message man | joshler

2. late night

"I'm sorry, if I woke you up."

"No, but I was serious. are you okay? Did something happen? You usually sleep at this time."

"Oh," she notices, "No, Tyler, nothing happened," she laughs. He realised, that she would laugh even though she wasn't okay, "I just mechanically set my phone on sound before I went to sleep and some notification woke me up. I checked it and then some loneliness hit me."

"And you want to come over? It's 4, Ashley, you can leave your loneliness when you go to sleep."

"No, I can't."

He has no strength for this girl. Why does her attitude need to affect not only on his sleeping schedule, but also on some other important things, like school?

He knows he can't just sneak out from the class, because she sometimes wants to buy some concert ticket, but he knows, how difficult it is to purchase a concert ticket at a time these days.

He also knows, that he can't just come back from school one day and show up to his parents out of nowhere with bright blue strand of hair, but these things make her happy, and who would he be to not let her be happy?

But for now, he wants to sleep, "I would love to welcome you here, but, I repeat, it's the middle of the night and everybody's sleeping. We would wake everybody u—"

"No problem, I will enter through the window."

And so he gave up. The story repeats itself. He never wins with Ashley. He always wishes he could be like her. She's so childish, but can also fight, has a big mouth, but everybody likes her. He's rather quiet and prudent. He wonders, how can she still be with him and not get bored.

Meanwhile he is waiting for Ashley, he checks on his Youtube account. He might not answer to any comment, but he reads them all. He scrolls through them below his latest video, from a week ago, when he made a cover of some indie song he heard last month.

"I love him even more, that he sang her song." You can't love me, you don't know me, he thinks.

"What kind of ukulele is he playing? It sounds really pretty." It's a tenor one, he wants to say, and feels a little bad, when he sees nobody has answered to their comment yet.

"Last time I was this early my mom told me not to believe people, who don't want to show their face on the internet." You should have definitely listened to her. I don't believe them either, he almost says.

He closes his video and starts scrolling through the timeline this time. He doesn't subscribe anybody, so many random videos keep appearing there constantly. He hates it, but that's the result of being a shady creep he is, or something like that.

He could watch one of them for distraction and to only keep his eyes wide open, but he wouldn't be himself, if he opened the app without checking on one channel in particular.

He haven't seen any recent video for over a week there, which is kind of weird, because they aren't the type of people, who hesitate ten times before posting something, for example like Tyler. He can record something today and post it a month later, or never.

It has been too many times he was afraid, that they can see his every move and how often he clicks at this one profile picture. He knows, that it's a dumb thought, and if he can't see who visits his own channel, they wouldn't know either, but sometimes he scares even himself.