5 - Isa #2
The guilt hits so hard I have to grip the bar to stay standing. She's dead, and somehow it's my fault. That's the only thing I know for certain, the one true thing in a fog of unreliable memory. We were together, then she was gone, and the weight of it sits on my chest like a stone.
I can't remember how she died. Not clearly.
There are fragments. Sun too bright, her voice calling my name, something about falling.
But the pieces won't fit together. Drug haze, trauma, time, something has eaten the memory until all that's left is this crushing certainty that I killed her.
Not directly, maybe. But through carelessness, recklessness, being the kind of friend who brings danger.
My breath comes in sharp gasps. Fourteen years old, and I destroyed the one person who really knew me. Is that why I push everyone away now? Why I can't let Juliet's warmth get closer than bar-width?
Meiling would be twenty-eight now. My age. Would she still laugh at stupid things? Would she have gone to Taiwan like we planned, sent me postcards of night markets and temples? Would she have forgiven me for whatever I did that day I can't quite remember?
The weight of her presses down until I can barely breathe. This is what happens when I let people close. They die, they leave, they become ghosts that haunt me in empty bars.
I force myself to move, to lock up, to walk out into the Miami night. But Meiling follows me anyway, a shadow I can never shake, a debt I can never pay.
The walk home takes me down Atlantic instead of Ocean, past the closed shops instead of the late-night restaurants. Another variation in the pattern, another attempt to shake the feeling that never leaves.
It's worse tonight. The watched sensation has weight now, substance, like someone breathing just out of sight. I catch myself counting steps. One two three four five six seven eight, one two three four five six seven eight. The rhythm that keeps panic from eating me whole.
A car idles at the corner, windows too dark to see through.
It pulls away as I approach, but another one appears two blocks later.
Different car, same feeling. My hand finds the knife handle and I pull it from my boot, fingers wrapping around it like a rosary.
The metal warms under my palm, and for a moment I imagine using it, imagine the wet slide of it into flesh, the way a threat would become silence.
The violence of the thought should disgust me. Instead, it steadies me.
I check reflections in every surface. Store windows, car mirrors, the black screen of my phone. Nothing. No one. Just me and my paranoia walking through the thick Miami night that smells like salt and exhaust and night-blooming jasmine.
By the time I reach my building, sweat has soaked through my shirt despite the short walk.
I stand at the entrance for a full minute, scanning the street, noting every shadow.
An old man walking a tiny dog. A couple arguing in Spanish three buildings down.
Normal night sounds that feel anything but normal.
Inside, I perform my security rituals with religious precision. First lock, test the resistance. Second lock, listen for the click. Third deadbolt, the one I installed myself, the one that actually matters. Each lock is a prayer, each secure click a small salvation.
Check the thread I placed across the door frame.
Undisturbed. Test each window latch, twice, because once is never enough when you're trying to secure yourself against something that might already be inside.
The knife stays in my hand as I move through the apartment, checking corners, closets, behind the shower curtain.
My rituals have become more elaborate each night.
More threads, more checks, more ways to convince myself I'm safe.
Empty. Secure.
In my bedroom, I strip off my sweat-soaked clothes, take a quick shower, and collapse onto the bed, but sleep feels impossible. My body thrums with leftover adrenaline, with the memory of being watched, with something else I don't want to name.
I close my eyes and hate that it's Adrian's face I see.
Not the watcher, not the threat I'm running from.
Adrian. His fingers brushing mine over that coffee cup this morning.
The way that tiny touch sent heat shooting through me, immediate and unwanted.
His voice saying "carina" like it means something more than casual endearment.
My thighs press together involuntarily, and I curse my traitorous body.
This is not the time. I'm being hunted, watched, violated in ways I can't even prove, and my body chooses to ache for the one man who makes me feel safe?
The one person whose daily ritual of coffee has become something I need like air?
I’ve known Adrian for years, but these past few days something’s changed. I keep noticing the stretch of his shirt across his chest, imagining that the look in his eyes is hunger rather than simple kindness. It must be my stalker, making me scared, making me turn to the safest person I know.
I let myself imagine what would happen if I didn't pull away when Adrian touches me. If I let his fingers linger on mine. If I leaned into his warmth instead of drowning it in one burning gulp.
The ache between my legs intensifies, and I press my palm against myself through my underwear, hating myself for the relief it brings. This is what I've been reduced to. Paranoid and desperate, craving the touch of a man I can't afford to want. Because people who get close to me die.
Adrian with his easy charm and his careful distance. Adrian who sees too much but never pushes. Adrian whose cologne, tobacco laced with something citrus, maybe lime, makes me want to bury my face in his neck and stay there until the rest of Miami disappears.
My fingers move against myself, and I bite my lip to keep from making sound. Because somewhere out there, someone is watching. Waiting. And the sick part is, I don't know if the heat in my belly is from fear of my stalker or from imagining Adrian's hands instead of my own.
I come with his name silent on my lips.