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ELEVEN

Good thing my car is out of commission. I consumed more alcohol than I’d intended. The short walk home is more of a stumble, but it is early enough that there are still several pedestrians on the sidewalk, and the alcohol thrumming in my bloodstream keeps me warm.

I glide farther away from downtown, until the lights and sounds are distant.

The streets here are dark, tranquil, and it’s only now that the images of the black hearts return, carrying with them the unknown intentions of whoever is sending them.

I should know better than to walk home alone at night, my head swimming with alcohol, my chest filling with fear.

This is the exact type of situation that leads to danger—the exact type of situation I write about—and I’m in no position to be so risky.

When my complex comes into view, relief washes over me, and I hurriedly type in the security code to the front door.

Inside, the apartment is a cluttered mess, and quiet.

“Crystal?” I call out, but there’s no answer. As expected, she’s probably out with co-workers, likely celebrating the achievements of someone else, same as me.

I could have stayed longer at McCallie’s, but my head was beginning to swim, and I wasn’t sure I could stand another minute around Marley. Maybe it’s the newness of her, her youth, but something about her gets under my skin, makes me feel like I’m longing to break free.

I slump onto the sofa, retrieving the remote to aimlessly scroll through what’s on television.

Finding nothing of interest, I turn it off.

This overwhelming feeling of emptiness has plagued me ever since April shared her news.

Perhaps even longer than that, if I’m being honest. I’m lonely, and the fact I’ve just left a gathering of people does little to ease that sense of loss.

I raise my phone, wishing there was someone I could call. But who?

When I dropped out of college, an immovable distance appeared between me and every other person I know.

My mother is disappointed in my failures.

Crystal is still in my life, but I assume it’s because of pity more than anything.

I don’t have any real friends, only acquaintances I’ve met in my various jobs before moving on to the next. Nothing real, nothing important.

There’s only been one serious boyfriend in the past decade.

Without meaning to, my thumb finds his contact information in my phone, hovers over his name.

Jasper. The alcohol coursing through my body dares me to call him.

Maybe we could just catch up. Maybe he could come over so I wouldn’t feel so alone.

You’ll regret it , a voice from inside warns.

A sober voice. Just as quickly, warring thoughts appear in my mind, reliving the good times in our relationship.

We were together for nearly two years, my longest relationship by far.

More than that, Jasper was my first adult relationship.

We met on my twenty-seventh birthday, when I was having a miserable celebration dinner by myself at my favorite Chinese restaurant.

He appeared at my table wearing a plaid button-down tucked into jeans, dark-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

“Did you order egg rolls?” he asked, holding a plate in front of me.

“Yes,” I said, confused, looking around the near-empty restaurant for my server.

“I think they brought them to my table by mistake.” His gaze followed mine. “There aren’t many people here besides us.”

“Eating alone, too?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s not as pathetic as it sounds, I promise.”

“I guarantee you it’s not as pathetic as me,” I said, leaning deeper into the booth. “I’m dining alone on my birthday.”

He pulled a face that was hard to read, part smile, part wince. “That is sad. Surely you aren’t celebrating alone?”

I nodded. “And now you’ve taken my egg rolls.”

“I’d be willing to share,” he said, putting the appetizer on my table. “Consider it my birthday gift to you.”

The entire interaction felt staged, a corny meet-cute from some romcom I’d never finish.

Normally, I would have told the stranger to hit the road and take his contaminated egg rolls with him, but there was something about Jasper that made me pause my initial impulses.

He was kind, nervous and safe. It was that safety that let me build a relationship with him, and for the first time in years, it seemed like maybe I was able to reenter the world as everyone else knew it.

Remember what happened next , that annoying voice inside insists.

It wasn’t right away. Two years passed, and I fell in love. Jasper was about to move in when I found them in his car. A pair of lacy underwear that did not belong to me. Sewn into the fabric was a black heart, and beside it, a paper with a single word: Cheat .

I confronted him immediately, lacking all the casual cool that protagonists typically have in books and movies.

