fakediary

We eventually found the pond.

It was getting late, and most of the evening crowds had already dispersed. A few people lingered along the paths, but the area around the water was quiet.

We found a spot near the edge and sat down together.

The lampposts cast long reflections across the dark surface, their golden light trembling with every little ripple. Occasionally, a breeze disturbed the water, breaking the reflections into fragments before they slowly came together again.

David sat beside me, his arm resting comfortably around my shoulders.

For a while, we simply watched the water.

Then he spoke.

“It’s so strange.”

“What is?”

“Being here. In New York. With you.”

I turned toward him.

He was looking out across the pond, smiling faintly.

“Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m actually here.”

I knew what he meant.

David traveled frequently for work, but his trips had always been within Chile. This was his first time traveling abroad, and he had chosen to cross an entire continent to meet a woman he had gotten to know on the internet.

Of all the reasons to make your first international trip, I supposed that was a fairly unusual one.

“Did you ever imagine you’d come to New York?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Never. Especially not like this.”

I laughed.

“What, you mean flying all the way here to meet some random woman from a psychology forum?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, when you put it that way, it does sound a little crazy.”

He smiled.

I looked at him for a moment, then asked, half jokingly, “Do you regret it?”

“Never.”

He answered so quickly that I laughed.

“Not even a little?”

“No.”

I leaned back on my hands and considered him.

“What if I turned out to be a terrible person?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“What kind of terrible person?”

“I don’t know. A criminal. A con artist. Someone who lures unsuspecting Chilean men to New York.”

He laughed.

“Very specific.”

“I’m just saying. You flew halfway across the world to meet someone you’d never seen in person. That’s quite a leap of faith.”

He looked amused.

“And you didn’t?”

“Well, yes, but that’s different.”

“How?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

He had a point.

Still, I wasn’t quite ready to surrender the argument.

“I used to live here,” I said. “At least I know my way around.”

“Ah, so you were the responsible one.”

“Obviously.”

He chuckled.

I nudged his shoulder with mine.

“But seriously. What made you trust me?”

This time, he didn’t answer immediately.

He looked back toward the pond, considering the question.

I waited.

It was something I had genuinely wondered about. We had shared so much of ourselves over the months, but there was still an undeniable risk in meeting someone from the internet, particularly when doing so involved international flights and considerable expense.

After a moment, he turned toward me.

“I don’t think it was one particular thing,” he said. “It was everything.”

“Everything?”

“The way we talked. How honest you were with me. Even when you didn’t have to be.”

I listened.

“We talked almost every day. I got to know how you think, how you react to things. I saw you when you were happy, when you were angry, when you were having a bad day.”

He paused.

“And you never tried to pretend you were perfect.”

I laughed.

“Well, that would’ve been a difficult act to maintain.”

He smiled.

“Exactly.”

I thought about his answer.

There was something interesting about the way trust developed between people who had never met.

In ordinary relationships, physical familiarity often came first. You noticed someone’s appearance, their mannerisms, the way they carried themselves. Only gradually did you begin to learn what went on beneath the surface.

David and I had done things in almost the opposite order.

He knew the less flattering parts of my personality long before he knew what it felt like to hold my hand.

Perhaps that was why meeting him had felt so natural despite all my initial nervousness.

I looked at him.

“So you were pretty confident I wasn’t going to murder you?”

He laughed.

“Pretty confident.”

“Pretty?”

“Well, I had to leave a little room for uncertainty.”

I gave him a playful shove.

He caught my hand before I could pull it away and brought it to his lips.

“Besides,” he said, “I wanted to meet you.”

There was no elaborate explanation attached to it.

He simply said it as though that had been reason enough.

I looked down at our hands.

For someone like me, who tended to examine every possibility and anticipate every potential complication, his certainty was difficult to comprehend.

But I liked it.

I liked that he had considered the distance, the expense, and the uncertainty, and had decided to come anyway.

We sat quietly for a while, watching the reflections shift across the pond.

Then I rested my head against his shoulder.

“Well,” I said, “I’m glad you came.”

He kissed the top of my head.

“Me too.”

The breeze had grown cooler, and I tucked myself a little closer to him.

I thought about the question I had asked him.

What made you trust me?

Perhaps I had been asking the wrong person.

After all, I had boarded a plane too.

And sitting there beside him, I realized I wasn’t entirely sure when I had decided to trust him enough to do that.

It hadn’t happened all at once.

There had been no single conversation, no grand declaration, no moment when I had consciously decided that David was someone I could trust.

Somewhere between our discussions about psychology, our late-night confessions, and those ordinary morning conversations during my commute, he had simply become someone I wanted in my life.

I glanced at him again.

He was watching the water, apparently content with the silence.

I wondered whether that was what trust sometimes looked like.

Not certainty that nothing could go wrong, but being willing to find out.

I slipped my fingers between his.

For the moment, that seemed enough.