Not your type

The first message is flattering, which is the first sign, though you do not count it yet. He says you are beautiful. He says he has always been drawn to women like you.

Women like you. You read the phrase twice and put the phone face down on the counter while the pasta water boils.

The second message asks what you are doing tonight. The third tells you that he is very open-minded, and has never had a problem with 'that', and that his friends do not need to know. The fourth asks whether you are 'pre or post'.

You know this conversation. You could write it for him. You have, in a way, a dozen times, patiently, in the years when you thought explaining was the price of being chosen.

You drain the pasta. You pick up the phone. You do not reply, because a reply is a door, and you have learned where this one leads. You press block, and then report, because the next person he messages might not have eaten yet and might have less patience than you.

It takes eleven seconds. You check.

Then you eat your dinner standing up, get your coat, and go to the games night at the community centre, where a woman called Priya destroys everyone at a board game about trains, and a boy with a green beanie asks if you want to be on his team next week.

Nobody there tells you that you are brave or beautiful or their type. Somebody tells you that you are terrible at trains. It is the nicest thing anyone has said to you all day.