All I See Is His Eyes, For Forever

-2-

"Shit, I have to go. Bye!"

"Bye mom," I respond, even though the call had already ended.

I give out a great sigh and toss my bookbag to the floor. I guess now she can't yell at me for doing nothing but being on my computer. I boot it up and plug it in. It's not like it's gonna die, but I get kind of nervous if it goes below 30%.

I stare at the address on my arm as it loads. Conphyxx@gmail is all he scribbled. It was kind of messy- the @ symbol just looked like an 'o.'

Typing it in, I worried that it was too soon after school to be contacting him. What if he thinks I'm a creep?

Wait, what should I say...?

Dear Connor Murphy,

No, no, that sounds too formal.

Just... Relax, Evan.

Hi Connor

It's Evan. If this works, I'm kind of super happy you're willing to talk to me. Sorry if that's weird.

Send.

I shake out my hands. It's not the same as talking in person, but it gives me a kind of rush to be talking to someone. I step away from the computer.

My hair falls on my face as I stand. I decide then to leave it be and let Connor respond in his own time. He's probably not like me and has nothing better to do after school than talk to someone over email.

I roll out my shoulders and stretch out my back. The hunch I walk with all the time really strains it sometimes. I take off my shirt and change into a bigger, more comfortable one. Wearing a polo all day gets kind of stiff and uncomfortable - but then again, I, myself, am always stiff and uncomfortable.

As I finish changing, my phone screen lights up with a notification. New email.

I face the unchanged computer screen and sit down. Only the email I had sent is shown.

"Refresh, duh," I mumble.

The click of the mouse reloads the page, and a new email is shown:

ev

i guess i could say the same. though its weird that you constantly apologize, even in messaging

I almost immediately typed out another apology, but shook my head.

Human interaction, holy shit.

Yeah, I almost wrote another apology just now. I hope you don't think it's too annoying. At least now I don't have my stutter

Why don't you use capitalization or anything?

'He kinda writes how he talks,' I thought.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with it.

Send.

I pat my desk in a sort of stress-relieving fashion, eager to get this strange energy out. I'm not used to wanting to talk to someone.

I stand again to give him more time. By the time I finished changing my pants, my phone had lit up twice, the first being a notification from the idle game I play, the other another email.

Another refresh of the page shows me a new message:

meh, i barely noticed the stutter tbh.

It takes me a second to understand what 'tbh' means. I almost have to look it up, but feel embarrassed doing so.

'The... the bad...? No, to... to... to be... to be hor... uh. hhhhelpful...? ehh... hh. To be... honest. Honest! Oh! Okay.'