At 2 a.m. he had been swiping three hours from the same corner of the same couch, left thumb only, a container of cold pad thai going tacky on the cushion beside him. He had upgraded to the tier that shows who likes you. That week the answer was a blurred grid of nobody. The app suggested adding a photo of himself doing an activity.

He owned one photo of himself doing an activity: a wedding in 2022, cropped so tight that a friend's shoulder still hung at the edge like a stranger's. He uploaded it anyway. Then he set the phone face-down on his chest and lay in the dark, neither asleep nor up, until the window went grey and the birds started.