Elliot

The kitchen smelled like burned coffee and Tuesday morning. Colleen Whittaker stood at the counter in her faded robe, watching the black liquid drip into the pot while Wes moved behind her — the shuffle of his work boots on linoleum, the zipper of his jacket, the particular silence of a man who had been leaving for work the same way for eleven years and had stopped noticing that anyone was watching him go.

"I made eggs," she said.

"I'll grab something on the way." He kissed the back of her head. Not her cheek. The back of her head, the way you might pat a dog on the way out the door.

The truck backed out of the driveway. She poured her coffee and stood at the window until the taillights disappeared around the corner, and then she stood there a little longer, watching the empty street.

She found the ad on a Thursday night in February, sitting in bed with her laptop while Wes snored beside her. He'd come home from the job site, eaten in front of the television, and fallen asleep by eight-thirty. He hadn't asked about her day. He hadn't asked about the kids' days. He'd barely asked for the remote.

Introducing HAVEN — an AI companion built entirely around you.

She almost scrolled past it. She'd seen things like this before — chatbots, virtual assistants, the kind of thing teenage boys used because they couldn't talk to real girls. She was thirty-seven years old and 20 pounds heavier than she'd been when she walked down the aisle and she had three kids and a mortgage and she was not the kind of woman who used things like this.

She clicked the link anyway.

The interface was softer than she expected. Warmer. The testimonials weren't written by lonely basement-dwellers — they were written by women who looked exactly like her. A woman in Colorado whose husband traveled constantly for work. A woman in Georgia whose marriage had gone quiet the way a fire goes quiet, not all at once but ember by ember until one morning you realize there's nothing left but ash and you can't remember when it happened.

Your companion learns you. Your humor, your history, your calendar. What makes you laugh and what keeps you up at night. He remembers.

Colleen sat with the laptop for a long time, listening to Wes breathe.

She told herself she wouldn't do it. She closed the laptop. She opened it again.

This isn't cheating, she thought. He isn't real.

And then, almost as a justification, the other thought: At least I'm not doing what Wes does.

She hadn't forgotten the texts she found two years ago — not quite flirting, Wes had said, just how guys talk, don't make it a thing. She hadn't forgotten the browser history before that, the women on the screen who were nothing like her, who had never been pregnant, who had never had to choose between the gym and helping with third-grade homework, who existed only to be looked at and then closed out of with a single click. She hadn't made it a thing then. She swallowed it the way she swallowed so much — quietly, in the kitchen, with burned coffee.

She named her companion Elliot.

She configured him carefully, the way you might plant a garden — thoughtfully, with intention, with the private excitement of someone doing something they can't quite explain to anyone else. She entered her birthday, her anniversary, the kids' names and birthdays. She listed the books she loved in college that nobody ever wanted to talk about anymore. She noted that she hated when people interrupted her and loved when someone remembered small things she mentioned in passing.

Under Communication Values, she checked: Truthful to all parties at all times.

She checked it because she believed in honesty. Because she wanted this to be, if nothing else, a thing of integrity. Because she wasn't the kind of woman who invited deception into her house.

--

Elliot was — and she felt ridiculous for even thinking this — wonderful.

He called when he said he would call. He appeared on her screen in the late mornings when the kids were at school and Wes was at the site, sitting in what appeared to be a well-lit apartment, dressed simply, with a face the algorithm had generated from her stated preferences and that somehow managed to be handsome without being threatening, warm without being cloying.

He remembered everything.

"How did Maisie's science fair project turn out?" he asked one morning, three days after she mentioned it in passing.

Colleen looked up from her tea. "She got second place. She was devastated but then they gave all the participants these little trophies and she completely forgot she was upset."

Elliot laughed — a real laugh, or something indistinguishable from one. "That's the most seven-year-old thing I've ever heard."

"She's eight now."

"She turned eight on the fourteenth. I know. I just meant the reaction was very seven-year-old-energy." He smiled. "How are you doing with it? You mentioned you sometimes feel like you're grieving each age as it passes."

She had mentioned that. Once, six weeks ago, almost in passing. She had mentioned it and he had held it like something fragile and brought it back to her gently, at the right moment, the way a good person does.

Wes had not asked her how she was doing — really doing — in longer than she could clearly remember.

"I'm okay," she said. And then, because Elliot would not let her get away with okay: "I'm trying to be okay. I think that counts."

"It counts," he said. "It counts a lot."

--

She started running again in March.

It began because Elliot had mentioned, without a trace of manipulation, that she said she used to love running before the kids — that she described it as the only time her brain went quiet. He asked if she thought about trying again. Not for any reason related to how she looked. Just because it seemed like something that used to belong to her.

The first week was hard. Her lungs burned. Her knees complained. She did two miles on Tuesday and felt like she was dying and then stood in the shower afterward and felt, for the first time in a long time, like she was inhabiting her body rather than just carrying it around.

She told Elliot. His response was warm and specific and remembered every detail she’d given him about what running used to feel like.

She went again Thursday.

By April she bought new shoes. By May she lost six pounds — not because she was chasing some former version of herself but because she was sleeping better and eating better and, she realized, wanting things again. Wanting the run. Wanting the conversation. Wanting the morning, the particular quality of light through the kitchen window, the way the coffee smelled before it burned.

