05. Sleepwalker
Shade
DAY ONE
She’s not parked across from the window. No one watches me as I make myself breakfast and pace around in my apartment.
This is a trick. I’m sure of it. Maybe she overslept.
I keep on the lookout as I walk to the coffee shop. I don’t see her anywhere. I don’t feel her watching me with her pissed off stare.
I feel… lonely. She wrote me off so fast. Three words and she gave up?
I try to shake it off. I do not need a psycho in my life. This is for the best.
DAY FIVE
“Did she leave?”
I’ve lost it.
“Who?” Tera sounds bewildered at my angry tone. She sounds like she just woke up and I glance at my watch, wincing at the time.
Then I get pissed. Who? She knows damn well who I’m talking about.
“South. Did she leave?”
“No?”
“Then where is she ?” I practically yell in frustration.
It’s been days since she’s followed me and I’m out of my mind. I waver between being pissed about it and being concerned for her. I can’t find her anywhere. The baristas have no idea what her name is or anything else other than her voice is weird, her eyes are empty soulless voids, and she hasn’t been in.
“She’s probably working.”
“ Where ? She doesn’t live here,” I grit out through clenched teeth.
“She works from home,” Tera sounds even more confused. I hear someone grumble as she shifts around and she whispers my name and an, “I’m not sure.”
“Well, where is home?”
“I don’t know, Shade. I’m sick and it’s too early for this.” She hangs up on me.
DAY EIGHT
I spend the next few days pestering Tera about her location at God awful hours of the morning. She doesn’t have any satisfying answers to my questions so I feel a little less guilty about it. She started this mess and she can put up with my crazy ass.
All she can tell me is that South checked out of her hotel months ago and got a pay by month apartment so she could keep following me. While refusing to tell me the name of the complex. A search came up empty on that front. The overwhelming number of people that have moved here is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
She’s not allowed to give out South’s number or address because it’s some rule they have. A ban she put on Tera. The irony. And Tera isn’t budging on it, no matter how much I threaten her precious computer.
I’ve pulled up video feed from the streets leading from here to the coffee shop, gym, and the diner I like to at least have a video of her. It’s like she knows exactly where they are because she never passes a single one. There I am, as plain as day. No South.
She’s shit at being subtle. How did every single camera miss her?
I’m getting nowhere.
Where the fuck did she go?