29. Julia #2
I fold the letter once, then unfold it because I hate that I’m treating it gently.
I should throw it away or fucking burn it.
Tear it into pieces small enough that there is no handwriting left to recognize.
Instead, I put it in the drawer with the others.
That makes me angrier than almost anything else, the fact that the drawer was still his, that I made it his and that all of his previous letter held space there.
I stand with one hand against the closed drawer and wonder what it would take to forgive someone for something like this.
Forgiveness feels enormous, impossible and much too close to absolution when the betrayal is still fresh enough that I can feel it in my body.
My phone buzzes across the counter.
Tessa:
I’m bringing wine, carbs and the trashiest movie I can find tonight. This is not a democracy.
I stare at the screen. Then at the drawer.
Tonight, I tell her.
Tessa arrives at seven carrying two bottles of wine tucked under one arm, a paper bag of takeout in the other and enough candy balanced against her chest that I have to take something from her before she drops half of it on my porch.
“You do realize there are only two of us, right?”
“There are only two of us so far,” she says as she steps inside and nudges the door closed with her heel. “If tonight becomes emotionally catastrophic, I reserve the right to call for reinforcements.”
Normally I would ask what kind of emergency support requires three bags of sour candy and two bottles of Cabernet, but she turns around before I get the chance and actually looks at me.
The joke disappears from her face.Her eyes travel over my old sweatshirt, the hair I haven’t bothered doing anything with and probably whatever is sitting behind my eyes after spending most of the day alternating between wanting to burn Kai’s letter and reading it again.
She sets the takeout bag on the kitchen island without looking away from me. “What happened?”
She just stands there studying me with the unnervingly direct expression of someone who has known me long enough to recognize when every version of “I’m fine” is complete bullshit. I turn toward the kitchen before her face can make mine collapse.
“Can we eat first?”
“No.”
“Tessa.” I walk over to the cabinets just so I get a moment to compose myself.
“You look like somebody died, and I know Nanna didn’t because she sent me a meme at nine-thirty this morning.”
I stop and turn around. “Nanna sends you memes?”
“Apparently we’re friends now. Focus.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it, though it barely lasts long enough to qualify. Tessa notices that too, and her whole expression softens.
“Oh, honey.”
That nearly does it. I turn away again before she can hug me because if she puts her arms around me now, I will start crying, and I’m not ready to begin this conversation from somewhere I can’t find my way back from.
“Pour the wine.” I mutter.
For once, she doesn’t argue. Ten minutes later, the food is cooling untouched on the coffee table while we sit on opposite ends of my couch with our glasses between us.
Tessa has turned completely toward me with one leg folded underneath her, while I keep staring at the dark television because apparently telling your best friend that you have been secretly fucking your stalker becomes considerably more difficult once you actually have to form the sentence.
There is no elegant entry point into this so I just blurt it out.
“I’ve been seeing someone.”
Tessa’s eyebrows climb. “Okay.”
I wait. She waits. When I don’t immediately continue, her eyebrows climb higher.
“Are you going to tell me who, or is this one of those interactive experiences where I’m supposed to guess?”
“I’m getting there.”
“You’ve been ‘seeing someone’ and haven’t told me?” The genuine offence in her voice almost makes me smile.
“I knew you were going to get stuck on that part.”
“Of course I’m stuck on that part. We discuss men who smile at you in elevators.”
“I know.”
“How long?”
“A while.”
“That is not a measurement of time, Julia.”
I take a drink, mostly because it buys me several seconds. “Long enough that you’re going to be pissed I didn’t tell you.”
Tessa settles farther back against the cushion with the wary expression as if she’s preparing for impact. “Fantastic. Strong opening.”
“He isn’t somebody I met normally.”
“What does that even mean?”
I stare down into my wine, watching the reflection of the room tremble slightly because my hand isn’t as steady as I thought it was.
“He kind of found me.” The joke she was about to make never comes, so I continue. “There was somebody watching the house.”
Her glass stops halfway to her mouth. “What do you mean, watching your house?”
“I mean exactly that. I didn’t know at first. I would get this feeling sometimes, especially near the windows, like somebody was out there, and then he started leaving letters.”
Tessa lowers the glass very slowly. “Letters.”
I nod. “Yes.”
