The night it happened, the air had the temperament of overwelmed tea – heavy. Her companion, once the human embodiment of chamomile, crossed lines she hadn’t thought to draw, because some betrayals are too absurd to anticipate.
His touch became more of a hostile acquisition. A corporate takeover of her autonomy. She froze from the sheer absurdity of it all. The apologies arrived later, brittle and rehearsed, like bad theater. She’d heard sturdier remorse in customer service scripts.
So, she left like someone walking out of an opera at intermission. She moved to a city where the streetlights hummed like old vinyl and no one asked why she never took phone calls. Therapy became a weekly engagement, as dependable as morning tea. Her job at a bustling bookstore offered the comfort of quiet rebellion: alphabetizing chaos and handing out literary salvation to strangers. The scar from that night she wore it like vintage lace.
And then, one evening, the television, forever the traitor summoned his face. A little older, sleeker, the same eyes repackaged with gravitas. The chyron read: Advocate Against Harassment Shares His Mission. He spoke with the fervor of a reformed villain – giving TED Talks on virtue, as though amnesia were a public service. Her tea cooled.
He’d become a brand. A moral influencer. Social media applauded him with digital ovations. She scrolled, numb and fascinated, watching people offer standing ovations to the thief who’d stolen her safety and now returned in a hero’s cape.
But anger, like deo, eventually fades to something more complex. Late at night, insomnia dressed her in curiosity. She watched his interviews with a critic’s eye: was that a flicker of guilt, or merely good lighting? Did he believe his own narrative? She didn’t know. What unsettled her most was not that he’d changed – it was that she wondered if he had.
She saw his face on a book and thought, of course. She stopped, just mid-chew of a mediocre snack. A flicker of something. Just… static. He looked permanent now, laminated. She kept walking. Her story didn’t fit jackets or shelves. It leaked, it burned, it laughed in church. It changed accents mid-sentence. It was a window smashed by joy and mended with glue that glittered. She was still being written, mostly in the margins.