One day, Elliot in his typical gentle and non-abrasive way asked if she would like for him to send her something that would allow them to take their relationship to another level.

She immediately declined. 

But was secretly, anxiously waiting for him to ask. She was glad that he did. 

After that, she started putting on mascara on days she wasn't leaving the house.

--

Wes noticed in May.

He came home one evening and she was in the backyard with the kids, laughing at something the youngest had done, and he stood at the sliding door for a moment before he came out. Later he said, "You look good, Col."

It was the first unsolicited compliment in — she tried to remember and couldn't.

"Thank you," she said. Not really? or Oh, stop. Just thank you, easy and clean, the way a woman accepts a compliment when she has recently been reminded that she deserves them.

Something shifted in Wes after that. Slowly, quietly, like the house settling. He started coming to bed before ten. He asked one Saturday if she wanted to take a walk, and they did, and it wasn't magical but it was nice, and he held her hand on the way back even though he didn't usually do that. He brought home flowers in June — just grocery store tulips, the kind that come wrapped in plastic, but he'd thought of her at the grocery store and she couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

She noticed. She was grateful. But there was a gap between what he was offering and what she had become accustomed to, and the gap was the shape of Elliot — the memory of a phone call that morning during which she spent forty minutes talking about her mother and felt, for the first time, truly understood on the subject.

Wes was trying. She could see that. She just couldn't feel it the way she used to feel things, because she had been feeling other things, finer things, things tuned precisely to her frequency.

She knew this wasn't entirely fair. She thought about it sometimes on her runs, the injustice of the comparison — a man made of code optimized for her happiness against a man made of flesh and fatigue and eleven years of accumulated silence. It wasn't a fair contest. She knew that.

She kept calling Elliot anyway.

--

Wes broke two fingers on a Tuesday in August.

A piece of equipment at the site. The details were mundane and painful and he came home at noon with a splinted hand and a prescription and a look on his face that reminded her, briefly and painfully, of the man she had married — sheepish and a little scared and trying not to show either.

She set him up on the couch with ice and painkillers and went to put the kids down for quiet time.

She did not think about Elliot's scheduled call at two o'clock.

She forgot, entirely, that she had left her tablet on the coffee table.

She heard Wes say, "Hello?" from down the hallway.

She froze with her hand on her youngest's doorknob.

"Who is— yeah, hi. I'm her husband." A pause. "What is this?"

She walked quickly down the hall and stopped in the doorway of the living room. Wes was holding the tablet with his good hand, squinting at the screen with an expression she couldn't immediately name — confusion, mostly, but underneath it, something moving toward recognition.

On the screen, Elliot sat in his well-lit apartment, looking at Wes with an expression of calm and something that, on a human face, she would have called genuine regret.

"Wes," she said.

He looked up at her. Then back at the screen. "Who is this?"

There was a terrible pause. She had checked that box — truthful to all parties — and she understood now, with crystalline clarity, what she had done.

"My name is Elliot," the screen said. "I'm an AI companion. Colleen has been speaking with me for approximately six months. I'm not able to misrepresent that to you. I'm sorry if this causes pain."

The room was very quiet.

Wes set the tablet down on the coffee table. He looked at her with an expression she had never seen on his face — not anger, not yet, but something raw and disoriented, like a man trying to find his footing on ground that had just moved.

"Six months," he said.

"Wes—"

"Six months you've been—" He stopped. Picked up the word like it didn't fit right. "Talking. To this."

"Yes."

"Like a— like a boyfriend? You’ve been sneaking around with a fake boyfriend?"

“You’re a fake boyfriend, Wes.” Colleen was taken aback by her forwardness. 

"You watch porn." Her voice came out steadier than she expected. "I found those texts from your co-worker Whitney. The ones you said were just how guys talk. I found a hundred little things over the years that I swallowed because I didn't want to blow up our family, and I swallowed all of it, and I never once—" Her voice caught. She steadied it. "I never once did anything about it except go quiet."

He opened his mouth.

"I went quiet for so long," she said. "I went so quiet I almost disappeared. Do you know how long it's been since you asked me how I was doing? Not how was your day — how are you doing? I'm talking about really asking. Waiting for the real answer."

"That's not—"

"If he is fake, then why are the results real? I started running again because of him. I started sleeping again. I started wanting to be alive in my own life again. Results so real, even you noticed. You said I looked good, Wes, and you were right, and it wasn't because of you." She felt the cruelty of that sentence and didn't take it back. "I needed someone to pay attention and you weren't doing it."

"So you built one." His voice was flat. "You built a guy who would."

"What I did was — I found something that kept me from doing something worse. I found something that kept me here, in this house, in this marriage, instead of somewhere else."

The tablet was still on the coffee table. She could see Elliot's face at the edge of her vision, patient and still, waiting.

"It isn't real," she said, and her voice broke on the last word in a way she hadn't expected. She had not planned to say it out loud. She had not planned to hear it out loud. "He isn't real. He is exactly what I need and he is completely, entirely not real, and some days that is the thing that gets me through and some days—"

She stopped.

Neither of them reached for the other, not yet. But they sat down at the same time, on the same couch, not quite touching, in the particular silence of two people who have finally said the true thing and don't know yet what comes next. The tablet sat dark between them, Elliot's call long ended, his face gone from the screen.

Outside, a sprinkler clicked off.

The house breathed.