3. The Mysterious Stranger
Chapter three
The Mysterious Stranger
Lauren
T he next morning I dressed like I was armoring for war.
Crisp navy slacks, the kind with a lining that stuck to your skin in humid weather, and a high-collared blouse so starchy it left a faint burn line under my chin.
I applied a BB cream heavy enough to smother a chemical spill and wound my hair into a bun with so many bobby pins it threatened to give me a tension headache before noon.
When I stepped outside, the air felt like sandpaper.
The raw and abrasive nature of it catching on the exposed slice of my wrist where the sleeve slipped up.
The world was unreasonably bright. It made every motion feel naked, unprotected.
Walking to work, I hugged the edge of the sidewalk, hugging myself with my bookbag strap like a straightjacket.
I could still feel last night’s dream on my skin, an electric sting.
Every time my hips shifted, the friction at my inner thighs reminded me of how I’d gasped and twisted in the shower, kneeling and greedy under the spray.
I kept my head down, but every shadow that crossed my path made me flinch, like I was half expecting the dream-hands to reach out and drag me back into that other world.
I was two blocks from the library when it happened.
The intersection was busy, no one waiting for the light to change, just a surge of bodies pressing forward in whatever direction promised escape.
I kept my eyes fixed on the crosswalk lines, counting the blackened gum dots to anchor myself.
Then someone crashed into me at full speed, a hard, unyielding collision that sent my books tumbling to the concrete.
“Shit… sorry. I wasn’t… fuck.” The voice was male, but the tone was something less than polite.
I bent to grab my books, head swimming. When I looked up, the man was already stooping to help.
He was taller than me by a few inches, with a runner’s lean build and skin just this side of olive.
His hair was a messy ink spill, not quite a style but not quite accidental, and he had the kind of jawline that belonged to a soap opera villain.
But it was his eyes that caught me. So dark they almost looked black, set deep and sharp, unblinking.
He handed me my battered copy of Dream Analysis: Jung and Freud, then stopped, staring at me with a flicker of confusion. “Scarlett?” he said, the word soft but electric.
My heart jumped. I tried to say something, anything, but the syllables got stuck on my tongue.
He grinned, teeth blinding, and for a second the street noise melted away. “Didn’t expect to see you this early. You’re not usually up before noon.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “You should’ve called. Or are we pretending last night didn’t happen?”
I stared at him, mute. He was close enough that I could see the individual pores on his nose, the dark stubble creeping along his jaw. The scent off him was city and cologne, something sharp and peppery. I tried to take a step back, but he caught my elbow.
He bent down, lips a half-inch from my ear, and said, “You left a mark, by the way.” Then his hand slid down and, with shocking casualness, he squeezed my ass… right there in the middle of the crosswalk, as though we were actors in a play and the whole street was an audience in on the joke.
I felt every neuron in my body fire at once.
My thighs went numb, my hands too, but I was painfully, humiliatingly aware of the pressure where his hand gripped me.
I could taste the copper of my own blush, radiating out from my cheeks in waves.
I wanted to die. I wanted, for a split second, to press myself into him and feel what would happen if I stopped resisting.
Instead, I gawked. Fish-mouthed. He noticed the hesitation. The smile flickered. “You okay?” he asked. “You seem… off.” The way he said it, off, like he’d seen a thousand versions of me and this one was especially disappointing.
I forced a laugh, brittle and fake. “I think you have the wrong person,” I managed, barely above a whisper.
He blinked. His eyes traveled over my face, pausing at my glasses, the bun, the tightness of my lips.
For a second, I saw uncertainty. Then he laughed.
The laugh was a deep, smooth sound that vibrated through my bones.
“If that’s how you want to play it, fine,” he said, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender.
He checked his watch, then flashed another smile.
“I’ll see you tonight, then. Don’t be late. ”
With that, he slipped past, weaving through the crowd with the liquid grace of someone who’d never been stopped by anyone or anything in his life.
I stood in the middle of the sidewalk, clutching my book and my chest, like maybe I could keep my heart from exploding out of my body.
The world came back in pieces: the shriek of a car horn, the sticky-sweet exhaust, a child wailing somewhere far away.
My fingers trembled so badly I nearly dropped the book again.
