The Bathroom Fan

A woman of about twenty five stood in the bathroom of a second floor apartment with her phone in both hands and the door not quite closed. It was a Thursday in October, twenty past eight in the evening. In the kitchen behind her a man was making pasta and talking, and every few seconds he raised his voice slightly to carry, and she had stopped being able to hear the words about ninety seconds ago.

The message was from an account she did not know. A woman, seven mutual followers, a profile photo taken at a wedding.

Hi. I’m so sorry to do this. I think we might be seeing the same person. I have screenshots if you want them but I don’t want to send them without asking.

Below it, the small grey line saying the message had been requested and accepted, which meant it had been sitting in a folder for some number of days that she was not going to be able to stop calculating.

She did not move. The bathroom fan was on because she had turned it on out of habit. Her toothbrush was in the cup on the left, the way it had been since June, next to his.

In the kitchen he said her name, asking something about parmesan.