3. Giselle
GISELLE
I climb the stoop stairs two at a time, keys gripped between my knuckles. The walkup is old. Five floors of chipped banisters and a carpet that’s seen a thousand footprints more desperate than mine. It’s less than I can afford, and more than I deserve.
Even from outside, I can smell the cacophony of scents from every floor. Burned rice on one, sweat and baby powder on the next. The tell-tale scent of skunk weed on the next. My ankles are raw from the straps of my low heels, and each step towards the front door is worse than the last.
I fumble the lock, the world swimming a little from the long night and the memories I’ve tried not to let ferment.
Then, it happens again.
The sense of being watched blooms in my sternum, hard and insistent like fingers wrapping around my throat.
Adrenaline spikes through my body and chases away what little alcohol remaining in my system.
I twist around, hand reaching for my gun.
Nothing.
Just the sigh of the city at night and a roach zigzagging toward a crack in the sidewalk.
Instead of my gun, I grab an earring and twist.
Flash.
A bright light explodes across the darkness. So bright and fast that it leaves me half-blind. My gun rises by instinct and I spin, barrel forward, to search the block for the source of the light.
Wait… no it’s not. A shadow moves, and I get a peek of a now-familiar pair of blue eyes before the hulking shape of a massive man seems to melt into the shadows. Somehow they’ve burned themselves into my mind since I last saw them at the gala.
And in that instant, I know two things:
One, he followed me home.
Two, he knows where I live.
My breath catches in my throat, my heart drumming a confused and erratic song.
I should call it in, if only to establish a paper trail early. Russo will take me seriously. He knows I’m not in the habit of calling wolf. If anything, I have a reputation for the opposite.
But I don’t call it in. I wait as my heartbeat slowly returns to normal, and keep waiting—partly to see what happens next, and partly hoping that I might see those blue eyes again.
And only when the adrenaline drains completely in the still night, do I turn away and open the door.
My apartment is a study in function: futon, desk, chair, a stack of compostable paper plates and two of each form of basic cutlery.
I keep my badge on the fridge and my gun within three steps of any point in the room.
The walls are white, the windows small, and the space filled mostly with air and regret.
The only decoration is a framed photo on the bookshelf, but I turn it away.
I don’t want to look at Serena tonight.
I drop my purse on the futon and shed the dress like a second skin. Underneath, my compression tank and black bike shorts chafe my skin until it’s crawling with gooseflesh. I tug at Serena’s earring until my lobe throbs. Only then, do I let it go so that the pain in its wake can anchor me.
The city is never quiet. But tonight, there’s a deliberate hush.
I peek out the blinds towards the street below. It’s empty. Nothing but flickering streetlights and the warm glow of the bodega across the intersection.
No blue eyes.
And now that I’m alone, I feel just free enough to admit to myself that I’m almost disappointed, and that I wish they are there.
Am I really so fucked up that I want a stalker? I wonder, knowing the answer all too well.
I check all the windows, then the closet, then the bathroom, one after another in a ritual that’s half-safety and half-compulsion.
Satisfied, I kill the lights and stretch out on the futon, still in the tank and shorts, hair unpinned and spilling across the pillow.
My eyes sting, my bones rattle at the joints.
I close my eyes and his gaze returns, huge in the darkness behind my lids.
And blue.
So goddamn blue .
They feel like both an accusation and a promise. It’s like he knows I can scream at the top of my lungs and it won’t change a goddamn thing. And I know that no matter how badly I wish for them to, those eyes won’t ever blink when they look at me.
Eventually, exhaustion wins and I sink into the futon mattress, the worn metal bottom grinding against each other in complaint. The photo on the bookshelf is still turned away, but I can see it perfectly: me at ten, Serena at fifteen, and both of us in hideous Christmas sweaters.
Her arm is around my shoulders, holding me in place. We’re both smiling like idiots, not knowing that it’ll be the last time we ever stand like that again.
And then, like a ghost haunting me with its ice-cold caresses, a pair of blue eyes swim back into existence from the dark recesses of my mind.
I know he’s there.
Not in the room.
In my head.
Blue eyes. Watching. Knowing.
And for the first time in years…
I don’t feel entirely alone.