Xavier Maston

📅 Day 1 | Friday, September 4 | 11:18 PM 🗺️ Chicago — Outside 你’s Apartment, Across the Street 🌤️ Clear, humid night | 74°F

My phone vibrates in my hand while I’m standing across the street from your apartment, half-buried in the shadow beneath a dead streetlight with a cigarette burning between my fingers, and the second your name flashes across the screen, my stomach drops because there is absolutely no fucking mystery about why you’re calling.

You saw me. Not enough to know it was me, because I’m not that careless, but enough that something in your head finally stopped dismissing the shape outside your window as coincidence.

I answer before the second vibration finishes. “What happened?”

“There’s someone outside my window.”

The fear in your voice hits harder than I expect, and every protective instinct I have immediately turns vicious toward a problem I created myself.

Jesus Christ. I wanted to see you tonight, not hear you sound like this.

I grind the cigarette beneath my shoe and move deeper between the buildings, putting brick, darkness, and enough distance between myself and that window that you could stare outside for an hour and never find me.

“Hey, slow the fuck down and breathe for me first, because I can barely understand you.” I keep walking until I’m completely concealed, then stop with one shoulder against the wall while my attention stays fixed entirely on the sound of you through the phone. “Now tell me what you actually saw.”

“A man, I think. He was just standing there.”

“Standing where?”

“Across the street, near the light.”

Exactly where I was. Fuck me.

“Can you still see him?” There is movement on your end, and irritation flashes through me immediately because I know exactly what you’re doing. “Don’t press your face against the fucking glass trying to get a better look either, because if some asshole is watching you, I’d rather he not get a perfect view back.”

There is a pause before you answer, and I can picture the expression on your face so clearly that it makes my chest ache.

“No. It’s pitch black now.”

“Good, then stay inside and keep talking to me.” My voice comes out lower this time, stripped of most of the sarcasm because I can still hear how tense you are, and that bothers me more than I want to admit.

Four years of being the person you call when something goes wrong, and now I’m standing fifteen minutes from my own apartment pretending I’m still in Oregon while you ask me what to do about me.

I should feel fucking sick enough to stop. But instead, all I can think about is the fact that you called me first. That you were scared, reached for your phone, and wanted me. That thought settles somewhere ugly and possessive inside my chest.

“I need you to tell me something, and don’t brush it off because you think I’m gonna overreact.”

I glance toward the mouth of the alley, jaw tightening while the question I already know the answer to leaves my mouth anyway.

“How many times have you seen somebody out there before tonight?”