He keeps coming.His steps slow, like he’s studying me.
Like heseesme.
That thought unmoors something in my chest.I’ve spent my whole life being overlooked.The quiet girl, the bookish girl, the background girl.But this man’s gaze lands like weight.
Two arm lengths away.That’s all.
And then?—
Headlights cut through the darkness, scattering the moment.Relief makes my knees weak in a way that’s embarrassing even though no one can see inside my head.
My cab.Thank the universe.
I exhale hard, like I’ve been underwater, and stumble into the backseat without looking back.I rattle off my new address and risk a glance through the back window.
He’s still there.Watching.A shadow with a pulse.
I stare at him until his body shrinks into a dark speck and the city swallows him whole.
And even then, I still feel him.Static under my skin.
I turn the key in the lock of my apartment door and the reality of this new life presses in.The door swings open to reveal a space that still feels like it belongs to someone else.Boxes line the walls, sentinels of everything I haven’t dealt with.My footsteps echo too loudly in the emptiness.
The city hums just beyond the window.
I lean back against the door and close my eyes, wishing the quiet would soothe the ache beneath my ribs.
I lock the deadbolt.Then check it.Twice.Twist the chain.Three times.I’m twenty-eight, technically an adult, supposedly a fully functioning one, but I’ve never lived alone before.And if I’m being honest, it terrifies me.
Not the starting over part.
Not the man who was standing on the street.
The quiet.The silence that reminds me there’s no one in the next room.No one to call out to if something creaks, or breaks, or completely unravels.I want to learn how to be alone without it meaning abandoned.How to want things out loud and not apologize for the wanting.
It terrifies me so much that I told the guy who gave me a tour at work today that I couldn’t go out to the dinner I’d agreed to.I told Wyatt that something came up.Which was a lie.What came up was my chronic inability to be normal, and the overwhelming realization that I have no idea how to function as a single human unit.The hardest part of living is the rules, the rehearsals, and how much of my life is avoiding making other people uncomfortable.
He was being kind.Probably.I doubt he was planning to murder me over pad thai and spring rolls.But I couldn’t stop thinking about how badly I’d mess it up.What if I talk too much?Or not enough?What if I get food in my teeth and he thinks I’m weird?
Which, I am.
So that wouldn't exactly be wrong.
Wyatt probably thinks I’m flaky and antisocial, and he’s not wrong about that either.
I set my bag down, line the strap along the counter’s edge, and try not to think about how a stranger’s gaze across an empty street felt like an answer to a prayer I didn’t know I was reciting.
I move to the window, drawn by the city’s glow.From up here, Vegas looks quieter than it is.From above, it’s a constellation of lives scattered across the desert, dreams and ambitions laid out before me.
Behind me, the kitchen light flickers once.
He’s still there.
The same ghost who’s been lingering since the day I moved in.
Charcoal suit, Bolo-Hat.Straight fromThe Thomas Crown Affair, or at least that’s what I told him the first time I saw him.
He didn’t laugh.He never does.He doesn’t bother me either.Mostly he just exists.Like a coat rack someone forgot to move.
