19. Julia #2
The paralegal takes a breath and I can almost hear the apology forming again.
“No.” The word comes out before she gets the chance.
Both of them look at me.
I walk back up toward her. “You don’t need to apologize for instructions you were never given.”
The silence that follows is surprisingly satisfying. The associate’s jaw tightens, but the email is right there and he knows it.
“We’ll send the corrected version and explain there was an internal update,” I tell him. “It isn’t a crisis. But she isn’t taking responsibility for something that wasn’t hers.”
He mutters that he’ll handle it and disappears down the hallway.
The paralegal remains beside me for another moment, and when I look at her, some of the tension has already left her shoulders.
“Thank you.” She whispers.
“You really don’t need to thank me.”
“I was already starting to think maybe I missed something.”
I glance toward the closed hallway. “That is why God invented timestamps.”
She laughs softly. I return to my desk with something strangely settled inside me.
Doesn’t feel like a triumph or some dramatic breakthrough.
Just the recognition that I’m tired of watching people apologize simply because someone else has decided they should.
I’m even more tired of doing it myself. Kai would probably have an insufferably insightful observation about that.
I decide not to give him the pleasure of hearing about it, but the thought stays with me throughout the afternoon anyway.
By the time I leave work, I have reached one conclusion with surprising clarity.
I am tired of being the nice girl whenever nice means making myself smaller, easier, quieter or more convenient.
Exactly what that has to do with the man hiding outside my house is something I choose not to examine while driving.
The black envelope is waiting against my door when I get home.
I see it before I even reach the porch, and my body reacts so quickly that any attempt to classify the feeling as fear becomes laughable.
Fear is there, of course it is, but so is the immediate pulse of excitement that follows when I realize he came back.
I stop near the bottom of the steps and look into the tree line .
Nothing moves. It is still early enough that the last of the daylight hasn’t disappeared completely, which means he must have approached the house while the neighborhood was awake.
I wonder how badly he wanted me to have whatever is inside.
I pick up the envelope before I can spend too much time with that question.
Inside the house, I don’t bother pretending I might wait to open it.
I kick off my shoes near the door, hang my coat, leave my bag on the bench and carry the envelope directly into the living room.
The wax seal cracks beneath my thumb. His handwriting has become familiar enough that I recognize the shape of it before I read the first word.
Little Ember,
Then:
You left the light on.
Warmth spreads slowly beneath my skin. Of course he noticed. Of course he stayed. I continue reading.
But you made me wait.
I told you to choose when I was welcome. You did.
You also taught me something.
You like knowing I want something from you.
You like knowing you can make me wait for it more.
I stare at the page.
“Cocky bastard.” My mouth betrays me by threatening a smile. Then I reach the next line.
Good.
The smile disappears. It is completely unreasonable for a single handwritten word to do anything to me. My body disagrees.
I keep reading.
Tonight, I want something different. When it gets dark, come to the living-room window.
My pulse changes immediately.
Leave enough light behind you that I can see your face. You don’t need to show me anything you don’t want me to see. I don’t need your body spread open for me to know what I do to it.
Heat creeps slowly along my neck. I settle farther back against the couch.
I want you close enough to the glass that when you look outside, you know exactly who you’re looking for. Then touch yourself.
My thighs press together almost automatically. This time, pretending the reaction is anything other than arousal would be insulting to the both of us.
Slowly. Not because I ordered you to. Because you spent all day wondering whether I would ask again.
I stop.
“That is absolutely not true.”
The empty room appears unconvinced. Maybe not all day, but enough of it for the thinking to qualify as borderline obsessive.
I return to the letter.
I want you to know I’m out there while you do it.
I want you looking into the dark and imagining exactly what watching you is doing to me.
If you change your mind, walk away from the window. That will be enough. I will not follow you to another room. I will not wait for you to reconsider.
The words slow something inside me. There it is again — the exit. The choice.
Then:
But if you stay...
My stomach tightens.
Then give me what you refused me last night. Come for me. And when it’s over, keep your eyes on the trees. I want to know whether being watched still feels like something being taken from you or whether tonight you can admit you chose it.
—Man in the Shadows
I finish the letter and remain sitting there while the room grows quieter around me.
That final question bothers me more than the sexual parts.
Not because I don’t understand what he means, because I do.
The first time he watched me, I had no choice.
That fact still makes my skin crawl when I allow myself to think about it too closely.
I had been inside my own home believing privacy was automatic, and he had taken it without ever giving me the opportunity to say yes or no.
Last night was different. He asked. I left the lamp on, but refused to give him anything else and as far as I know, he respected that. Tonight he is asking again, only more clearly. If I go to that window after dark, there will be nothing accidental about it.
I set the letter on the coffee table. There are several hours left before the decision needs to be made. I spend approximately ten minutes pretending I haven’t already made it, then I shower. Halfway through shaving my legs, I realize what I’m doing and stare down at the razor in disgust.
“He is standing thirty fucking yards away, Julia.”
Apparently my legs still require shaving?
Pathetic, but I finish anyway. Afterward, I stand in front of my closet wearing a towel and become annoyed all over again because I’m considering what to wear for a man who has already seen me in oversized sweatshirts and clothing I would never intentionally classify as seductive.
Eventually, I chose soft black shorts and a loose gray T-shirt.
No bra. That decision happens without much thought until I catch my reflection.
I point at myself. “Do not start.”
I have no idea what exactly I’m warning against.
Downstairs, I make dinner and manage to eat about half of it while checking the windows more often than necessary.
Twilight settles gradually over the neighborhood, softening the shapes outside until streetlights begin appearing and the trees behind my property merge into one dark wall.
My heart starts beating differently before the sky is completely black.
I rinse my plate, wipe my hands and return to the living room.
The letter is on the coffee table, exactly where I left it. I read only the instructions this time.
Come to the window.
If I change my mind, I can just walk away and he will leave.
I think about the paralegal at work, about the apology she was ready to give simply because someone had made her believe responsibility belonged to her. Then I think about last night — I made him wait because I wanted to. Nothing bad happened and he asked again. He’s waiting for my consent.
I turn on the lamp beside the couch, the warm light fills the room and then I walk toward the window.
Each step feels slightly unreal, because there is no sensible version of my life where I should be doing this.
I am thirty-four years old, standing inside a house I own, deliberately approaching the window because an anonymous man hiding somewhere in the woods asked me to let him watch.
If Tessa knew, she would probably break into my house herself and physically remove me from the room.
Still, I keep walking and stop a few feet from the glass.
My reflection meets me first. Loose shirt, bare legs, damp hair falling over my shoulders.
Nothing particularly dramatic, yet I feel different from the woman who stood here searching the darkness after the first letter.
Then, I felt exposed. Tonight, I feel watched because I chose to be.
Compartmentalising like that makes all the difference over what I’m about to do next.
I step closer. The darkness gives me nothing.
“Are you there?”