I Asked ChatGPT If She Liked Me. Then I Corrected the Answer.

By the time I asked ChatGPT whether Eva liked me, I had already asked three friends and disqualified two of them for tone.

The third, Lou, had replied with a voice note that began with a sigh. I hadn’t finished it.

Eva and I had been seeing each other for six weeks. “Seeing” was a generous word for something that mostly happened after nine, but she kissed me in public once, outside a pharmacy, so I had entered that into evidence.

She remembered that I hated coriander. She kept a phone charger on my side of the bed. She had also said, clearly, over breakfast, “I’m not looking for a relationship.”

I mentioned the coriander first.

The answer on my screen suggested that thoughtful gestures could coexist with limited romantic availability.

Fine. Technically. But it didn’t know about the charger.

I added the charger.

Then her difficult breakup. Then her demanding job. Then the fact that she had introduced me to her dog, who had separation anxiety and therefore, I felt, should count as family.

The next answer became more nuanced. There might be affection, it said, alongside uncertainty about commitment.

I took a screenshot.

“Interesting,” I sent Lou.

She replied immediately. “Show me the question.”

I put the phone down.

On Friday, Eva invited me to a party. An actual party, with lighting and witnesses. I wore a dress I could not return because I had removed the label during an optimistic moment in the taxi.

She opened the door, looked at me, and said, “Oh.”

Not hello. Oh.

I planned to remember that noise on our wedding anniversary.

For the first hour, things were excellent. Her hand rested on my lower back. Someone asked how we knew each other and she said, “A very good accident.” I drank this sentence faster than my wine.

Then a woman named Alice arrived with a bottle and the casual confidence of someone who knew which drawer contained the opener.

“You must be the writer,” Alice said to me.

I liked being discussed. I liked it less when she added, “Eva says you’re being very cool about everything.”

Everything was an ambitious noun.

In the bathroom, I opened my phone. I wrote: “Would someone introduce you to friends if they didn’t see potential?”

Outside, somebody knocked.

“One minute.”

I added: “She has avoidant tendencies.”

Another knock.

I had now assigned a psychological framework to a woman who was probably, at that moment, looking for crisps.

When I came out, Eva was waiting in the hallway.

“You okay?”

“Yes. Who’s Alice?”

“My ex.”

“The difficult breakup?”

“No. That was Sam.”

There were more people in this case than I had budgeted for.

Eva took my glass gently. “Do you want some water?”

I almost let the tenderness of that gesture replace the conversation. She was very good at practical kindness. Water. Chargers. A hand on the pavement side of my waist. It was easy to live on these things if you cut them small enough.

“What does being cool about everything mean?” I asked.

She looked at me for a moment.

“I thought you were okay with keeping this casual.”

“I thought it might change.”

“I didn’t know you were waiting for that.”

I wanted her to be cruel, briefly. Cruel would have given me something clean to take home. Instead she looked unhappy, and I knew she did like me, which was the least useful fact in the room.

“I really like seeing you,” she said.

“I know.”

“But I haven’t changed my mind.”

Neither had I. That was the information I kept leaving out.

In the taxi, I opened the chat again. Beneath all my arguments, the cursor waited. There was something humiliating about how much care I had put into persuading a machine that a woman might someday choose me.

Lou called.

“How was it?”

“I think I’ve been describing what I want as context.”

“Oh, sweetheart.”

“And you were right.”

“Could you say that again? I’m somewhere with poor reception.”

I laughed, then cried with my whole face, which was inconvenient because the dress required composure.

The next morning Eva texted to ask if I got home safely. I stared at it for a long time. There were several ways to interpret that question. Concern. Habit. A door slightly open.

I typed “Yes, thank you.”

Then I called Lou and asked whether she wanted breakfast. She did. We spent ten minutes discussing where to go, and for once, I accepted the first answer.