“A drop of empathy in a sea of death won’t make me a rag. Anyway, tell me about your records.”
A bitter veil hangs over my mind, but I force myself onto safer ground. “I have a lot of music—from ‘60s hits to modern commercial trash. I don’t necessarily listen to all of it; most I bought for the album covers,” I say through clenched teeth. The change of topic to my music sends a ripple of ease through me, but the anger never truly fades away.
“Interesting,” he says, chewing a forkful of his food. I stab at my paella, aiming particularly for the green beans that remind me of the waitress’s grassy eyes. “But what do you actually enjoy?”
“Uh—” I falter, a headache blooming behind my eyes from the surge of emotions I’ve felt today. “I think… trip-hop. Maybe electronic, too?”
“You’re asking me?” He smiles, a light chuckle escaping from his chest. “You have great taste. Honestly, to me, you seem like someone who enjoys old music,” he continues. “Maybe a bit of classical, too.”
“Have you met a lot of people like me that you can just assume this?” I fire.
“No,” he dismisses, the one word steady and final. “Never anyone likeyou.”
I pause, letting his gaze settle on me, before shoving a piece of paella into my mouth. It’s almost too big, swelling at the edges, and I press it into my inner cheeks, fully aware that I must look ridiculous—like a hamster stuffing its cheeks.
I raise my brows, expecting a joke, a smirk, maybe even a glare, but instead, he leans across the table. My breath catches before turning sharp and shallow. The world around us dissolves into a blur, all fading until only the steady drum of my heartbeat remains.
His finger drifts to my lips, brushing away a fleck of paella I hadn’t noticed. It’s deliberate, unhurried, precise—a ghost of a touch that sends a ripple through me. My eyes widen, heat pulsing up from my chest, yet I can’t move, can’t look away. His gaze pins me, dark and patient, and when he finally withdraws, it feels as though a current has been yanked from my body. A sudden chill shoots through my veins, leaving ice shards where my blood should flow.
I swallow awkwardly, my body shifting from a stuffed, flustered version of myself to… something else, something sharper. My throat feels raw and tight, parched. I lift my glass, tilting it just enough for the wine to coat the edges, letting its familiar warmth anchor me, tethering me back to the moment and away from the swirl of my racing thoughts.
“Tell me,” I murmur, setting the glass down with deliberate care. “What is it about me that makes me so different?”
The words drip with mockery, but beneath the surface hums a genuine curiosity. My ribs flutter, a nervous thrill crawling through me, alive and restless, like butterflies trapped in a gilded cage.
By the time I finish this glass, all of the thoughts, the doubts, the restless spirals, will be swept away, drowning in the river of my own fog.
“The way you see life,” he begins. I tilt my head slightly, a quiet smirk tugging at my lips. “Yourhumor. Yourtaste. Yourideas.” His voice drops, each word deliberate, weighted. “Yourskills.”
Heat coils low in my stomach, tight and insistent, crawling beneath my skin. I cross my legs under the table, feeling the slick pool of warmth between my legs that feels almost too revealing. Each word presses against me, stripping me bare in ways I hadn’t realized I’d allowed him to, exposing something private and raw.
He doesn’t know me, and yet the way he says it makes it feel like he does. Like he’s obsessed.
Obsessed withme.
With the way I move, the way I think, the way I exist. And that thought curls in my chest like fire trapped in ice.
“I know that,” I whisper, the words slipping out in a blur, heavy, hazy, thick with certainty, as his gaze locks onto mine. “I know I’m all those things.”
“And I know that you know,” he answers calmly. His shoulders ease, as if he’s released whatever invisible hold he had on me. “Still,” he adds, his voice dropping quieter now, “it doesn’t mean I don’t see it. Or that I shouldn’t say it.”
I want to smile, but my face doesn’t seem to remember how. What I manage instead is a small, crooked smirk—strained, unnatural—a poor imitation of control.
I shift in my chair, warmth pooling low in my stomach, spreading and pulsing faintly—a sensation I haven’t felt in so long, if ever. Not from the words themselves, but from the way they sink in, deeper than any physical touch could reach.
“Why don’t you get a vinyl player for yourself if you want it so much?” I ask, my voice carrying a defensive edge I can’t hide as I try to change the topic. Desperate, I cling to the shards of control slipping through my fingers, biting my skin as they scatter.
“I always thought you only owned things like that when you had a home to keep them in.” He pauses, letting the words hang between us. “I still don’t have one.”
Home.
The word lands like a stone in calm water, sending unstoppable ripples through me. It tastes strange—bitter, acidic, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat. I don’t have to summon the memories; they surge on their own, vivid and relentless.
The cold walls.
The suffocating silence stretched between shouted words.
The quiet, gnawing humiliation of trying to please people who never wanted to be pleased.
