Page 2 of Loved By the Gargoyle

Hello,

X.

It was pretty ridiculous, and I thought it had been a joke from another tenant. Someone bored, trying to find friends, maybe. And there was no harm in responding back, so I’d scribbled my own hasty greeting underneath it, stuck it where the crack of the doorframe and the wall met, and left.

Hi,

M.

When I got back, there was another note waiting for me on a brand new page.

If it does not trouble you, would you tell me what occupies your thoughts?

X

My brows pulled together at that, but I figured it was their way of asking how I was doing or what was on my mind. I’d taken the note inside with me, leaving it on my counter as I went about my day. But then I’d caught sight of it again hours later and my fingers itched to pick up a pen.

It was stupid. Dangerous. I knew that. Who in their right mind responded to a complete stranger or even entertained the idea?

The thing was, it didn’t feel harmful at the moment. It felt like a cute little joke. And I was intrigued. Bored.

Lonely.

So I picked up my pen, and I responded. Not with a ‘I’m okay’. I actually sat at my desk, nibbling away at a prawn cracker and I wrote back.

It felt like having a penpal. And I was careful, too. Careful not to overshare anything about myself. About my work. My family. I mean, if they were a serial killer, they could’ve murdered me at any time since they already knew where I lived, but I still made sure to sign off with my first initial and not my full name.

And he did the same.

All the responses following implied my mysterious penpal was a he. And as careful as I was to keep details about myself private, he did the same.

But even though I didn’t know his name, or what he looked like, I knew a lot. At first, we’d written back and forth surface-level stuff. Things about our days, what we’d seen. It escalated into a slow-building relationship tethered together with scraps of pen and blotches of ink.

I looked forward to hearing from him.

Was it sad to say that his letters were one of the best parts of my day? Probably, but it was the truth.

Talking to X had been something that veered from my set routine. At first, I didn’t think it would go anywhere, but his messages appeared daily to brighten my day. To ask me questions and answer my own.

The last letter I’d left was yesterday’s, where I gushed over my favorite restaurant, The Cauldron, a few blocks away. I guess I just assumed he lived in the building and had been there.

I reread the words, trying to decipher more about him with the clues he left. I eventually got up and strayed across my living room to the corner that was meant to be my office.

On my desk sat a wooden box, the color faded with time, with golden edges and the Chinese character for courage on the lid.

I lifted it, placing X’s letter inside along with the others I kept. Then, I took a seat and picked up a pen, paper, and began to write.

Not for the first time, I daydreamed while I wrote, weaving an image of X in mind. Each time I read another note, his appearance changed. Each time I grasped the pen in my fingers, it was like I had X in front of me, and every word that came to life at the tip of it. It felt like I was speaking directly to X. Butterflies erupted at the base of my stomach, spreading through my entire body as a whole, until the sensation of tingles overtook every single layer of me. My heart sang, and it was almost embarrassing to admit that I’d grown a crush on someone I’d never seen, heard, or really spoken to before.

But did that even matter? Spiderwebs were composed of intricate smaller pieces, stringing the bigger strands together to form the whole. I was familiar with the smaller pieces of X’s spiderweb. I knew parts, if not the whole, and that was okay too.

Besides, it was just a crush. A harmless crush.

I could almost hear my ma and aunties in my ear asking me–demanding, really–when I would be getting a man. Someone for me so I wouldn’t be so lonely.

I wasn’t lonely.

Okay, that was a lie, considering I’d taken up a mysterious penpal for that reason exactly. But it was easier to pretend I wasn’t.