In Passing

DUA

The reply came faster than Athena expected. 

She was lying on her stomach, ankles crossed in the air, phone propped against her water glass on the nightstand. It was almost midnight. She had court in the morning, a deposition she hadn't fully prepared for, and yet here she was, thumbs hovering over the screen like a teenager.

alxiodaniel: slow day huh?

She read it twice. Then once more, just to be sure she wasn't imagining things.

Daniel Alexio. She'd noticed him before, in the vague way you notice anyone who follows you back without making a sound. No likes. No comments. Just a silent presence in her follower count. 

Daniel's own profile was quiet. Six posts. All of them formal. Him standing in a large hall inside the UN Headquarters, suit perfectly pressed. Another in what looked like a parliamentary chamber, hands clasped behind his back. One of him in a graduation gown with a red cum laude sash across his chest, the words "Faculty of Law"  visible behind him. She'd assumed he was another friend-of-a-friend, someone who'd added her because he'd been too polite to ask for her number.

She hadn't expected him to talk.

And she definitely hadn't expected him to talk like this—casual, almost careless, as if they'd been doing this for years. Athena bit her lower lip. She could ignore it.

She should ignore it. She had five hours of sleep ahead of her if she was lucky, and she was twenty-four years old, not sixteen, and late-night conversations with strangers on Instagram were exactly the kind of thing she'd outgrown along with cheap tequila and text-fighting with ex-boyfriends. Her thumbs moved anyway.

athenajosephine: just mentally clocked out already. you?

She hit send before she could second-guess herself. Then she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The phone buzzed.

alxiodaniel: same. been staring at the same email for 20 minutes. figured if i'm going to procrastinate, i should do it properly

She laughed. Out loud, in her empty bedroom, like an idiot.

athenajosephine: properly meaning messaging random girls at midnight?

alxiodaniel: not random. you're the only one

Athena stopped breathing for a second. She read it again. Then she put the phone face-down on the mattress and walked to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and looked at herself in the mirror with the kind of stern expression she usually reserved for junior associates who filed motions late.

"Don't," she told her reflection.

Her reflection looked skeptical. She picked up the phone again.

athenajosephine: smooth. does that usually work?

alxiodaniel: honestly? no idea. first time trying it

athenajosephine: on anyone, or on me?

alxiodaniel: on you. definitely on you

Athena sat down on the edge of her bed. The deposition brief sat untouched on her desk across the room. The ceiling fan kept wobbling. Somewhere down the hall, her neighbor's dog barked once, then fell silent. She didn't know what to do with this. With him.

Men had approached her before, obviously. At bars, at work events, through friends, through dating apps she'd download and delete in the same week. They came with pickup lines or LinkedIn requests or carefully casual DMs that were so clearly calculated she could see the algebra behind them. She'd gotten good at shutting it down. A practiced deflection, a polite withdrawal, a slow fade that left both parties pretending they'd never been interested in the first place.

But this—this felt different.

Not because it was grand or dramatic. Because it was easy. Because he wasn't trying to impress her. He was just... talking. Like he already knew she'd talk back.

athenajosephine: dangerous assumption, that i'd reply

alxiodaniel: maybe. but here you are

She couldn't argue with that.

They talked for two hours.

Not about anything important. 

He told her about his work—something in legal compliance, legal finance, numbers and meetings and the kind of corporate lawyer exhaustion that made him sound older than he probably was. She told him about the deposition, the case that was eating her alive, the partner who called her "sweetheart" in front of clients and wondered why she never laughed at his jokes.

alxiodaniel: you should record him and play it at his retirement party

athenajosephine: i've thought about it. extensively.

alxiodaniel: i believe you

athenajosephine: you should. i'm terrifying

alxiodaniel: i don't doubt it. but you're also still messaging me at 1am, so..

Athena grinned into her pillow. She couldn't help it. It was strange, she thought, how quickly intimacy could form in the dark. How a stranger could become someone you wanted to tell things to, just because they were there, just because the conversation felt like a door opening somewhere you hadn't realized was locked.

She learned things about him in fragments. That he hated scary things but enjoyed watching horror movies like a man in love. That he had a younger sister he was overly protective of. That he went to the gym not because he enjoyed it but because he thought of it as stress relief, and one necessitated the other. That he had a habit of starting books and never finishing them, so his nightstand looked like a small library had exploded.

alxiodaniel: currently reading three books at once. it's a problem

athenajosephine: finish one

alxiodaniel: where's the fun in that

athenajosephine: the fun is called closure, dan. you should try it sometime

He sent back a laughing emoji, then;

alxiodaniel: is that legal advice?

athenajosephine: consider it a warning

Somewhere around one-thirty, she realized she was cold. She'd kicked off her blanket without noticing, too absorbed in the glow of the screen to feel anything else. She pulled the duvet up to her chin and kept typing, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. She asked about the photo—the one Max had posted, the one that had started whatever this was.

athenajosephine: so you saw me through max's story?

A pause. Longer than the others.

alxiodaniel: yeah

athenajosephine: and then what, you went full detective?

alxiodaniel: something like that

athenajosephine: that's slightly creepy, you know

alxiodaniel: i know

alxiodaniel: does it help if i say i felt weird about it?

Athena considered this. It did, actually. The honesty of it. The admission that he hadn't been entirely casual, that there'd been intent behind the follow, deliberation behind the first message. Most men would have played it cool. Would have pretended she was nothing special, just someone he'd noticed in passing.

athenajosephine: it helps a little

alxiodaniel: i'll take a little

She fell asleep sometime after two, phone still in her hand, his last message unread until morning. When she woke up, groggy and late and cursing herself for the lost sleep, she found it waiting for her.

alxiodaniel: goodnight, thena

alxiodaniel: hope the deposition goes well

In the morning, she read it three times on the Uber to court. Then she did something she hadn't done in months. She smiled at her phone while the city rushed past her window, and she didn't try to hide it.

***