She’s not a hobby.
Adrian:
Then what?
A decision.
He doesn’t like that.He sends me that stupid face with the wide eyes and straight mouth.Idiot.My screen disappears and then pops back up.He added the sensors.This is nothing illegal, I tell myself, not that I think it’d matter if it were.This is nothing she didn’t consent to by living in a city that loves its own reflection.I catalog her without permission, but I always have.It’s how I lived past twelve.
I pull away from her street, zigging in and out of the morning traffic.I park my bike on her side of the street, in the front, so I can’t see the warehouse from here.I hope her using the back entrance isn’t her normal routine.I’ll know after today so I can adjust accordingly, but if I don’t see her walk in I’m finding a reason to go in and ask for her.
My thumb finds my knife.One, two, three.The tap comes with a new answer it never had before: one, two,watch.And then I’m doing it.I’m staring at the little square of feed in the corner of my phone.No face.No movement.It happens at seven forty-five.
Hair like honey in loose waves teasing the collar of a black jacket shot through with beadwork that throws star-pricks when she moves.Constellations stitched to cloth.Her mouth is bare, a pink that looks bitten even when it isn’t.A lick of color at the V of a dress under the jacket, there and gone.She pauses, but not for show.For her checklist.Her hand finds her bag on her hip and tests the zipper.She nudges her phone in the front pocket so it sits perfectly straight.Her wallet is pulled from the bag, put back in, and pulled back out, and then in again.She doesn’t stop.She gets frazzled, takes a few breaths, counts to herself, stops on seven and then puts the wallet in to stay.Her mouth shapes a quiet “thank you” toward no one I can see.I file it as ritual, but I’m not sure if it’s self-praise or something stranger.Then she moves and the air around her changes.She doesn’t perform center stage; center stage finds her as she walks down the middle of the sidewalk.
The glass door of Silver State breathes out, and she’s gone.The visor on my helmet is fogged, and I try to slow my breaths.In, slow.Out, slower.One, two, three.I fight like hell not to rip my helmet off and follow her in.I sit there with the engine quiet and the city loud and admit what the knife tap already knew: I’ll never look away.
I roll the Harley across to our warehouse and kill the ignition.Metal ticks as it cools.I tell myself I’m not escalating.I tell myself I’m watching the block, the warehouse, not the woman.I might be watching men who might watch the woman who might be mine, but that’s neither here nor there.The lie is elegant enough I almost buy it.
And still, the picture of her walking into work guts me.When she walks, the whole city turns to face her.The pressure of the air changes.My thumb finds the knife.One, two, three.The tap answers back with the only prayer I’ve got.Watch her.This makes sense.It isn't an obsession.She’s gravity.It isn’t her fall people are drawn to her, but monsters need gravity too.So I count, I tap, I watch.
I text Sava.
I’m losing it over her.
Sava:
Are we talking keeping her safe or are we talking stalker?
I don’t text back.She calls.
“Which one is it?”she says by way of hello.
“Both.”I click to speaker phone so I can keep watching Melinda move through her day.
“You need rules.”
“I have rules.”My thumb finds my knife.One, two, three.
“Say them out loud.”She waits.When I don’t, she fills the silence.“Do not approach.No touching.No speaking to her.No gifts.Keep your thirty-minute buffer between any impulse and any action.If it still itches after thirty, call me or one of your brothers before you do anything stupid.”
“Talking about this is stupid.”
“Talking about this is what’ll keep you out of trouble.I hope.”
“What if I can’t stick to the rules?”
Her voice thins, the way a string does when a bow drags too slow.“If it’s real, it’ll still be there tomorrow.Practice patience.”
“Since when do you preach patience?”
“I understand what it is to want something so badly you think you might truly lose your sanity.Someone so close you can touch them, but you can never allow yourself to,” she says, soft and ugly-honest, “and I learned I don’t get to.Not now.Not ever.”She clears it away.
I lean on the bar of the bike.“And you can do that?Just ignore that pull every day?”
“I try.”She sighs.“Every fucking day I try.But, you may have to travel more.I wouldn’t say the distance quiets my mind, but at least I can’t reach him from across the world.”
“I’d ask who you’re talking about but my guess is you’ll hang up on me.”
