17. Julia #3
I won’t ask you to answer yet. For now, I only want you to know that I have not gone anywhere. I see you when you are polished for the rest of the world, and I see you when you are barefoot in your kitchen wearing clothes nobody was ever meant to find seductive.
You are wrong if you think one version interests me more than the other.
My throat tightens. There, that is the sentence that does the real damage.
Not the one about watching me touch myself.
Not the question about whether I would have wanted his hand instead.
This. Because I spent an entire week wondering whether he had seen enough of me to become bored.
And somehow, impossibly, the man who should know none of that has written directly into the insecurity.
You have been wondering whether I lost interest.
My stomach drops. I read the sentence again. No, that one is too close.
I didn’t. I was watching.
A chill moves over my skin despite the warmth gathering everywhere else.
Sleep well, Little Ember. You are far more interesting when you forget anyone might be looking.
—Man in the Shadows.
I reach the end and remain sitting with the letter in both hands.
My house feels different again. Not because anything has changed in the last ten minutes, because now I know that the silence of the past week was never absent.
Friday, he watched me wander around the kitchen.
Saturday, he watched Tessa and me make dinner.
Sunday… I close my eyes briefly. Sunday he saw far more than I ever intended another person to see.
For several moments, anger is the easiest emotion to understand. He had no right. There is no complicated psychological interpretation required. No history to unpack. No trauma response to analyze. I believed I was alone inside my home and he watched something private. That is wrong. Completely.
My eyes open. The letter remains in my hands. Then why am I still holding it like something I intend to keep? I read the paragraph again. Not all of it, only the part I hate most for affecting me.
I see you when you are polished for the rest of the world, and I see you when you are barefoot in your kitchen wearing clothes nobody was ever meant to find seductive. You are wrong if you think one version interests me more than the other.
My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with fear.
There is something profoundly unfair about receiving words I have wanted in some form for most of my life from a man whose behavior should make them meaningless.
To be seen. Not the useful version or the competent one.
Not the woman who knows what to say, what to fix and when somebody else needs something.
The one who stands in front of the refrigerator without knowing why she opened it.
The one who wears enormous shirts and eats cheese directly from the cutting board.
The one who gets horny on a Sunday night and does something about it, then looks mildly irritated when the result isn’t worth the effort.
He sees that woman too. Apparently he prefers her. I hate how much that matters.
I read the letter again from the beginning.
The second reading is somehow more intimate because surprise is no longer protecting me from the meaning of the words.
The fear remains, though, and so does the anger.
But neither manages to erase the warmth spreading through me when I reach his question again.
Would it have felt better if it had been me?
I have no idea. The logical answer is that I don’t know him, therefore the question is meaningless.
The less logical part of me wonders what his voice sounds like.
That is new. Until now, Man in the Shadows has existed entirely as handwriting and presence.
A silhouette without an actual silhouette.
I have never imagined his face because there is nothing to build it from.
Now I wonder about his voice. Is it deep?
Soft? Would he speak the way he writes, controlled and certain as though every word has already been decided before it leaves him? I catch myself.
“Jesus Christ.”
I lower the letter. This is exactly the kind of thought that should send me directly to Kai’s office ahead of schedule. Except telling Kai is somehow even less possible now. The first letter was bad enough. How exactly am I supposed to sit in that chair and hand him this one?
Hi, Dr. Blackwood. My stalker watched me masturbate and then wrote me a letter about it. Also, I appear to have developed the sexual judgment of a woman in a horror movie.
I can already imagine his face. Not judgmental, that might actually be easier.
Kai would look at me with that terrifyingly focused attention of his and ask how the letter made me feel.
Then he would wait. And because silence becomes a weapon in that office, eventually I would have to answer.
Scared, violated, angry, interested, aroused.
Absolutely fucking not. I fold the letter carefully.
This time, I noticed that I didn't even consider throwing it away.
I slide it back into the envelope and place it beside me on the couch before finally standing.
The movement pulls my attention toward the windows.
Outside, darkness has swallowed most of the yard.
My own reflection hovers in the glass, softer than the last time I stood here searching the trees.
Behind it, the porch light reaches only so far before the property disappears into shadow.
He could be there. The realization is immediate.
Maybe tonight. Maybe not. I walk closer to the window.
I don’t press my face against the glass or lift a hand to block the reflection this time.
I simply stand several feet away and look beyond myself toward the tree line.
There is nothing to see. No movement., no figure between the trunks.
If he is out there, he is better at hiding than I am at finding.
The thought should make me step away but my eyes remain on the darkness.
A week ago, not being able to see into those woods made my house feel exposed.
Tonight, knowing he may be somewhere beyond the reach of the porch light does something entirely different.
The fear is still there, I would be lying to myself if I pretended otherwise, but beneath it is a strange, quiet awareness that settles where loneliness occasionally lives without announcing itself.
He didn’t lose interest, he didn’t leave.
I close my eyes for a moment, immediately disturbed by how close that thought comes to comfort.
When I open them again, the trees remain dark and empty. I still cannot see him.
For some reason, knowing that doesn’t feel quite the same as believing I’m alone.