I wanted to sit down on the curb and scream, or laugh, or maybe just vanish.
Instead I turned, almost involuntarily, toward the plate-glass window of the nail salon behind me.
My reflection looked wrong. There was nothing of “Scarlett” in it.
The face staring back was mine. Lauren, librarian, so average it hurt.
My glasses were smudged, my bun already collapsing.
The line of my blouse was pulled taut across my too large chest, the fabric almost indecently sheer where the sun caught it.
I looked like I’d been caught in a wind tunnel, or a fever, or both.
But under the surface, something throbbed.
The pulse at my throat beat so fast I could see it moving.
I imagined, for one stupid second, how I might look if I unbuttoned the top three buttons, let my hair fall around my face, stood up straight.
Could I be this “Scarlett” then? Or just a sad parody, a woman who didn’t know how to wear her own skin?
I pressed my palm to the glass, feeling the cold cut through my nerves.
I tried to picture what he’d seen. What any stranger could see, looking at me. I saw a ghost in a blouse, a cipher.
I held there, listening to my own breath fog up the window, until someone behind me said, “Excuse me?” and I had to step aside.
My legs carried me the rest of the way to work, but it felt like walking in a nightmare where every step was half a second behind the world.
I could still feel his handprint on me, hot through the double layer of fabric.
The worst part was how much I didn’t hate it.
By the time I reached the library, the nerves in my body had wired themselves into something between terror and anticipation.
I thought of the man’s last words… I’ll see you tonight …
and wondered if I was going to spend the entire day haunted by the possibility even though I already knew the answer.
The front doors of the library hadn't even unlocked yet, but Amanda was already there, propped against the returns desk, one hip cocked at an angle that made her pencil skirt pull tight across her thighs.
She stirred her coffee with a neon pink straw, lips pursed in a way that left a perfect crescent of coral lipstick on the lid.
Her silk blouse was the color of sunrise, clinging to the curves of her breasts where one button too many lay undone, revealing a shadow of cleavage and the glint of a gold pendant that disappeared beneath the fabric.
Her hair was swept up in a ponytail so sleek it might've required an engineering degree, exposing the elegant line of her neck and a pulse point that seemed to flutter when she saw me before I saw her.
“Lauren, hey!” she chirped. Her voice pinged off the marble and glass, too loud for the hour. “You look… wow. You okay?”
“Morning,” I managed, fumbling my keycard at the lock. I could feel the heat still radiating from my cheeks, and my blouse was already wrinkled from the walk. I slid behind the desk and tried to disappear into the computer, hoping Amanda would get distracted by her own reflection.
No luck. She leaned in, elbows bracketing her cup, watching me with laser attention.
“Did you sleep at all? You’re usually a straight-up Ice Queen on Mondays, but today it’s like…
” She trailed off, doing a slow, deliberate scan from my hairline to my shoes.
“You look like you were chased here by wolves.”
I laughed, brittle. “Just tired. Weird night.” My hands hovered over the keyboard, trying to act busy, but all I could see were the tremors in my own fingers.
Amanda plucked a pastry from a waxed paper sleeve and offered it to me. “Sugar fixes everything.” She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. “Or is it something spicier than insomnia?”
I took the pastry to appease her, breaking off a corner and popping it in my mouth. The sweet glaze burned my tongue, but I barely tasted it. “It’s nothing. Just a dream. Or… whatever, it’s stupid.”
Amanda’s face lit up. “Spill. You never talk about your dreams. Unless you’re secretly a serial killer, in which case I totally called it.”
A pang of wanting flickered in my gut. Wanting to confess, to be seen, to let someone else carry the weirdness for a minute. I dropped my voice to a whisper, feeling the absurdity of it all. “I keep having these… dreams. But they’re not dreams, more like episodes. And every time, it gets more…”
Amanda leaned so close I could smell her lotion. “More what? Sexy? Violent? Both?”
“Both,” I said, instantly mortified.
Amanda whooped, loud enough to make the security guard glance our way. “YES. I knew it. You have a total pervert brain under all that tweed.”
I shushed her, ducking my head. “It’s just… I don’t know. I’m not even in control. I wake up, and it’s like my body is miles ahead of my mind.”