Back at the office, Evan handed the paperwork to his supervisor and ran through the meeting like a checklist.  

A nod. No praise. “Be more prepared next time,” the man said, already turning away.

Evan returned to his desk.  

The spreadsheet reappeared, neat lines of numbers marching across the screen.  

He couldn’t focus.  

All he saw was the department store—the glass, the bright counters, Sienna’s calm voice saying, *I’ll take this one.*

A single bag that could flatten half his paycheck.  

Two lives that didn’t overlap.

He couldn’t sleep.  

The apartment was quiet except for the television bleeding through the wall.  

Staring at the ceiling, he heard the sentence form in his head:

*I’m not good enough for her.*

The thought lodged like a nail.

He unlocked his phone and opened their thread.  

His last message—**[Didn’t expect to see you today]**—sat above her one-character reply:

**[Mm.]**

Cold. Far away.

His thumbs hovered over the keyboard.

**[How was work?]**  

**[Did you eat?]**

He typed, erased, typed again.  

In the end, he turned the screen off and set the phone face down.

Days passed like that.  

Sometimes he opened the chat, wrote a few words, then deleted them.  

Sometimes he just stared at her icon, feeling hollow.

He noticed he was messaging less.  

At first it was every day.  

Then every other day.  

Then three or four days of silence at a time.

She didn’t reach out either.  

On the rare nights he did text, her replies were still short:

**[Mm.]**  

**[Okay.]**  

**[Fine.]**

No emojis. No questions back.  

A door, closed and steady.

On a rare free evening, he bought groceries at the supermarket.  

In the checkout line, a couple argued softly about dinner—hot pot, the girl pleaded. The boy laughed and agreed.

Evan walked home with plastic bags biting into his fingers.  

*I don’t even have the nerve to ask her out for hot pot,* he thought, and felt something heavy settle in his chest.

That night, he opened the chat again.  

No new messages.

He typed with shaking fingers, then settled on two words:

**[Good night.]**

Her reply came within five minutes.

**[Mm.]**

He stared at it, the small ache expanding.  

He realized he’d stopped expecting anything more.  

Maybe to her, he was simply someone she didn’t dislike.  

But he had wandered far past that.

The next day, he didn’t text.  

The day after, he held back again.  

By the fourth day, the silence felt normal.  

No buzz. No bubble.  

Sienna didn’t ask where he’d gone. She didn’t reach out.  

It fit neatly into her life, he realized—his absence.

Maybe this had never mattered to her at all.

On Friday evening, coworkers invited him out for drinks.  

He declined and walked home alone.  

The sky was heavy; a thin rain fell.  

He didn’t open his umbrella. Drops soaked through his sleeves.

He kept seeing her back as she disappeared into the crowd with that paper bag—  

so clear in his mind, and impossibly far.

Near midnight, he sat at his desk with the phone beside him, black and still.  

He made a decision:

Let it fade.  

Stop pushing. Stop wanting.  

The distance was too wide; there was no bridge he could build.

And yet, before he powered off the screen, he glanced at her icon one last time.  

A quiet voice in him said:

*If she ever texts first, I’ll answer.*