Read on Inkitt.

Chapter 6

“Tell me again what happened?” Bethany asked for the fifth time, hands planted firmly on her hips. This would also be the fifth time I would tell her. But I opted to remain silent to see if she would continue to mark out a groove across my floor as she paced or truly wanted me to rehash the exact same story, word for word.

To her credit, Bethany didn’t laugh at me when I told her that I had seen someone in the trees and that I was certain he was watching me. She didn’t look at me with an ounce of doubt, or worse, sympathy.

“How do you know it wasn’t a deer or raccoon?” she had asked cautiously.

“First, the nearest deer is a forty-five minute drive out of the city. And trash pandas aren’t six feet tall,” I rationalized.

“Maybe it was hanging from a branch?”

“I didn’t all of a sudden step into a cartoon, Beth.”

Shrugging Bethany plopped down beside me on the couch and grabbed for the remote.

I fully appreciated that she was trying to get to the bottom of this without immediately jumping to the Noa-is-paranoid-and-crazy conclusion. Though it was not all too comforting that she wasn’t any closer to an explanation that I was.

Certain that he was indeed watching me and not some creepy lurker trying to catch a peep or two through any random window simply rang true. Every fiber of my overly suspicious being agreed with this. No other explanation fit. No matter how unlikely it sounded, he was there for me.

“You know what I could use?” she asked amid her mindless channel surfing clearly moving on.

“The guy you met at the juice bar this afternoon laid out naked before you slathered in an oat milk cold foam,” I offered still feeling odd about my balcony encounter while remembering Bethany had been pretending to be dairy for the last two months. Pretending because the girl would still down a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and has yet to refuse anything blanketed with melted cheese.

“Beside that,” she said with a smile clearly remembering her afternoon date. “I could use a load of junk food and cheesy Rom-Com movies.”

That we could do.

~~~~~

I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since my ex and I moved in together during my first year of college. I had hoped that would remedy itself now that he had been gone for almost six years.

No such luck.

I had a lot of disillusions about how life would be once I was free of him. Turned out he didn’t need to be present to still hold me prisoner. Even after my body healed, my mind, well, my mind had remained locked in that closet afraid and tortured.

Years of unique therapy and I would like to have considered myself mostly healed. And I usually completely believed that until it was time to go to sleep.

Rarely were there ever specific thoughts that plagued my mind and chased away sleep. There was still this almost innate flight-or-fight response when it came to voluntarily placing myself in the ultimate position of vulnerability.

No matter what distractions I tried. Television, all different colors of noise; white, pink, green, they all sounded the same to me – annoying. And even tried meditation, teas, trending social-media nighttime concoctions, bath salts, essential oils, even strenuous workout going for exhaustion.

No matter what some expert claimed would work, nothing ever did.

Yet every night I settled in, optimistic that I would seamlessly fall asleep and not wake until the sun was up and I was satisfyingly rested like any halfway normal person.

Always picturing myself stretching in the morning light, like a cat, as it streamed in through the window while birds chirped happily, greeting the day. Instead of the inevitable. My grit covered eyes slowly rolling open at some unforgiving hour for some reason that I knew was ridiculous.

Bethany kept telling me to see a therapist or start dating Mr. Valium. I’d done neither. Well, no official therapist. I had spent a few years working through my issues in an unconventional way. Training in self-defense and entering into an even more unconventional relationship.

Relationship may not have been the best way to describe it. An arranged partnership was more apt. It was the best thing I had ever done for myself. Clearly that had only done so much.

Even after physically exhausting myself during that time in my life, sleep had never come easy.

Tonight was no different.

Shocking.

My next hope was that my brain would go numb from overwhelming frustration and I would black out. Since that was the most plausible scenario, I kept my fingers crossed.

According to the clock above the TV, it was only just past three in the morning. I must have slept a record-breaking twenty minutes. That was pathetic, even for me.

We had fallen asleep buried in a pile of blankets and pillows arranged into our own private pavilion on the living room floor. Empty bowls and junk food wrappers littered the coffee table. Bethany’s deep, rhythmic breathing sounded beside me.

Disentangling myself from the world’s softest blanket, I grabbed my phone from the side table and headed for the bathroom.

It was officially morning. I was calling Alijah. Receiving a call from me at any odd hour was not unusual nor unwelcome.

Closing the bathroom door but keeping the light off, I sat on the edge of the bathtub. The cool porcelain sent a little shiver through my bones as I brought up my brother’s number.

His contact picture giving me pause. I took it on his last birthday. I had surprised him with a brother/sister date. The small, round picture of him staring at me was taken after I kicked his ass at ax throwing. He pretended to let me win, but the defeated look on his face had said otherwise. I had to capture it.

Tonight the memory made me sad. Damn, I have got to get my shit together.

The phone rang three times before going to voicemail. Locking the phone, turning the screen dark, I refused to let it bother me. I assumed he would be leaving soon for his new job. Using the time to prepare at the very least. Alijah never slept at night much either, but not because he couldn’t. He was one of those people that could fall asleep on a plane being attacked by alien laser beams during hurricane force winds while being struck by lightning bolts sent straight from Zeus’s personal stash. It was enviable.

After tonight I really needed to hear his voice. Just to make sure his plane wasn’t being attacked by little green men and all of nature’s and a Greek deity’s fury. Even if he told me how paranoid I was being, again, that I was allowing my fanciful imagination to run circles in my head, I would at least be hearing it in his voice.

Dropping my head into my hands, I sighed. I was not going crazy. I saw what I saw. Those eyes did not belong to some forest creature. Though the smell that wafted from him said otherwise. Shit, was I just being over dramatic?

No, I saw something. And that something saw me. Did it have something to do with Alijah’s newest gig? Seemed logical to me. What were the odds that he was going on another hush-hush job that was instigating more unrest in me than usual and a strange stranger showed up outside my apartment?

I never believed in coincidences. I wasn’t going to start now.

Before heading out of the bathroom, I paused. Unlocking my phone once more, squinting at the sudden illuminating assault, my thumb hovered over another name. This one had a picture that conjured another memory.

I had tried for almost two weeks to sneak up and get a picture of Cal. Somehow he used his self-proclaimed ninja skills to evade me every time.

This picture is the evidence of the time I almost got him. It was a mostly blurred picture that could have been of a man with dark hair turning away from the camera covered in shadows. Or it could have been the raccoon Bethany had hoped I saw outside.

Sighing heavily, the screen turned dark again. No need to worry someone else.

Stepping back into the living room, the soft glow of Bethany’s phone screen stood out amongst the darkness like a beacon. As soon as I stepped onto our cushy nest she dropped her phone, face down.

“Everything okay?” she asked quietly, voice hoarse from sleep.

“Fine,” I answered quickly. “Everything alright with you?”

“Hmmm,” she said turning her phone off without looking. “Just the guy from the juice bar. Booty call.”

Damn. Bethany was a terrible liar. Whatever had been on her phone she sure as shit didn’t want to talk about it.

I nodded like I understood and burrowed my way back under the covers.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Noa.”

The hard clank of Bethany setting her phone on the coffee table was the last sound I heard before sleep blissfully pulled me under for another hour or two.