Wander
The moment his cigarette dies against the ashtray, I’m pulled back under. That first glimpse of him with smoke between his lips, it hijacked something in me, rewired my nerves so completely that every breath since has felt like borrowed time. Five years ago, and my brain still plays it on loop.
That day, the office kicked us out for their precious photography. Thirty minutes of rest. I pushed myself hanging around with others on a park bench across the street. Surrounded by coworkers, I pretended I wasn’t suffocating in my own skin. Jolie pulled out her pack of cigars, handed it. Everyone took one. Everyone but me.
I watched the cigarette pass from hand to hand, and with each transfer, I felt the spotlight burning hotter. My refusal was becoming a statement I never intended to make. I could’ve laughed it off, grabbed one like it was all a joke — but the moment had passed. The silence had already decided what I was.
I rehearsed lies: a respiratory condition, recent quitting — each required an origin story that would unravel. I was still calculating escape routes when a hand appeared in front of me, offering a lit cigarette like a sacrament. They’d diagnosed me correctly — a smoking virgin and now they wanted to watch me break.
Then, from behind, a hand cut through the air and snatched it away.
I spun around. Ryan. A stranger then. My nervous system didn’t know him yet, but it already trusted the stillness he carried. Later, during our walk, I pressed him: why? His explanation was so achingly tender that my bones dissolved. Or maybe that’s the revisionist in me, the one who’s spent five years overwriting that memory with the love I feel now.
Let’s be honest: I’m unreliable. The past I hold is warped, softened, sanded down to fit the shape of my obsession.
Five years together. We burned through them; good stretches, bad stretches, and that third year when we both knew we were misaligned. We stretched it to four out of stubbornness. By the end, we were ghosts sharing a bed.
Tonight, he called. His marriage (the one he built after me) was cracking. He needed someone who wouldn’t mock him, wouldn’t make him defend himself. His boys are useless for that. I’d made him a promise once: whenever, wherever. He’d made his own promise back then — never again, never my face. But here we are, in his car, and I can see how thoroughly marrying someone else was just a performance of moving on.
I told him to start from the beginning. Tell me everything about her. I can help. I always help.
Every syllable he uttered was heavy with reverence. The way he shaped her name, the way his voice softened around her faults — I felt it in my chest like a second heartbeat. And just like that, I was his again. Listening. Advising. Patching up his marriage so he could go home and love her better.
They kept fighting. He kept calling. I kept answering.
And I realized something terrible: I’d never been more consumed. He loved her enough to marry her, to fight for her, yet he couldn’t purge me from his system. The calls weren’t about fixing anything. They were about feeding something he couldn’t name. He wanted to see me. He wanted to feel me close. And the more he stayed tethered to me while loving her, the more I needed him.
That’s what I craved. Not his love — I’d had that, and it wasn’t enough. What I needed was the proof. The evidence. The undeniable fact that no matter how much he loved her, no matter how hard he tried to build a life without me, he couldn’t. He’d lie next to her at night, his wife, the woman he chose, and still my name would surface. Still my voice would echo. Still he’d reach for his phone and call me in the dark. That was the drug. That was the obsession. Knowing that his love for her could never quite erase his love for me.
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And then he leaned forward and kissed me.
He whispered he couldn’t forget about me. That he wanted to be with me again. That he’d never really moved on.
And just like that — he made it easy.
He handed me everything I’d been starving for, and in doing so, he killed it. Because it wasn’t about having him. It was never about having him. It was about him not having me, about him reaching across the distance he’d created, about his love for her making his love for me feel like something stolen, something forbidden, something undeniable.
Now he was just mine. Available. Chosen. Ordinary.
The spell shattered. I looked at his face, still hopeful, still waiting for me to melt into his arms, and all I felt was rage.
I didn’t speak. My hand went to my pocket. The knife was small, unremarkable, always within reach for reasons I told myself were practical. I climbed onto his lap in the backseat, and before he could process my weight shift, I drove it through his right ear. Once. Twice. I lost count somewhere around the moment blood started pouring out.
He tried to push me off, but his arms grew useless — must have hit somewhere I shouldn’t. I didn’t care. I kept going. His breathing became gurgling. I didn’t stop until his body went limp beneath me.
How could he do this to me? How could he take the one thing that made him beautiful — the impossible math of loving her while still being wrecked by me — and just solve it? He was supposed to stay hers. He was supposed to keep wanting me from a distance, keep calling me in secret, keep proving that I was the one he couldn’t shake. That was the contract. That was the whole point.
Now I have to start over.
I leaned down and licked the blood from his cheek — salt, iron, something metallic and final. Then I stayed there, straddling his lap, feeling his pulse stutter against my thigh until it stopped altogether.
He was still warm.
And as I sat there, holding him close, running my fingers through his hair, I started planning. The next one. The next man who’ll love someone else but still think about me. The next one I can shape from a distance, keep orbiting, keep proving my permanence in his blood. The next one who’ll call me in the dark and tell me everything while his wife sleeps in their bed.
I closed my eyes and listened to the silence of his body, and I let myself imagine it — the next face, the next voice, the next man who’ll love someone else with his whole heart and still reach for me in the dark. He’s out there. He’s always out there.
The car grew cold around us. The night pressed in.
And somewhere, in a warm bed, in a house I’ve never seen, a man I haven’t met yet is dreaming of a woman who doesn’t exist.
