7. Emily
“ I swear to God, someone needs to get that man laid so any of us have a hope of finishing all these labs with a high enough average.”
I nodded in agreement with Lisbeta, though I’d have suggested a different solution for our surly professor, who seemed to have forgotten that there were only twenty-four hours in a day and that we all had full course loads from multiple classes. Maybe a redo of A Christmas Carol , but more homework-themed with the three spirits of lab work: Due, Past Due, and Sum Zero.
I chuckled at my own mental joke, but thankfully, it sounded like I was laughing at Lisbeta’s pithy remark so no one gave me the side eye. I had a feeling I was on thin ice with the group, and I didn’t want to rock the boat at all.
“Thank God it’s Saturday.” That was Jessica, still rocking the telltale sunglasses that came after a night on the town. “I feel like I could sleep like the dead.”
There was a groan of commiseration around the entire table, and I joined in, even though I was feeling pretty spry. The utterly bizarre interaction I’d had with the strange man was still noodling around my mind, yet I felt more rested and ready to go than I had since summer break. Was it my sudden rebound after being sick? Or was it from having so many calories? I didn’t really know, but I was grateful for it, and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I sipped my coffee, enjoying the deep bitterness of it. There’d once been a time when I could only drink the most sugary, doctored-up caffeine drink with lots of whole milk, but both my lactose intolerance and my blood sugar had forced me to slowly wean myself off of those borderline confections. I still had them when I was on my period as a nice little apology to the rest of my body for my uterus acting like Mike Tyson’s punching bag, but the rest of the time, I’d learned to love a deep, earthy, roasted coffee. Black, of course.
For once, I was sitting pretty. Despite the hiccup with the stalker guy, I’d turned in an essay I’d finished in the few free margins of my afternoon class, I’d gotten a good review from my supervisor at the research center, and I was finally feeling full!
Things were looking up, that was for certain, and it was about time. Once our little brunch get-together was over, I’d finish packing up and head home for the birthday party I shared with my father. Some would consider a Sunday party odd, but it worked for us. It let everyone just chill together Saturday night and watch movies while munching on takeout that was ridiculously bad for us.
“Hey there, Bella,” someone said. “You weren’t in class yesterday.”
I raised my eyebrow at the small pack of fraternity bros who approached my table. It must’ve been one of the few classes Bella and I didn’t share because she’d been at all the ones we both had. Perhaps one of her electives? It was a known fact that if a student’s plate was overloaded, it was the electives that were ditched first.
“Yeah, I know,” she sighed. “I desperately had to finish up this makeup lab, so I had some choices to make.”
I watched as the other girls all twisted around to talk to our fellow students, but I just pasted what I hoped was a polite expression on my face and checked out mentally. After so much focus today, it was nice to just... let my mind wander. I thought about my shared birthday with my father, about the drink in my hands and whatever I wanted to eat later, what programs I wanted to get into at which hospital, just some real good cranial meandering. I got so into it that I didn’t realize I was being called until Jessica flicked her unused straw at me.
“Earth to space cadet! This is mission control.”
“Huh?” I blinked slowly at her. People were talking to me? Yikes.
“I was just asking how your classes were going.”
I looked at the bro who was speaking and realized he looked vaguely familiar. “They’re going pretty well,” I answered. “Killing me trying to stay afloat, but I’m managing.”
He smiled softly at me, and I could tell he thought he was charming, but I wanted to go back to my daydreams. “Bruh, heavy same here.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree there,” Lisbeta said, and I couldn’t tell if her tone was entirely joking or slightly pissed off. With her, it was often so difficult to tell. “Miss Emily has already found her Prince Charming.”
“Yeah, she hardly even recognizes the male species now.” Jessica’s laughter held a cruel edge. Not that I verbalized that, of course, though I wanted to.
I knew I’d worked really hard to lose weight and finally be accepted into a group of friends who were fairly socially adept and popular… but did I actually like them? Did they even like me, or was I just their punching bag?
It was a sobering thought, and it must’ve shown on my face because the rando leaned in, his admittedly handsome features softened with concern. I thought of the dashing stranger instead. He’d been older than me, but ambiguously so. Just enough to be intriguing.
Wait, what? Intriguing? What was I going on about? He was upsetting, rude, and possibly dangerous, and I needed to put him out of my mind.
“You okay?” the guy asked. “These girls being mean?”
But I didn’t answer him. I hardly even heard him. That was because I saw none other than the strange man himself standing across the road from the café, staring at me once again.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit!
I jumped to my feet, my heart thundering in my chest. Encountering him at my college was an unpleasant occurrence. Encountering him again off-campus hours later was outright alarming. I’d gone from a one-off experience to a possible stalker situation.
