When Anna and I matched, the app still felt like something people were wary of, so I gave her my full name and even my license plate number. It felt like the normal precaution you took when you were about to meet a stranger from the internet. She got in my car and the connection was immediate. She was a Russian student with a heavy accent, glasses, blond hair, a slightly awkward posture, and a directness that bypassed every American social rule I had ever learned. Nothing about her felt shaped by trying to be a certain type of woman. That made it easier to relax around her than I had ever experienced.
Our first dates were straightforward. Bars, restaurants, the usual places people chose without imagination. The hostess always seated us in the predictable part of the dining room where early Tinder couples were clustered together, all of them stiff and polite and trying too hard. We would sit there watching the slow collapses around us while our conversations never stalled. There was something steady between us from the beginning. She laughed easily. She asked simple questions. She didn’t act like she was auditioning for anything. I didn’t either.
After a few dates she came to my apartment. I had assumed she would look around and quietly recalibrate her interest downward. The place looked like it belonged to someone still in the process of becoming an adult. But she walked in and said she liked it. She didn’t mean she liked me despite the apartment. She liked the apartment. She said she wanted to live that way. Her tone never shifted to suggest she was trying to flatter me or make a point. She spoke in straightforward observations, always. I smoked Parliament Lights then. A week or two later she started smoking them too, not as a gesture or a flirtation, but as if it was simply the logical next step.
She needed to move apartments and I volunteered to help. Her place barely had anything in it. No mattress, no packed boxes, no evidence that she had prepared. I moved her things to the car and she worked beside me without apology or explanation. She didn’t thank me. It didn’t register as rude. It felt like she assumed I already understood the situation and didn’t need the interaction padded with ceremony. I found it refreshing. There was nothing performative between us.
The night it ended didn’t feel like a turning point until the very last minutes of it. I brought a bottle of wine because at that time I brought alcohol to every interaction. Earlier in the evening she had asked why I did that. I didn’t give her a real answer. She then told me stories about Russia, showed me photos of her hometown, played music she grew up with. We had sex. Everything about the night felt warm and steady. There was nothing tense or unsettled. When we were getting ready for bed, she said, in the same tone she used for everything else, “You’re only into me because you have no other options.” I didn’t register it at first. I asked her what she meant. She repeated it, worded more plainly, but with the same neutral delivery.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t explain anything. I didn’t feel insulted in the traditional sense. It was just true. The wine was still sitting on her table, untouched. I picked it up because it was mine. I walked out. She didn’t protest or ask for clarification. The whole thing ended in silence.
Years later, at thirty, I typed her name into Facebook out of nowhere. Her profile hadn’t changed since the last time I’d seen it. Same photos, same posts, same faint trace of a life that had never fully transitioned into adulthood. I sent her a message explaining why I had moved back to Seattle, mentioned the bipolar episode, and gave a brief account of what had happened to me. She didn’t respond. That night I removed her from my friends list. The next day she liked a picture of my cat on Instagram. It wasn’t a re-opening of anything. It was a small sign that she had noticed the change and that was the extent of it.