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FORTY-ONE

When Alex arrives bleary-eyed and shaken at the Herald the next morning, Tom is sitting on a long couch in the big glass-walled atrium waiting area.

“Alex!” He leaps up when he sees her. “I’m sorry about last night. I was worried that I scared you. I didn’t mean to.”

He isn’t wearing his headphones, she notices. His neck looks nearly naked without them as he rushes toward her, thwarted by the arrangement of long sectional couches in the lobby. Her palms go damp as she continues through the atrium past him. She doesn’t slow down. She doesn’t have time for this.

“Alex, wait! I’ve been wanting to talk to you, and, well, as you know you haven’t been answering my texts since the other night and I didn’t know how else to contact you.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. A hot wave of shame rushes over her. She does not want to think about the other night. Not now. She should not have gotten involved with this man she doesn’t know. It was careless of her.

“What happened? Alex?” His forehead creases with worry. “I must have done something to make you react that way; I would love to know what.”

Alex is so tired. She wants so badly to believe that he has nothing to do with what is happening to her. She imagines collapsing into one of the seats of the sectional and letting him pull her to his chest and telling him everything, but there is too much about Tom that doesn’t add up: the spying, the strange run-ins, and mostly those words, the ones that still make her chest clamp up when she thinks of them. You can’t escape the past.

He leaps over the couch awkwardly, landing right in front of her just before she reaches the turnstiles. She is forced to stop, to look at him there. His face looks more haggard than she’s ever seen it. There is stubble growing in on his cheeks.

“What are you doing, Tom?” She narrows her eyes.

“What am I—?” He looks taken aback. “I told you, I just wanted to talk to you, Alex.” But Alex doesn’t have time to explain the letters. And besides, she isn’t sure she believes him. It all still seems a little too convenient. A quirky handsome man who listens to audiobooks, Little Women , for Christ’s sake, just happens to run into her again and again? All this coinciding with a slew of threatening notes, one of which he happens to quote. No, it doesn’t add up, but Alex doesn’t have the time or the energy to figure it out right now. Not with all that’s going on. She has to keep herself safe. And if doing so means staying away from Tom, then so be it.

“Alex!” he says again, more softly.

“You spy on people, Tom. You’ve insinuated yourself into my life when I never asked you to. You are out there watching; I never know if you are doing something bad or you are just strange, but it’s too much. I don’t know if you’re bad or good. All I know is you’re scaring me.”

“Please, Alex. You’re right.” He puts his palms out to her. “It has nothing to do with you. Maybe I shouldn’t look out the window so much, but you try working in banking. It’s horrible. I just hate my job. I’m so bored I’ll do anything to preoccupy myself. I swear it was never meant to be creepy. I am so truly sorry that I scared you.”

“And what about the thing you said?” She still has no idea why he said it, but it terrified her. “You don’t know anything about my past.”

“Alex, I’m sorry for using some generic aphorism about life. I can tell it freaked you out, but I promise you I don’t know what is happening. If you explained to me what is going on exactly, I could maybe have some idea of what you’re talking about. And then I could reassure you that I have nothing to do with it.”

The closeness of their time together still clings to her, coating her in a weird film of embarrassment. She hadn’t wanted to make herself so vulnerable. Her stomach turns as she remembers him looking at her scars. She should never have given in to him, shouldn’t have allowed herself to get caught up in the image of her and him together. What did she think was going to happen? That they’d become a perfect little couple? Alex knows better than that. It was reckless of her. Stupid. She looks away from him.

“Let me go,” Alex demands, her heart pumping quickly. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you need to leave.”

He moves aside abruptly, hurt creasing his face. “Of course. God. I would never try to stop you.” He steps back, clearing her path to the elevators. “Alex, I’m so sorry. I’m just really confused. If you ever want to tell me what happened, I would love to know.”

Alex passes by him, walking as quickly as she can to the turnstiles, her fingers trembling as she scans her ID. She heads for the elevators, not letting herself turn back, relieved as she hears the whisk of the glass partitions shutting behind her.