Sydney asked me to tell her a story.
This was after. The sheets were tangled at our ankles, her head somewhere near my shoulder but not on it. We were two strangers who had stopped being strangers for about forty minutes and were now slowly becoming strangers again. Intimacy has a half-life.
I think she wanted something to hold. Some proof that this meant something, or proof that it didn't have to mean anything and that was okay too. Or maybe she just wanted noise to fill the silence before one of us reached for a phone.
So I told her a story.
A girl once asked me, "What's up? How's life?"
I said, "I'm good."
The conversation ended.
I stopped.
Sydney waited, and then waited some more. She turned her head slightly, like she was checking whether I was serious.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
She laughed, not a real laugh, the kind you do when you're confused but don't want to be rude about it. She was probably wondering what kind of man she'd just slept with. That's fair. I was wondering too.
"That's not a story," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because nothing happens. There's no... I don't know. No point. No twist. It's just nothing."
"Yeah."
"So why'd you tell it?"
I looked at the ceiling. There was a crack running from the light fixture to the corner. Someone should fix that. No one would.
"We've heard thousands of stories," I said. "Lived inside some of them without knowing. We know what a story is supposed to feel like. Beginning, middle, end. Someone wants something, struggles, changes. There's a shape to it, something that makes the time you spent feel worth it."
"Right."
"So when I tell you a girl asked how's life and I said I'm good and that was it, you feel cheated. Where's the drama? What's the takeaway?"
She didn't answer. She was listening now, actually listening, which is rare. Most people are just waiting for their turn to talk.
I sat up a little. Not because I needed to. Something in me was starting to unspool and I didn't know how to do that lying down.
"When she asked 'how's life,' there was a gap. Maybe half a second. And in that half-second my brain opened a file. Not a file. Everything. Every piece of data I've collected about what it means to be alive right now. And it asked me: do you want to tell her the truth?
"And the truth is not a sentence. The truth is a flood.
"The truth is I woke up this morning and checked my phone before I opened my eyes. I saw news about people dying somewhere far enough away that I'm allowed to feel sad but not obliged to do anything, and I scrolled past it. I got an email from a company I gave my data to without reading the terms, and they're selling my patterns to someone who wants to sell me something I'll buy to feel like a person.
"The truth is I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about having opinions about brands. About having one-sided relationships with strangers on screens. About knowing more about celebrities' divorces than my neighbours' names.
"The truth is I'm tired in a way sleep doesn't fix. I have everything my grandparents dreamed of and something still feels missing, and I can't tell if that makes me ungrateful or just awake.
"The truth is there are children who will never taste clean water, and I know this, and I still bought a coffee this morning that cost more than their families make in a day, and I didn't think about it until just now, and I probably won't think about it again tomorrow.
"The truth is I watched a video of someone's house getting bombed and then a video of a dog on a skateboard, and my brain gave them the same weight, because that's what the feed has done to me.
"The truth is I don't know if I'm a good person. I don't know if that question even means anything anymore.
"That's 'how's life.' That's what was behind the door she knocked on when she made small talk with me in that coffee shop or that party or wherever the hell it was."
Sydney was quiet.
"So what did I do with all that?"
I let the question sit for a second.
"I ran the calculation. The same one everyone runs, all day. Does she actually want to know? Can she carry this? Will saying it help anything, or will it just make us both uncomfortable, so that we have to perform some kind of recovery and the whole thing turns into work instead of just passing?
"So I compressed. I took the flood and crushed it into two words.
"'I'm good.'
"And she said 'good!' with that little lift at the end, and we smiled at each other, and we both walked away relieved that neither of us had to be real.
"That's the contract. I don't make you carry what I'm carrying, you don't make me carry what you're carrying, and we both pretend we're not carrying anything. And the wheels keep turning."
Sydney shifted beside me. I felt her looking at me but I kept my eyes on the crack.
"So what's the story?" she asked, softer now.
"The story is that a girl asked how's life, and I had an entire universe inside me, and I said 'I'm good.' And she believed me. Or she pretended to. Or she knew I was lying and was grateful for it. And we both kept moving.
"That's everyone's story, every day. Billions of people carrying their own floods, compressing them into small talk, agreeing that 'I'm good' counts as an answer.
"Maybe that's mercy. Maybe it's the only way we get through the grocery store checkout line without falling apart. It's also the loneliest thing I can think of. All of us walking around, drowning quietly, smiling at each other."
The room was very still.
Sydney reached over and put her hand on my chest. Not romantically. Like she was checking that I was solid.
"What story were you hoping for?" I asked.
She didn't answer for a long time.
Then: "Something with a point, I guess."
"Everyone wants a point."
"Is there one?"
I thought about it.
"Maybe we tell stories to pretend there is. And sometimes the pretending is enough."
She took her hand off my chest and looked at the ceiling too.
"That's sad."
"Yeah."
"But also kind of..."
She didn't finish, and I didn't ask her to.
We lay there for a while. The half-life went on. Soon one of us would check a phone, and one of us would say they should probably get going, and we'd compress this night into something small enough to carry. A story we'd never tell anyone, or one we'd tell everyone with everything that actually happened stripped out.
For now her foot was touching mine under the sheet, and neither of us moved it.