Watching You: Part 2 – Chapter 10 – Not Allowed

I took the long way home. I needed the extra fifteen minutes to think, or I told myself that’s what I needed them for.

My phone buzzed somewhere around the second turn.

Janet. Wanna come over.

I didn’t give it a second thought. Made a U-turn at the next light and drove the other direction entirely.

Good timing, if nothing else. I needed a distraction, and Janet was reliably one – not because there was anything between us worth naming, but because she liked things rough enough that thinking became genuinely difficult for the duration, which was exactly the kind of difficulty I was looking for that night.

Her building was on 21st. 

Expensive block.

I never asked who paid for it and she never offered, and I told myself that wasn’t my problem to solve, which was true, technically, in the sense that nothing about Janet was actually my problem.

The door was already unlocked when I got there. 

She was dressed for it – red, pale skin, long legs that did nothing for me the way another set of legs did nothing but occupy space in a memory I hadn’t asked for.

I don’t remember her eyes. I’ve never once looked at them for longer than it took to confirm they were open.

She liked me to take her from behind.

I didn’t object. I preferred it with her that way as well. I pulled a condom from my pocket, tore the wrapper open with my teeth, and rolled it on without a word. Pure habit. The bare minimum requirement.

Our bodies clasping, finding the right rhythm. I slapped her with my open palm – once, twice. She clenched around me, a sudden spasm, then two, then three, and she was done.

I allowed myself to finish. Stripped the latex off, tied it in a knot, and tossed it into the trash beside the bed before she even caught her breath.

What came after was a glass of whiskey from her nightstand, finished in one go.

“When am I seeing you again?” she asked from the mattress.

I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

I didn’t wait for her to answer. Opened the front door, didn’t bother closing it behind me, and walked straight to the elevator.

Then the drive home, faster than the speed limit wanted and slower than my thoughts were moving.

I prefer to sleep in my own bed. Alone, specifically – that part matters, has always mattered, long before I had language for why.

The problem was I wasn’t alone that night, even in an empty apartment.

I had Mia’s deleted profile keeping me company instead, and it turned out that particular company doesn’t leave just because you’ve physically exhausted yourself trying to outrun it.

I lay there until the light started coming up outside the window.

 Didn’t sleep. 

Didn’t try very hard to.

Somewhere around dawn I stopped looking for explanations.

Problems don’t become smaller because you delay solving them.

Mia had disappeared.

I didn’t agree to this.

She wasn’t allowed to disappear.