m sorry you’re dead,” Danny says. “I’m sorry people are doing horrible things with your face and your voice, and I’m just—sorry.”
“It’s not real,” Eve says. “It’s okay.”
“It can be fake and still not be okay.”
“Sometimes,” Eve says, “I feel like I don’t actually know what’s real anymore.”
Danny kisses her forehead. “You and me, baby. The real deal, as they say.”
They are both crying. Only a little! Only a little.
“They’re always saying that.”