The night we were on YM....

"Hi. How are you?" i typed. The text under the chatbox showed me that he was typing something in return.

"Fine."

I sat looking at my screen for a long time. I imagined him in front of his computer, tipping his chair back to the point of falling over, never really giving in to gravity.

"So, what are you doing?" he typed. I looked around my empty room. The pictures on the walls, the lamp by the bed. The chair with my clothes flung over the back.

"I have a couple of friends over", i typed back. Never a dull moment, i thought to myself, bitterly. I sat in my pool of warm light on the bed, laptop balancing on a pillow on my knees. The only sounds was me, typing, and the clock, ticking.

"And you", i typed. "What are you doing?"

"The guys are here, and we're watching the game."

"At this time of night?"

"No, the game is over. Now we're just drikning."

I smiled at his typo. He did that when he typed fast. And then my smile faded as i thought of him, getting all worked up over typos and misspellings. He sought perfection, always. The perfect evening. The perfect weather for boating or walking. The perfect girlfriend...

"Well, have fun. I'll head off to bed" i wrote. For a long while i sat watching the screen for a reply. But all i got was "Last message received at 01.26". He'd do that. Chat with someone online, and then forgetting, leaving them hanging. Infuriating.

Five minutes later i logged off, and turned off the computer. Putting it away on the table was hard. I wanted to open it, and turn it back on. Or pick up the phone and call him. But i didn't want it badly enough... Whatever the reason, i never did it.

...On the other side....

He kept looking at his screen for a long time. He had so much to tell me. So much he ached to write in that little chatty box. How he missed me. How he wished he had the nerve to call me, and ask me all the questions that were tormenting him. Ask me, if i've had forgotten. But instead he just watched as the text on the screen informed him that i had logged off. "User is no longer online".

There was a small, very worn and shaggy teddy bear on his desk, right by the computer. It was staring at him, accusingly, with one beady eye, its mouth forever pulled up in a wry, lopsided smile (because of the stitches where it had been torn at one time). I had let him keep it, even though it had been mine. The only thing of me, still in his apartment.

"It wasn't my fault", he said out loud and patted the bear's head. Then he switched off the computer and went to bed.