2:47AM

Someone said I had no talent for writing. Fuck it. You be the judge.

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Google says it takes eight minutes to die by hanging. Three minutes to bleed out. I've had these tabs open so long my phone keeps asking if I want to close them.

My pulse thuds against my wrist while the microwave clock bleeds antifreeze-green across my counter. I've been staring at my reflection in its door so long my face has become abstract; shapes pretending to be human.

The message appears: "U up?"

I type back: "Yeah. You?"

Two words. Two periods. One lie.

Her response instant, like she's been waiting with her finger on the trigger: "Not really. Want to meet?"

I don't know her, but I know the hunger for a voice when the silence gets too loud.

"Jerry's Diner. 20 minutes."

Jerry's looks like giving up feels. The fluorescents overhead make everyone look three days dead. College kids wasted and glued to their phones. Two nurses in scrubs share fries, not talking about whatever they saw on their shift.

She's hunched in the farthest booth, hood pulled low. Her fingernails are bitten to blood, and her sleeves are frayed where she's been unraveling them thread by thread.

"You Cal?" Her voice sounds like gravel over glass.

"Yeah. Sophie?"

She nods without looking up. Dark circles rim her eyes like bruises, and her lips are chewed raw. The waitress pours coffee neither of us will drink.

"You ever think about it?" she asks, picking at a napkin.

I make her say it. "About what?"

She looks up then, eyes sharp as broken mirrors. "The math. The rope. The pills. All of it."

The chatter in the background fills the space between heartbeats. "Every day," I say.

"Yeah." She almost smiles. "Same."

Her hands shake as she stirs her coffee. "Thought this would help," she says. "Seeing someone else as fucked up as me."

"Does it?"

"It's worse." She traces the rim of her cup. "Now there's proof I'm not crazy. That someone else feels it too."

She tells me about her mom's voicemail—three minutes she can't bring herself to delete. About the pills lined up on her nightstand. About crying into her camera then erasing the evidence.

I tell her about the belt in my closet. The note I've rewritten until the words lost meaning. About the fan who DMed "you saved my life" and how I almost replied "I can't even save my own."

By 4 AM, our coffee's turned to ice. Sophie stares at the ceiling like she's measuring the distance.

"Want to get out of here?" she asks.

"To where?"

"Does it matter?"

My apartment smells like stale whiskey and surrender. Sophie sits cross-legged on the floor, eyes fixed on my closet.

"That it?" she points.

The belt hangs like a question mark.

"Yeah."

She stands, crosses the room, pulls it down. Tests the weight in her hands. "Strong," she says, almost admiring it.

"Sophie—"

"Relax." Her voice is winter-cold. "It's not for me."

She tosses it onto the couch, sits back down. "So," she says, calm as flatlined heart. "What's the plan?"

The words escape like a confession: "What if we did it together?"

I expect her to call my bluff.

Instead, she studies me like a coroner ."Together?"

"Yeah."

Her lips twitch. "You'd really go through with it?"

"If you would."

She exhales slowly, measuring the air. "Okay," she says. "But not here. Not now."

We spend an hour planning our own ending. Timing. Method. Notes. Like influencers planning viral content.

Time comes uninvited.

When I wake up, she's gone.

The belt hangs perfectly straight. My note vanished.

My phone buzzes once.

A notification. From her.

A picture: my note, folded neat as origami, lying beside the belt.

Caption: "Found something better."

Below it, a link.

I click.

It's a YouTube video. Her face fills the screen, telling the story of the night we met. How she saved a stranger. How connection beats destruction.

The view count is already climbing.

I watch my pain become her content. My note become her proof. My almost-death become her redemption arc.

I pick up my phone. Open the app where we met.

Her profile's gone, but there are others. Other 2:47 AMs. Other confessions waiting to become content.

I start swiping.

This time, I'll write the ending.