I couldn’t sit on the information, wait for the right time to confront him.

I started a fight immediately, demanding to know who the underwear belonged to.

Jasper, being the kind, decent person he was, folded immediately.

He admitted to having slept with a random woman he met in a bar.

Claimed to not even know how it happened.

It was out of character, but she was practically throwing herself at him, and he just couldn’t help himself.

He couldn’t rely on the love I had for him.

He couldn’t consider the fact we were about to move in together.

Just like that, Jasper was gone, and I was on my own again. Have been ever since.

Even though he begged for my forgiveness, and part of me did believe him when he said he’d never do it again, I couldn’t move past it.

When I wasn’t imagining the man I loved in the arms of another woman, I was picturing the black hearts, which had managed to wreak havoc on my life once again.

Could this woman and my stalker be the same person?

If so, she was willing to go to extreme lengths to ruin the only solid romantic relationship I’d ever had.

I begged Jasper to tell me what the woman looked like, asked him to look for her online, but he refused.

He thought knowing the details would only injure me further.

Shame he hadn’t considered that before sleeping with another woman.

Now the black hearts have returned, twice in one week.

The postcard in my mailbox and the scrap of paper beside my slashed tire.

But why? I haven’t been fired or cheated on, no huge life change like before.

The black hearts aren’t always threats, it seems; rather a way for the sender to remind me they’re always near.

Anger and resentment fueling me, I drop the phone back on the sofa, determined not to give into my drunken feelings and call him. I’m annoyed I even considered it. I suppose people are all the same when they’re tipsy and alone.

The living room is dark, the faint glow of streetlights outside the far window casting small shadows across the furniture. Across from me, on the dining-room table, my laptop charges, the blinking light drawing me in like a moth.

I walk over to the table and sit. The most recent addition to the Layla story is still pulled up on the screen. I read it, and without realizing, my fingers find the keyboard, and I begin to type.

The Mistake by Becca Walsh

If the murder had taken place in a different time, perhaps he would have gotten away with it.

Decades ago, people relied on eyewitness testimony, faulty fingerprints and the overwhelming pull of gut instinct.

Now, it’s easy to trace a person’s whereabouts. We’re constantly being tracked by our phones and our watches and our cars. The police department were able to pull up the surveillance footage from the bar within a matter of days.

That’s where they first saw him. Sitting beside Layla, engaging it what seemed like a flirty conversation. They witnessed the altercation between the two drunk men, saw the couple slip out of the camera’s range without anyone noticing.

He’d known they would find him. There was the slightest hope that maybe he’d get away with it, but that was useless. He had taken it too far. A he said/she said scenario was easy to combat, but a dead body? It was only a matter of time before the trail led back to him.

First, there were the newspaper articles.

Female student found near campus. He’d gone to his scheduled classes, trying to keep up appearances, but he overheard the whispers.

A girl had been murdered. Right outside the buildings where all the other students learned and ate and slept.

She’d last been seen at a bar other students frequented.

And then he heard about the video, and he knew his time was up.

When the police came to his dorm room, he opened the door with ease.

It was useless putting up a fight. He’d been the last person with Layla, and there was no denying it.

Still, he tried. He tried to say he didn’t kill her, that he’d left her alone and someone else attacked her. But what were the odds of that?

After the other two girls came forward—the girl from the frat party and the other from the bar—his fate was sealed. Pleading out was easier than going through a trial; it saved his mother the pain of hearing the details.

Now, he sat on the flimsy mattress in his cell, staring at the cinderblock walls, the dull and dingy ceiling.

This is what he deserved, he figured. He couldn’t control his impulses, and now he was locked up like an animal.

Another girl would never be hurt, by his hands at least. In time, maybe the world would forget about his crimes, forget him altogether.

Night after night, he sat in that lonely cell, replaying the events of that night and what followed. Justice didn’t always look like the inspiring vignettes you see in the media.

Sometimes justice looked like this: lonely and dark.