Free Ask by Aelius Blythe

 
     
    ONE
     
    Just ask.
    She grit her teeth and looked down at the
desk. Her eyes followed the swoop in the wood's grain as it made
it's way around a dark knot, the one blemish in the honey-colored
wood. Looked like an eye.
    She flicked her gaze away from it, over to
the desk corner by her left elbow.
    Her fingers still rested on the keys,
uselessly poised over the letters. She couldn't look up, couldn't
meet his eyes, even though his eyes weren't really there at all.
She knew they were somewhere. Somewhere. That's what mattered. So
she kept her gaze on the corner of the desk, a gaze reflexively
lowered as if the eyes on the other end of the connection were
actually burning into her.
    Can't you just ask
already? she pleaded silently, still not
meeting the eyes that weren't there.
    They were somewhere. They were. They had to
be. She knew that much. His eyes were... she had no idea. They
could have been on the other corner of the state. Or they could be
across the street.
    This kind of place wasn't so specific.
    People hid their faces, hid their names, hid
their places. They were only vague stats, broad descriptions,
common personal qualities. Height, weight, hair color. Office
worker, technician, food service expert. Long walks on the beach,
vodka martinis, dogs. That kind of thing.
    And people lied.
    The stats, the descriptions, the
personalities, the meager amount of information glowing on each
person's profile... it all meant squat if the one writing it had
lied. And there was a high chance they had.
    And she knew it.
    His eyes could have been in Guam, for all
she knew.
    She shook her head and finally snuck a peak
back at the screen in front of her. Her fingers moved, finally
having something to say.
    "I have to go," they said.
    "Don't."
    "Have work," her fingers explained. "I'll be
on tomorrow."
    "Wait–"
    But she had already quit.
    Just do it. Just ask already! Fucking
commitophobe.
    But her fingers had already slammed the
metaphorical door shut and the epithet did not make it out of her
head. She leaned back and sighed, looking down at the desk again
because there was now nothing more interesting in the room.
    How could she trust a guy who didn't have
the balls to ask one simple question?
    She would ask him, of course. If she could.
But she couldn't. It wasn't ladylike. It wasn't okay. Even in this
dark corner of the internet she sat at a neat desk with one new,
blood-red suede heel tapping the desk leg, impatient fingers
tapping the keys with glossed nails that glinted in the screen's
glow. She was a lady, even here. And she'd keep it that way, thank
you very much.
    So she wouldn't ask.
    They'd cross that bridge
when he came to
it. Not her. Of course, she could throw caution to the winds and
just do it...
    But no.
    Then she'd be a slut.
    Or a spy.
     
    **********

 
     
    "Wait," he wrote. But she was already
gone.
    Evade. The name continued to glow beside its avatar.
    But she was gone, and he just stared at the
bland white face in the little box beside the name – a bland white
face under a brown mop of choppy locks pointing like arrows down
towards a bland white chin, resting feathery on either side of a
slender but bland white neck, and under the rough fringe brown eyes
blinked, delicate, careful. Even on the little phone screen he
could see the spidery spokes in the irises.
    It was a good picture, a good avatar anyway,
but it still had that plastic doll sheen. Unlike the name, the face
was generic, nondescript.
    It was okay.
    They all were.
    They were all just masks.
    ...tomorrow.
    The word glowed in its speech bubble beside
the name beside the nondescript face for another minute before
disappearing as he tapped it off.
    With the screen now dark, his hand hurried
to his pocket to put the phone away. He dropped the device into his
pocket and smiled reflexively at the little clink of metal that
broke the quiet. It was a satisfying, reassuring sound. He let his
hands rest in his pockets, it was a cold night and he