The Unposted Girlfriend

Ice has taken seventeen photographs of Chris before she gets to drink her coffee.

In the first six, his shoulders look small. In the next four, a parked scooter spoils the background. The remaining seven are good, but he wants one where he appears not to know he is being photographed.

She lowers the phone and asks how someone is supposed to look unaware on request.

He tells her to just catch him naturally.

They are at a café near Nai Harn. Her iced coffee has become a pale brown glass of water. Chris is wearing the black T-shirt she washed yesterday.

He posts the photograph before they leave.

A quiet life. Built on my terms.

Ice reads the caption from across the table. The terms appear to include unpaid photography.

They have been together for three months. Long enough for his protein powder to occupy her kitchen counter. Long enough for her to know which angle he prefers and which friends back home need to believe he is doing especially well.

Online, Chris lives alone.

His mornings are solitary. His dinners are discoveries. His apartment is always tidy, despite the fact that he has never shown any interest in where the cleaning products are kept.

When Ice appears, it is usually as a wrist holding a drink or a second shadow on the pavement. He tells her he likes keeping his personal life private.

She understands privacy. She does not post every disagreement or meal. She would simply like to exist at a higher resolution than an elbow.

Once, she uploads a picture of them together. Chris asks her to remove it because his page has a particular look.

It is a couple's photograph. The problem, apparently, is that it makes him look like someone in a couple.

After that, she watches the process more closely.

He moves her sandals before filming the balcony. Crops her bag out of the passenger seat. Refers to the restaurant she found as a hidden spot he stumbled across.

He is not accidentally leaving her out. He is doing small, regular work to make it happen.

The argument finally arrives over a bowl of noodles.

He takes a photograph from above, notices her hand and asks her to move it.

She keeps eating.

He waits.

She asks why everything they do together has to look like he did it alone.

Chris says she is making too much of social media.

Then he asks whether she can at least move the spoon.

That evening, Ice takes her things home. The departure is ordinary: charger, clothes, a container she wants back. Chris says they should talk when she is less upset.

The next morning, he films the apartment.

The counter is crowded. A towel is on the floor. There is a ring of dried coffee beside the sink, directly beneath the place he normally rests his phone.

He pans carefully toward the window.

For the first time in three months, his content is accurate.

He really is doing everything alone.