17. Julia #2
“I have never complained about this arrangement.” I say, smiling as I start turning towards my house, feeling lighter than I did when I got out of the car.
Then I see the porch. My steps slow. There is something resting against the front door.
Black. My entire body recognizes it before my mind catches up.
For a moment, every emotion I have spent the last week refusing to examine seems to arrive simultaneously.
Fear comes first because apparently some part of my brain remains appropriately interested in survival.
Relief follows so closely behind it that I nearly resent myself, then curiosity and underneath both, something warmer that I refuse to name while standing ten feet from evidence that a stranger has been on my property again.
I glance toward Mrs. Pritchard. She has turned back toward her plants.
If she noticed anyone near my house earlier, she would have said something, wouldn’t she?
The thought makes me look toward the street.
Nothing unusual. Just another quiet evening in a neighborhood I have always considered safe.
I walk toward the porch slowly. The envelope looks almost identical to the first. Thick black paper.
Dark red wax. My private name written across the front in the same controlled handwriting.
Little Ember.
My heart gives one hard beat. He didn’t stop.
The realization should frighten me, and it sort of does, but what frightens me almost as much is the immediate, undeniable relief that follows.
I crouch and pick up the envelope. The paper is cold from the evening air.
For one brief second, I look toward the trees again and wonder whether he is still close enough to see me holding it.
The sensation I felt that first night doesn’t return.
Nothing prickles along my neck. Nothing makes me feel observed.
If he has been watching during the last week, he has gotten better at being invisible.
That thought should probably send me directly back across the yard to Mrs. Pritchard.
Instead, I unlock the door. Inside, I take more time than I did with the first letter.
I close and lock the door, slip off my shoes and hang my coat beside it before setting my bag on the narrow bench beneath the hooks.
The envelope remains in my hand through all of it.
I don’t pretend I’m not going to read it.
That particular lie has become insulting.I carry it into the living room, sit at one end of the couch and run my thumb across the wax seal.
The first envelope frightened me enough that opening it felt like an argument between curiosity and self-preservation.
This one feels different. I am still nervous, just simply no longer afraid of the paper itself.
The seal cracks beneath my thumb. Cream stationery waits inside.
The first line sends that same strange little pulse through my stomach.
Little ember,
Then:
You wondered whether I was gone.
I stop.
“What the fuck?”
My eyes race over the sentence again. He cannot know that.
Except the uncomfortable thing is that he doesn’t need to know.
Maybe it is an educated guess. Maybe he assumed that after one letter I would wonder whether there would be another.
Still, something about seeing the thought written back to me makes my skin tighten so I continue.
I wasn’t.
I have been closer than you think, watching the small pieces of you that nobody sees because you believe being alone means being unseen.
The living room suddenly feels warmer. I become aware of the windows without looking toward them.
I know how often you wander into your kitchen without needing anything. I know you open the refrigerator as if something new might appear between one visit and the next, and I know you choose the softest clothes you own the moment the rest of the world no longer gets a vote.
My lips part. Friday, or Saturday. Maybe both.
He had been there. The thought makes my pulse jump, but another reaction follows when I realize what he noticed.
Not something impressive. Not me dressed for work or leaving the house with makeup and styled hair.
Me wandering around my kitchen doing absolutely nothing.
The ridiculous intimacy of it unsettles me.
I read farther.
I watched you laugh with your friend. I watched you try not to look horrified while she destroyed perfectly good pizza dough, and I watched you fail.
A startled laugh escapes me before I can stop it. I immediately cover my mouth with one hand.
“Oh my God.”
He saw that. I can remember the exact moment.
Tessa attacking the dough like it had personally insulted her ancestors while I tried desperately not to interfere because she had already accused me twice of being controlling.
He had been watching then too. The laugh disappears almost as quickly as it came.
That should not be funny. Nothing about a stranger standing outside my house watching girls’ night qualifies as comedy, except apparently he has a sense of humor. That feels dangerously humanizing.
My eyes move to the next paragraph.
And I watched you last night.
Something low in my stomach tightens before I have any idea why. Then I remember Sunday. The movie. The blanket. My hand. Everything inside me goes very still.
“No.”
I almost folded the letter back up and shoved it right back in the envelope. Almost. Instead, I keep reading because apparently there is no version of this in which I develop good judgment midway through.
You thought you were alone.
Heat climbs slowly from my chest toward my face.
I know the ache in your body when you press your hand against your core, wishing someone else would.
My breath catches. There it is. The sentence I should never have to read from someone I have never invited into my home.
My entire face burns. I lower the page for a second and stare at the opposite wall.
He saw me. Not theoretically, moving around the house or eating dinner or falling asleep on the sofa.
He watched me touch myself. The violation of that lands sharply enough that for several seconds there is no excitement at all. Only anger.
“Fucking creep.” The words come out louder than I intend.
I should stop reading. I know that with perfect clarity. Instead, I look down again.
The blanket hid almost everything from me, but your face told me enough.
That somehow makes it worse, and better. No, not better.Less horrifying, perhaps, because he hadn’t seen what my brain initially imagined he had seen. Still, he watched my face while I came. Heat spreads lower now, mixed with humiliation and something far more dangerous.
I watched the way your breathing changed and the way you closed your eyes when pleasure finally caught up with you. I watched the tension leave your body, and then I watched you look at the television afterward as though your own hands had disappointed you.
I blink once. Then again. The bastard. Because that is exactly what happened.
The orgasm had been fine, technically. It was…
functional. My body had wanted release, I gave it one and afterward I felt almost exactly the same as before, only sleepier and mildly annoyed by the fact that desire sometimes demands attention without offering anything particularly memorable in return.
I hadn’t expected anyone else to notice.
I certainly hadn’t expected someone hiding outside my fucking house to notice.
The next lines make my pulse change again.
You wanted relief, Little Ember. What you got was an answer to a physical question. Those are not always the same thing.
I stare at the words. That one gets under my skin, not because it’s sexual but because it sounds like something Kai might say. The thought arrives so suddenly that I almost laugh. Apparently therapy has officially colonized my vocabulary.
I keep reading.
I wondered what would happen if you knew someone was watching.
My grip tightens slightly on the page.
Would you have stopped? Would you have closed the blinds that aren’t there, turned away from the window and hidden where nobody could see you?
The question settles into me slowly. He knows there are no curtains, of course he does, he has been watching the house. I swallow and continue.
Or would knowing I was there have made you feel it differently?
My thighs press together before I can stop them.
“Absolutely not.”
My body remains unmoved by criticism and the letter continues.
Would you have wondered what I was thinking while I watched your face? Whether I wanted to be the hand beneath that blanket instead of the man outside wishing I were closer?
The words are sensual without describing much at all, which somehow makes them more effective. My imagination supplies everything he leaves out and that pisses me off. It also makes me read slower.
You should be angry that I saw you.
“I am.”
You should probably be frightened too.
“I fucking am.”
But I think there is another question beneath both of those things.
My breathing slows.
Would it have felt better if it had been me?
I stop reading. The room becomes unbearably quiet. There is absolutely no universe in which I should be considering the question. I don’t know him. I have never seen his face. I don’t know his age, his name or whether he possesses any redeeming qualities beyond apparently understanding pizza dough.
He watches me without permission, leaves anonymous letters, claims ownership of a woman he has never spoken to. And yet my body answers before my mind gets the opportunity — maybe. The admission exists only inside my head. It still feels dangerous.
I force myself to finish.