Hi

I really should’ve put a footnote on my request to the universe. Or at least a disclaimer. I disclaim most things I say in my life before saying them, so this was a big missed moment. Because two days later, life took me up on the offer with a plot twist I never, in a million years, saw coming. 

In the eleven years I had been playing a Scrabble type game, I had never entertained chats. I figured most of them were scammers, so why bother.

This one didn’t knock on my door until three games had been played.

The curious part about those games was the pattern I began to notice. Every word and I mean every word was dirty or naughty. Wet, labia, lips, kiss. And if you think this is easy? No. I tried during one of the games and failed miserably.

Who is this person?

I checked out the profile and saw he had been playing for ten years. His photo showed him sitting on a couch, elbow resting on the arm, a carefully placed finger against the side of his face, looking quite intimately at the camera, I might add. Maybe in his 40s, auburn brown hair falling past his chin.

We had completed the third game. I probably won, as usual. Another may disagree, but this is how my memory stored the event.

I was about to put my phone down when it flashed with a single word: “Hi.”

Any other “hi,” I would have ignored. Yet something in me said respond. So I matched him.

“Hi.”

The universe responded quickly. Two people who had played this game for a decade finally crossed paths, with over 50 million games played a day and it all began with a simple, “Hi.”
This is where the unraveling began.