Waiting On a Text

Every Day

4:30 a.m. Toby was already awake.

Lagos demanded it. If he wanted to beat the worst of the traffic, the alarm had to go off before sunrise. By 5 a.m., he was already dressed and heading out to the bus stop for his ride to work.

Before leaving, he unlocked his phone.

Toby: good morning.

He knew she wouldn't see it for another hour or two.

6:00 a.m. Zuri's alarm had gone off three times before she finally reached for it. Her roommate groaned from the other side of the room.

"If you don't get up now, you're going to be late for class."

She laughed sleepily, sat up, and reached for her phone. One notification.

Toby: good morning.

She smiled. Not a huge smile. Just the kind people don't notice because they're alone.

Zuri: morning. why are you awake at four in the morning?

Toby: because Lagos doesn't care about my feelings.

Every morning started like this, from then on. Two entirely different lives, running on entirely different clocks. His: traffic, voice notes, the office, a meeting that always ran long, waiting for lunch to finally arrive. Hers: hostel, the sprint to class, bread and egg from the woman who came late half the time, hunting for an empty lecture hall, charging her phone off whatever socket she could find between classes. Sometimes he replied instantly. Sometimes it took three hours. Sometimes she was in class. Sometimes she just forgot. Neither of them apologized for it anymore. They'd learned the rhythm of each other well enough not to need to.

The conversations themselves were rarely about anything. That was, somehow, the whole point.

Toby: what's for breakfast?

Zuri: hope

Toby: wow nutritional

-

Zuri: today's lecture was two hours extra long.

Toby: at least you survived?

Zuri: physically

-

Toby: my branch manager has said "quick meeting" three times today

Zuri: and?

Toby: none of them were quick.

They were the kind of exchanges nobody would remember for their content. Just for the fact that they kept happening, day after day, as small and constant as breathing.

The first voice note was an accident. She meant to type something and hit the wrong button instead; five seconds of her own voice sent before she could stop it — "Wait — I didn't mean to—"— deleted half a second too late.

Seen, the app told her, unhelpfully.

A minute later, his reply arrived, also a voice note. "You know deleting it doesn't work after I've listened to it, right?"

She groaned into her pillow, mortified and, somewhere underneath the mortification, unmistakably pleased.

Daisy noticed the pattern before Zuri ever admitted to it out loud. It happened over lunch one afternoon — Zuri mid-bite, phone buzzing on the table, her hand reaching for it before she'd even finished chewing, replying without appearing to think about it at all.

"You're smiling again," Daisy said, not looking up from her own food.

"No, I'm not."

"You literally smiled before you even opened the message."

Zuri didn't have an answer for that one.

It wasn't only her keeping the rhythm going, either — or at least, it never felt like it was, though she had no real way of knowing for sure what his side of it looked like. All she had was the evidence of it: the good mornings that kept arriving before she was even awake to receive them, the replies that came fast enough to suggest he wasn't exactly ignoring his phone either. She wondered about it sometimes, late at night, what he actually did with the gaps between his messages — whether he thought about her the way she'd started, quietly, to think about him, or whether this was simply what he was like with everyone, easy and present and impossible to read too much into. She never asked. She wasn't sure she wanted the answer yet.

The first missed day was the one that actually taught her something about herself.

No good morning. She noticed — of course she noticed — but didn't message at first, telling herself he was probably just busy. Nine came and went. Nothing. Eleven. Still nothing. By three, she'd caught herself checking her phone for the fourth time in an hour and felt an irritation she didn't fully understand, aimed less at him than at herself for checking at all. Why does this matter this much?, she thought, and didn't have a good answer.

At 6:42 p.m., finally:

Toby: I'm alive. today has been ridiculous.

She stared at the message for a long moment. Typed something. Deleted it. Typed again.

Zuri: okay

One word. He noticed immediately.

Toby: that okay sounded like you're annoyed.

Zuri: nah, I'm not

Toby: liar

He didn't push the argument over text. He called instead — not to apologize dramatically, nothing performed about it, just because calling was easier than typing his way out of it, and somewhere along the way, that had become the natural next step whenever texting wasn't quite enough anymore.

That night, once whatever needed smoothing over was smoothed, the day folded itself back into its usual shape.

Toby: my alarm is at 4 am, time for me to get some rest before facing tomorrow.

Zuri: mine is 6

Toby: terrible life. I hate to admit it, but now I miss school.

Zuri: your situation sounds worse

Toby: yeah probably. goodnight

Zuri: goodnight

She put her phone down. Turned off the light. Closed her eyes.

Then — the phone vibrated. She reached for it almost immediately.

Toby: don't oversleep

She smiled into the darkness.

Zuri: you too

Except she already knew he wouldn't. His alarm would ring in a few hours regardless, same as it always did, and somehow, before either of them had noticed it happening, saying good morning and goodnight to each other had quietly become part of the shape of every single day.