“I gotta go,” I said abruptly, shooting to my feet.
“Wait, what the fuck? What’s wrong?” That was Jessica, who at least had the decency to sound concerned.
“Uh, nothing,” I stammered. “I just realized I had a tutoring session for extra credit down in the resource center.”
“On a Friday?!”
“Yup! Gotta go!”
I hurried out the back of the building, hoping that’d get me out of the stalker’s line of sight long enough. Out of nowhere, I’d found myself in a much more serious situation than I’d ever imagined. Where had the guy come from? Had he spotted me at BMX? Truly, I never should have gone there. I should’ve stayed at home rather than end up embarrassing myself and picking up a stalker.
At least I was far enough away from home that I didn’t really have to worry about him harming my family. Unless… oh shit, what if he followed me home for the big birthday bash?
The thought made me nauseous. Did I need to call the cops? Or would they just laugh at me? Because so far, all he’d done was talk to me once and stare at me. The police wouldn’t get the absolute weight I felt when his eyes were on me. Every part of my body whispered that there was something dangerous there, no matter how ruggedly handsome the outer package was.
I was too scared to look behind me. If I was insanely lucky, the guy had no idea I’d spotted him at all. Hard to believe when our eyes had met, but I hoped, nonetheless.
It was perhaps a block or so later when I saw a possible salvation in an outlet mall. I rapidly went through a mental list of all the shops I knew were there, looking for whatever would be the place where my stalker fit in the least.
I got it!
Pulling a rapid left, I speed-walked right into Victoria’s Secret, its borderline-obnoxious pink interior instantly enveloping me. Was it my favorite store? No. I actually never shopped there. When I was plus-sized, they never carried anything that could possibly fit me, and even though I’d lost weight, I still found their bras just didn’t feel good on my larger chest. Besides, if I wasn’t a good enough customer when I was fat, I didn’t want to be one at all now that I was smaller. No matter what my weight was, I was still me.
Even if I was still figuring out who that was.
It was unlikely that my stalker would just amble right into the store, but just in case, I grabbed several bras that somehow managed to look both loosey-goosey and pinching at the same time, then beelined straight towards the changing room, praying that the employees wouldn’t swoop down on me like a bunch of minimum-wage-compelled harpies. It wasn’t their fault that their employers turned them into the equivalents of human seagulls with measuring tape, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed their company.
Somehow managing to dodge all of them, I ducked into one of the fitting rooms and closed the curtain. I knew that was more than enough, but it wasn’t, so I sat on the bench inside the tiny space and pulled my feet up, hugging my knees to my chest.
I just sat.
I knew I was doing that white girl thing from horror movies, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. I doubted I could outrun the man if he decided to properly give chase, and I certainly couldn’t take him hand to hand. I’d taken some self-defense classes in my time, but my new shadow was completely jacked in a way that was as intimidating as it was compelling.
No. With both flight and fight out, it seemed my best option was to hide.
I stayed there for a while. Twice, attendants came and knocked on the wood paneling beside the curtain, asking if I was all right. I assured them I was and prayed they somehow wouldn’t give away my position. If the employees saw a random guy in a biker jacket pacing in front of the changing rooms, they would do something about it, or at least I hoped so. Again, there was only so much that could be reasonably expected of them if they were only paid minimum wage.
I stayed huddled in that tiny room for about half an hour. When there was no sign of the guy, at least from what I could tell, I figured it had to be safe. Besides, maybe he wasn’t following me at all. He could’ve been going to the I and seen me, then froze while deciding what to do. I certainly knew if I’d had such an awkward interaction with someone, I’d want to avoid them.
Was this all in my head? I’d been a lot more stressed lately with midterms and everything else, so I could be catastrophizing in the worst way.
That was it. That had to be it. I gathered up all the bras I’d hurriedly smuggled into the changing room and opened the curtain.
Only to let out a short scream and drop them all when I came face to face with none other than the very man I was trying to avoid!
“You!” I leaped backwards until I nearly collided with the mirror hanging against the wall. At least it was cheap enough that I knew I likely wouldn’t break it.
“Me,” he said with a smirk that told me he thought he was oh-so-clever. I wasn’t in the mood. Anger rose within, hot and virulent, and it licked along my limbs, burning a path down my spine.
Who the fuck does this guy think he is?
It was that thought that had me stomping past him, pretending he wasn’t even there. I was so done with being scared of what other people thought of me. I wanted to dig my teeth into something, to rip and tear like a wild animal. It was completely unlike me, yet somehow, it felt right.
The guy was surprised by my storming right past him. Had he expected me to be scared? To keep cowering behind a curtain? Nope. I was done with that.