“From the man standing outside your house.”
“Yes.”
“And you never called me.” The anger in her voice is there, but underneath it I hear something worse. Hurt.
I look away. “I know.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Because at first I wasn’t even sure I wasn’t imagining it. Then I knew I wasn’t, and by that point…” I run my thumb against the side of my glass while I try to explain something that still sounds insane in my own head. “It had started changing.”
“How does getting letters from your stalker change into something that doesn’t warrant calling your best friend?”
“When I started wanting him there.” That stops her completely.
For several seconds, she simply stares at me, and I can almost see her trying to decide whether I misspoke. “You wanted him there.”
“Yes.”
“Your stalker.”
“I am aware of how it sounds.”
“I don’t think you are, because I’m sitting here hearing it and I’m not sure I understand how it sounds.”
Despite my foul mood, my mouth twitches.
“He started with letters about things he noticed, things I did when I thought I was alone. At first they scared me, but then they became more personal. More sexual. He started giving me ways to answer him without having to write anything back, and that changed things.”
Tessa’s brow furrows. “What kind of ways?”
“The lamp, mostly. If I wanted him to watch, I left it on. If I didn’t, I didn’t.”
Something complicated passes through her expression because that answer doesn’t fit the category she has already put Ghost into.
“He never came inside until I invited him,” I continue. “Eventually he left a letter telling me that if I wanted him to come in, I should leave the door open. So I did.”
Tessa’s mouth opens but no sound comes out.
I lift one hand immediately. “I know.”
“No. You absolutely do not know, because I currently have about eight thousand questions trying to crawl out of my mouth at once.”
“Please let me finish before you yell.”
She leans closer, all humor gone now. “Just tell me this, did he ever hurt you?”
The question comes so quickly and with so much naked concern that I finally look at her properly. “No.”
“Julia.” Her voice carries my name as a mixture of warning and concern.
“I mean it. He never hurt me in a way I didn’t want him to. If I told him to stop, he stopped. Immediately. Every single time.”
Tessa searches my face for several seconds before some of the panic leaves hers. “Okay. I still hate approximately ninety-eight percent of what I’ve heard so far, but okay.”
Once I start, the rest comes out easier than I expected.
Maybe because keeping Ghost entirely to myself has required more energy than I realized.
I tell her about the letters, about the first night I opened the door and the mask that prevented me from seeing anything except his eyes.
I tell her about how frightened and excited I was at the same time and how quickly the fear disappeared once I realized I could stop anything with a word.
I tell her he came back, that I kept wanting him to.
That sometimes he stayed afterward, which somehow became the part I found hardest to explain to myself because sex was easier to categorize than falling asleep with his arm around me.
Tessa interrupts often enough that it feels like an actual conversation instead of a confession.
Sometimes she needs clarification and sometimes she simply cannot physically allow one of my sentences to pass without protesting.
When I reach the lingerie store, she puts her wine down altogether. “Wait. Back up. He told you to go buy lingerie?”
I take a sip of my wine before I continue because no matter how mad I am, that particular memory still heats my cheeks. “He picked the store, paid for it and then showed up.”
Her eyes widened. “At the store?”
“Yes.” Obviously something on my face changes before she’s looking at me like I just grew a second head.
“You fucked your stalker in a fitting room.”
“Yes.”
She leans back and presses two fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I have several concerns and what I believe is now the early onset of hypertension.”
“You asked.” I let our a small laugh.
“I absolutely did not ask for this. I asked what happened. I expected a shitty man, shitty boss, maybe family drama. I did not expect you to tell me you secretly entered a psychosexual thriller and forgot to invite me.”
A laugh escapes me, stronger this time, and for a few seconds the pressure inside my chest loosens. Then I remember I still haven’t told her the other half of the story.
“Tess.” She looks at me and immediately knows from my voice that I’m not finished. “There’s more.”
“Of course there is.” She reaches for the bottle and tops up her wine. “Apparently we have abandoned all reasonable limits.”
“I know who he is.”
Her hand stops. “Ghost?”
I nod.
“How?”
“I had therapy Thursday.”
Her expression becomes confused. “Okay…”
“I got there earlier than usual, and Kai wasn’t with another patient, so I went into his office before he was expecting me. His jacket was off and his sleeves were rolled up.”