A single black rose.
My legs feel weak as I walk toward the bed, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The rose is perfect, its petals dark as midnight, its stem stripped of thorns. It's lying across my white pillowcase, either a promise or a threat, and I can't tell which.
I can’t breathe. I know I should run. I should get out of the apartment, call the police, call someone… do anything other than stand here staring at this flower that shouldn't be here.
Instead, I pick it up.
The stem is slick and smooth against my fingers, and when I touch the petals, they feel velvety and cool. There's no note, no explanation, just this impossible rose in my bedroom that someone left for me. Someone who can get past my locks, who knows where I sleep, who wants me to know they've been here.
The fear hits me then—reallyhits me, crashing over me in waves that make my knees buckle. I sink onto the bed, the rose still clutched in my hand, and I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but feel the terror coursing through my veins.
Someone was in my apartment. Someone was in mybedroom. Someone stood right here, right where I'm sitting now, and left this rose on my pillow.
I toss the rose back onto the bed as if it burned me, falling to the floor on my knees to grab for my purse that I dropped when I saw the flower. I grope for my phone, searching for the number for the police station with shaky hands.
“I need someone to come to my apartment,” I tell the dispatcher who answers, giving her my address. “I think there was a break-in.”
Two officers arrive twenty or so minutes later, clearly having been in no huge rush, and both men. They look tired andskeptical as I try to explain what's been happening: the gifts, the feeling of being watched, the open window, the rose.
They walk through my apartment, checking the windows and doors and looking for signs of forced entry. They find nothing. No damage to my locks, no sign that the window was pried open from the outside—not that anyone could easily get this high up—no evidence that anyone was here at all.
"Are you sure you locked the window this morning?" the male officer asks, and I can hear the doubt in his voice.
"Yes." My voice is sharp when I say it, but even I'm not sure anymore. Maybe I forgot. Maybe I'm losing my mind. Maybe all of this is in my head. I’m tired and stressed and maybe I was overheated last night and opened the window and forgot about it. Maybe thisismy fault somehow.
But I know I didn’t put a fucking rose on my pillow.
"And these gifts," the older officer says, looking at me. "You don't know who they're from?"
"No."
"Could they be from a boyfriend? An ex?"
"I don't have a boyfriend. And my exes wouldn't do this. My last boyfriend was a couple of years ago and he doesn’t even live in New York any longer."
They exchange a glance, and I know what they're thinking—that I’m a paranoid woman, probably imagining things and wasting police time.
"Look," the older officer says, his voice gentler now. "Without evidence of a threat, there's not much we can do. The gifts could be from anyone. A secret admirer, a client, a friend. And the window—you might have just forgotten to lock it."
"We'll file a report," the other officer reassures me, as if that does anything at all. "And we can have patrol cars swing by your building more often. But unless something else happens, unlessyou receive an actual threat or see someone following you, our hands are tied."
They leave, and I'm left alone again with the rose and the growing certainty that I'm not safe here. That I might not be safe anywhere.
When the police officers are gone, I call a locksmith, needing to dosomethingif they won’t. He arrives after midnight, bleary-eyed, and charges me double for the emergency call. He changes all my locks at my request, and checks every window to make sure they're secure. It costs me a small fortune, but I don't care.
I needsomethingto make me feel as if I might be able to be safe again. I need to believe that I can keep whoever this is out.
I’m as angry as I am upset. I just moved here, into this apartment that was supposed to represent my success, a dream spot in a dream neighborhood. Now it’s being sullied by… someone, and I have no idea who. Someone who thinks their obsession is more important than my peace of mind.
The locksmith leaves at two in the morning, and I'm exhausted but too wired to sleep. I pour a glass of wine and sit on my couch, staring at the rose that I should have thrown away already but, for some reason, haven’t been able to bring myself to.
It's beautiful, in a dark, twisted way, like everything else that's been happening. Everything I’ve received has been beautiful, elegant, artistic. These are the gifts of someone who thinks they know me, whoisgiving me things I actually want. Gifts that, under other circumstances, I’d be delighted to receive.
I think about the man in Boston again, about the way he looked at me, the intensity in his eyes. I think about how I haven't been able to stop thinking about him, how I dream about him at night, how part of me wishes he had asked for my number, wishes I had given it to him.
But that's crazy. He's a stranger, someone I met twice. There's no way he could be behind this. No way he could have followed me to New York, learned my routines, gotten into my apartment.
Is there?