“Hey, wait up!” he shouted.
He hurried to follow me out of the store. How pathetic. Fine. If he wanted me to make a scene in the middle of the street, I would.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I said as I kept right on walking.
“Look, I know you don’t know me, and you have no reason to listen to me, but I did want to apologize for the other day.”
Oh? An apology? That was just about the last thing I expected.
Despite my best efforts to resist, I turned to regard the handsome man. I wouldn’t have if we weren’t in the middle of a fairly busy mall, but I did feel safer knowing we were in public. For what it was worth, he did seem genuinely contrite.
And charming.
Perhaps a little too charming.
Part of me knew I was being naive, but another hoped this was all some misunderstanding. It would certainly be so much less stressful that way. The last thing I needed to worry about was some predator while preparing for my midterms. Med school was hard enough as it was.
The guy’s tone was sincere, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t something drawing me to him. On the other hand, he was a guy who probably knew how to handle women, how to sweet-talk them out of being angry after he’d done something wrong. It didn’t exactly speak well of his character, yet I found myself intrigued by him, anyway.
Did that make me pathetic?
“I am sorry for bothering you,” he said. “I thought you were someone else, someone that I knew and was separated from, way before social media was a thing. Even if you were her, I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. I hope you know I deeply apologize for startling you and wish I had approached the situation with much more grace. If you’re open to it, I’d like to take you out for coffee as an apology. Everyone on this whole campus runs on caffeine, right?”
“I…”
For some insane reason, I wanted to agree, which was absolutely stupid. Thankfully, though, I managed to clamp down on my tongue and study the guy once more. His apology was nice, and I wanted this to be some misunderstanding, but it still felt too good to be true, like I was being tricked.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “If you prefer, I could just give you a gift card.” He lowered his voice a little, and for a moment, I thought he was going to say something salacious that’d bring the tentative house of cards he’d built tumbling down. “Right now, it’s best to avoid anything too stressful. Otherwise, it could spike your fever.”
My fever?
How did he know about that?!
Terror strode through me again, and my adrenal glands were tired of the ups and downs. But if he knew about my fever, that meant he’d been following me for longer than I thought and knew far too much about me. Had he been going through my trash?
Before I could get a single word out, someone else appeared right beside us, shadow looming. I turned to see a rather strapping man with long blond hair pulled back into a bun and piercingly green eyes.
“Hey there,” he practically purred, voice smooth as butter. Strangely enough, it called to me in a similar way that my stalker’s did, yet it was also completely alien at the same time. While the dark-eyed man echoed like a dream forgotten after wakefulness, this new stranger was creating alarm bells in my head over and over again. “What’s a girl in your condition doing out in the open like this?”
In my condition? What the hell did he mean by that?
Oh no. Was he an accomplice to my original follower? Was he... was I about to be kidnapped?
I wanted to scream, I wanted to run, panic racing through every part of me, but I also felt ensnared in a web. Why was I still rooted to the spot when I should’ve been calling 911?
I didn’t have much time to linger on that question because my stalker stepped between us.
“Back off,” he growled. “She has family and pack. Nothing to see here.”
Pack?
What the fuck was going on?
“Is that so?” I swore a rumble issued from the blonde’s chest—a real, honest-to-God animal-like rumble. “The way I see it, she’s all alone and out in the open. I think we both know what usually happens in these situations.”
“How can she be alone when I’m right here?” my stalker shot back.
Were they fighting over me? The idea was absolutely preposterous. I wasn’t the type of girl that burly, chiseled men fought over. But even if I was, these two strangers knew nothing about me, or nothing I’d willingly told them. What was going on? Was the world going insane?
That feeling only increased when the blond guy drew his fists back and tried to hit my original shadow. I yelped, jumping away once again, but this time, there was no mirror to catch me. I stumbled, only barely managing to catch myself as the two men became embroiled in a brawl.
Had I been pulled into an action movie without my knowledge? Real people didn’t act like this, yet that was exactly what was happening right in front of me. Two muscled, attractive men were now in the middle of the street, fighting for the privilege of talking to me. I never had to deal with this thing when I was plus-sized, and I found myself sorely longing for the protective coating of fat that had shielded me from so much of the world.
“Get back, Emily!” my stalker shouted.
Emily? When did I tell him my name?
Should I really be surprised when he also knew about my fever?
That overwhelming feeling quickly became too much. I just needed to get far, far away from it all.
“Stay away from me!” I cried before booking it towards campus. Hopefully, I’d get lost in the crowd before making my way back to my own place, where I was going to email the landlord a request for at least two new locks on my door.
I had no idea what was going on, but I was smart enough to be acutely aware that whatever it was, this wasn’t good for me.