For over six years now, I have had a group chat with two friends pinned to the top of my iMessages app.
I met Missy and Haley in 2018 when I pitched an essay to their nature-themed zine. I freelance a fair bit—usually you send in an idea, work with an editor, and that’s it, you’re done. You might pop back into their inbox or they into yours when there’s a good idea. But at the time, all three of us lived in Boston, and someone suggested a get-together. That turned into another, and another, until I left Boston a year later for Chicago.
They stayed in my phone, a group chat pinging back and forth every few days, memes and photos and jokes, but I still worried about coming off as cool or smart or the right level of sociable. I liked them, a lot, but I wasn’t sure that they liked me, and I wanted to be sure that they did, so I held back a little. Later, I would find out that they were doing the same with me.
