In Her Own Footsteps

III

Aanya recalled her first-ever encounter with Connor – the same Connor she now could no longer imagine her life without.

It was December 8th, 2019. Aanya laid face down in her bed, groaning from the upset stomach being hungover had left her with. The blinds in her dorm room were pulled down and the curtains tightly shut. Any sign of light would kill her eyes. Her head was pounding with pain from a lengthy migraine. The night before, she drank an entire bottle of Jack Daniel's Whiskey; a night she would remember for years to come. The mere smell of Whiskey would bring back the night of her 20th birthday and the vivid taste of vomit in her mouth the next morning. She felt her phone buzz under her stomach. Worried it might be her parents checking in from nine thousand miles away in Mauritius, she reached for the phone. Her brightness settings were all the way down, yet, she could barely open her eyes to look at the phone screen. It felt like her pupils would melt from the blinding brightness. Squinting, Aanya looked at the notification. It was not her parents.

It's a Match! You and Connor liked each other.

The notification came from Hinge, a dating app she had signed up for a few months ago determined to get to know new guys. If it was not for the stupid hangover, Aanya would be beyond excited, running over to her friend Mackenzie's room to tell her that the guy they were just talking about yesterday liked her profile as well. Before Aanya could process the first notification, a second arrived.

Connor messaged you.

Squinting a little harder, Aanya opened the message. Connor had responded to one of the prompts on her profile; a two-truth, one-lie prompt where she wrote: I love Maths, I am an islander, I am a photographer. She read Connor's message and it made her laugh a little, which made her head pound even harder.

"I hate Maths too," was his answer.

Aanya wondered how he figured it out but respected that he had taken the time to read her profile and learn about her. Most guys didn't even bother and were very shallow on dating apps. Her eyes were burning and her head was pounding harder and harder. Aanya began to type but all she could muster was "Same". Unable to look at her screen any longer, she set it aside. She did not want the pain to get worse.

The next day, feeling alive, well, and much like herself again, Aanya wondered why she didn't hear from Connor again. She remembered receiving a message and replying to him. She opened the app to make sure.

Aanya's eyes widened. It now made complete sense to her as to why she hadn't heard from the boy she was interested in, the same boy who put in time and effort before messaging her. Her reply was a one-word answer followed by a period. It haunted her.

Same.

In the 21st Century, the era of texting and online dating, it was a sin to send a single-word message. A single-word message commonly stood for I am not interested, please stop. In the midst of feeling hungover and unwell, she didn't think to write anymore.

In an attempt to rectify her previous one-word message, she hastily composed a longer response.

"Hi!" She started, "How is it going? I am sorry I couldn't write a longer reply yesterday. Dec 7 was my birthday and yesterday I could barely get out of bed. I'm finally glad to have found a kindred spirit in dislike of Maths. Can you believe that I am only surrounded by people who love Maths!"

Little did Aanya know how far this message would go in making up for the one-word reply of the previous day and the impact Connor would have on her life in the years to come. Whenever Aanya recalled her past with Connor, she recalled so many instances where they both almost went their separate ways but instead, chose each other. She wondered why that was. Why was she so aware of the coincidences and choices?