Page 95 of Letters From A Stalker

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.

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.”