Closing the Distance

Bright

Just go for it, Calliope Ruiz argued with herself. She'd already downloaded the Friender app at a colleague's urging. Now she just had to sign up. With a huff, she entered a username: "Belle." It had the same meaning as her real name and was less unusual. Fewer questions that way.

It wasn't like she would find any true friends, anyway. This would just be online friends. Right? She'd given up on finding anything real and deep. At her age, it seemed everyone had already found their people. Even in a cool city like Portland, she had given up hope and was mostly resigned to her lot in life, the people she had now. Not that they were bad people. But she still felt alone. None of them were similar to her in their interests or how they viewed the world. Hence why Friender was recommended to her.

She finished filling out her profile and hit save, deciding against adding a picture. Why would online friends need to know what she looked like? She didn't even bother to look for friend matches. Calli put her phone down and picked up her paintbrush; time to get back to work. She had a show to get ready for.

Rafferty Paulsen was bored. And lonely. Yeah, he had friends and a good career, but it felt like...not enough. He'd been on this stupid app for months and the people were all boring, or they weren't really looking for friends. They were looking for friends with benefits or just plain hookups. Call him old-fashioned, but he actually wanted to like someone he slept with. And to like them, he had to get to know them. So much for finding new friends. I guess I'm just stuck with the ones I already have. Which were mostly just hangout buddies.

He started messing around on his guitar when his phone buzzed. Out of habit, he picked it up without thinking about whether it was interrupting him. The Friender app had sent him a notification: New friend match. The name was Belle. That was a pretty name. No picture, but that didn't matter. Better, even. It seemed less likely that this person was looking for something shallow if they didn't put up a picture.

So he accepted the match. It said Belle was offline, but he sent a message anyway.

Raf: Hey, what's up? 😁

Calli felt really awkward as she stared at the simple message. She couldn't come up with anything clever to say.

Belle: Hi.

Raf perked up when he got a short response, and it wasn't a proposition. So far, so good. OK...how to break the ice?

Raf: Hey, how's it going? I just saw a really cool meme. It had a picture of a cat, and it said, "I'm gonna need 3 boxes of chicken nuggets, 5 chicken wings, 6 packets of ketchup, and the spiciest hot sauce you have."

Calli laughed. That was cute.

Raf: Do you like chicken nuggets? I love chicken nuggets. I like ketchup on my chicken nuggets, but I'm not a big fan of hot sauce. I like sweet chili sauce. What about you? What kind of sauce do you like on your nuggets?

Oh my goodness, was she chatting with an adult? If so, the childlike humor was endearing and infectious, because she laughed again.

Belle: 🤣 I love sweet chili sauce!

Raf: You do?!?! Wow, I thought I was the only person in the WORLD who liked that sauce. I could put that stuff on just about ANYTHING. I could probably even drink it. I wish I could buy it in bulk.

Hey, have you ever tried sweet chili seasoning? There's this stuff I can get called Tajin. It's like a citrusy chili salt mixture. It's amazing, and I put it on chicken nuggets. 🤤

OK, now this was interesting. She could really get into this conversation.

Belle: I love sweet chili sauce on stir-fry, salad, French fries.... so yeah, lots of food. 🤭