It came at night, mostly.
Not the loneliness the loneliness was constant, a white noise that had been playing so long he'd stopped noticing it. No, this was something sharper. A physical ache that started in his chest and radiated outward, a hunger that had nothing to do with food.
He hadn't touched a woman in four years. The last time had been a mistake a woman from a dating app who'd come over, looked around his room with barely concealed horror, and left after twenty minutes. She'd been polite about it. She'd said she had an early morning. They'd both known it was a lie.
Leo had deleted the dating apps after that. What was the point? His profile would have to say: Lives in storage unit. Drinks whiskey named after livestock. Spends eighteen hours a day trying to convince the internet to give him money. Hasn't had a conversation longer than thirty seconds in six months. Also, his father thinks he's a coward, and he's starting to agree.
He'd tried to watch porn less. Not for moral reasons morality had become a luxury he couldn't afford but because the emptiness afterward was worse than the need had been. The brief flash of connection, the illusion of intimacy, and then the screen going dark and his own reflection staring back at him, pale and hollow-eyed.
He didn't know how to talk to people anymore. The skill had atrophied, a muscle he'd stopped using until it had withered to nothing. He'd catch himself practicing conversations out loud, mouthing words to the dead monitor, rehearsing greetings and small talk like a foreign language.
Hi, how are you?
I'm good, thanks. You?
Yeah, good. Weather's nice.
Sure is.
He couldn't even make the fake conversation interesting.
And women women were a mystery he'd never solved, and now the solution felt permanently out of reach. He watched couples on the street sometimes, through his window that faced a brick wall. He couldn't actually see the street from his window. He was just imagining what it would be like to hold someone's hand, to hear someone say his name and mean it.
The need was there. Always there. A low flame he couldn't extinguish and couldn't feed.