How digital friendship works🙃

Tell Me Something True

Chapter 2: Tell Me Something True

The next night, I told myself I wasn't going to check her stream.

I lasted until 1:58 AM.

The moment my computer finished loading, I opened the streaming site.

Then I immediately hated myself for it.

What was I doing?

I was twenty-three years old.

Unemployed.

Unable to sleep.

Waiting for a stranger on the internet.

It sounded pathetic when I said it out loud.

Yet my heart still sped up when I saw the small red LIVE icon beside Maya's name.

She was streaming.

I clicked before I could talk myself out of it.

The screen loaded.

Black background.

Gray text.

Exactly like before.

The viewer count read two.

A message appeared.

"can't decide if i'm tired or just sad."

A few seconds later I typed.

"Why not both?"

The response came almost instantly.

"oh."

Then:

"it's you."

I couldn't stop smiling.

"Disappointed?"

"slightly."

"Rude."

"you'll survive."

For the first time in weeks, I laughed out loud.

A real laugh.

Not the kind where air escaped your nose.

A genuine laugh.

And strangely, it felt good.

The chat remained quiet for a while.

Then Maya sent another message.

"you came back."

"Told you I would."

"I thought maybe you were lying."

"I'm beginning to think you have trust issues."

A long pause.

Then:

"probably."

Something about that answer felt heavier than the others.

Like there was a story behind it.

But I didn't ask.

Not yet.

Some things were fragile.

Push too hard and people disappeared.

Instead, we talked about random things.

Favorite snacks.

Terrible movies.

Songs we'd listened to too many times.

The conversation flowed surprisingly easily.

There was none of the awkwardness that usually came with meeting someone new.

No pressure.

No need to impress each other.

Just words appearing on a screen.

At some point Maya typed:

"tell me something true."

I stared at the message.

It was such a strange request.

Not "tell me something interesting."

Not "tell me a secret."

Just true.

I thought for a moment.

Then typed:

"I'm scared I'll never become anyone important."

The typing indicator appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Finally:

"important to who?"

I blinked.

Nobody had ever asked me that.

Most people would have offered reassurance.

You're important.

Don't think like that.

But Maya didn't.

She asked a question.

And somehow that felt more honest.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"Anyone, I guess."

Several seconds passed.

Then:

"I think everyone wants to matter."

I read the sentence twice.

Then three times.

Because it felt like she wasn't just talking about me.

It felt like she was talking about herself too.

"Your turn," I typed.

"Tell me something true."

The typing indicator appeared immediately.

Then vanished.

A full minute passed.

Two.

Three.

I wondered if she'd left.

Then her answer arrived.

"I think people only like me until they know me."

The words sat there.

Motionless.

Heavy.

I didn't know what to say.

Because some statements weren't fishing for compliments.

Some statements were scars.

And scars deserved honesty.

"I don't know you yet," I replied.

"Exactly."

The conversation moved on after that.

But neither of us forgot it.

Over the next week, Maya streamed almost every night.

And somehow I was always there.

Sometimes she went live because she couldn't sleep.

Sometimes because she was anxious.

Sometimes because she was lonely.

One night she titled the stream:

"avoiding responsibilities"

Another:

"pretending tomorrow doesn't exist"

And once:

"if you're awake, that's concerning"

I showed up for all of them.

Soon, patterns started forming.

Little rituals.

Things that belonged only to us.

Whenever I joined, I'd type:

"Emergency emotional support has arrived."

And Maya would respond:

"Request denied."

Then:

"but thanks."

One night she confessed she'd spent three hours reorganizing her bookshelf instead of working on her novel.

Another night she spent forty minutes ranting through text about a character she couldn't write properly.

"I know exactly what she wants."

"Then what's the problem?"

"She refuses to cooperate."

"She's fictional."

"She knows what she did."

I laughed so hard I nearly spilled coffee across my keyboard.

For someone who never used her voice, Maya was unbelievably expressive.

I began building an image of her in my head.

Not her face.

Oddly enough, I never imagined that clearly.

Instead I imagined pieces.

A messy desk.

Half-finished notebooks.

Cold tea forgotten beside her keyboard.

Music playing softly in the background.

The kind of person who stayed awake too late because her thoughts were louder at night.

The kind of person who carried sadness like a backpack she'd worn for so long she'd forgotten it was there.

And maybe she imagined things about me too.

One evening she asked:

"what's your room look like?"

I looked around.

The answer wasn't flattering.

"Depressing."

"Specific."

"Gray walls."

"Messy desk."

"One dying plant."

"Why is it dying?"

"I forgot plants need things."

"Like?"

"Attention."

"Understandable."

A minute later she typed:

"my room used to be blue."

"Used to?"

"My parents painted it."

"Why?"

"They said blue was childish."

I waited.

Something told me there was more.

Eventually she added:

"I liked the blue."

I didn't know why that sentence made me sad.

Maybe because it wasn't really about paint.

Maybe because it sounded like one more thing she'd loved that somebody else had decided was wrong.

As the days passed, our conversations became longer.

Deeper.

More personal.

Not all at once.

Slowly.

The way trust grows.

One truth at a time.

One night I admitted how much losing my job had affected me.

How embarrassed I felt.

How every rejection email felt like proof I wasn't good enough.

I expected sympathy.

Instead Maya typed:

"that's not failure."

"It feels like it."

"feelings are terrible witnesses."

I stared at the screen.

That sentence stayed with me.

Days later I was still thinking about it.

Feelings are terrible witnesses.

It sounded like something that belonged in a book.

Maybe because Maya was already a writer, even if she didn't believe it yet.

Around the end of the second week, something changed.

Not dramatically.

Not enough to notice immediately.

But it was there.

One night I joined her stream five minutes late.

Only five.

Yet the first message waiting for me was:

"you're late."

I froze.

Then smiled.

"Wow."

"You noticed."

"Obviously."

"Should I be concerned?"

"Probably."

I stared at the screen.

A warmth spread through my chest.

Small.

Dangerous.

The kind that starts quietly.

The kind you don't notice becoming important until it's already happened.

For the first time since meeting Maya, I realized something.

I wasn't just enjoying these conversations.

I was looking forward to them.

Building my nights around them.

Checking the clock.

Watching for notifications.

Waiting.

And maybe she was too.

The realization should have scared me.

Maybe it did.

A little.

Because connections like this were fragile.

Built entirely from words.

No faces.

No voices.

No guarantees.

Just two lonely people meeting in the dark.

But for now, it was enough.

Near the end of the stream, Maya typed something unexpected.

"hey."

"yeah?"

"thanks for coming back every night."

I hesitated.

Then replied honestly.

"There's nowhere else I'd rather be."

The typing indicator appeared.

Stopped.

Started again.

Finally she wrote:

"that's nice."

A few seconds later:

"also slightly concerning."

I laughed.

Then the stream ended.

The black screen disappeared.

The chat vanished.

And for the first time in months, my apartment didn't feel quite as empty.

Because somewhere out there, beyond the screen and the darkness and the distance, there was someone waiting for tomorrow too.

And maybe that was enough.

For now.