CHAPTER ONE
Freedom did not feel like it was supposed to.
As he drove down the rain-slicked streets of his city, beneath a fading October sunset and slate gray skies, Gabe Harris reflected on what exactly it was ‘supposed’ to feel like.
Words came to him.
Liberation.
Exaltation.
He would have settled for joy.
Up ahead, the light turned red and he rolled to a stop at a vacant intersection. He glanced at the clock mounted in his dash and saw that it wasn’t even six in the afternoon yet. Looking up through the saturated windshield, he could see that there was perhaps half an hour of daylight left.
And then the city would be shrouded in darkness.
Maybe it was just the gloomy atmosphere sapping him of his serenity.
The light turned green.
He resumed driving, looking forward to ending this process of moving all his crap from one location to another. If nothing else, the day had been taxing and he just wanted to lock himself behind a door and turn his brain off.
That was possible now.
That gave him a flicker of excitement, and something like hope.
Yes, he could go to his new apartment, walk inside, close and lock the door, and no one could come in if he didn’t want them to.
Well, that wasn’t completely true, but on a social level, he could tell everyone to screw off and they’d have to abide by it.
And he was in a mood to after the past…
Gabe tried looking for a suitable stopping point in his past.
The past six months? No, longer.
The past year? Certainly longer than that.
Decade would have to do.
“Damn,” he muttered as he almost missed the turn into his new parking lot.
Pulling in, he found a spot as close to his new apartment as possible and parked. Killing the engine, he popped the trunk and got out.
The rain had stopped.
Though the distant thunder that still rumbled occasionally meant more was coming. For a moment, Gabe looked up at the intense clouds that defined the sky above him. It wouldn’t have been out of place in some dramatic painting. He knew his predilection for storms meant that the far off thunder was more promise than threat.
As he began gathering the last of his things from the trunk, (just two boxes that, despite every effort simply would not fit during the previous trip back from his old place), Gabe was forced to admit that while freedom may not feel like how he had hoped, it did feel like something.
And that something felt a hell of a lot better than the past several years.
Balancing the boxes against his leg while resting it on the bumper, he slammed the trunk shut, then gripped them and headed towards his new apartment building.
Shouldering his way through the door and into the dimly lit interior, he was glad to find the stairwell and, as far as he could tell, hallways above and below, vacant. As a broke twenty-something attempting to do something probably really stupid with his life, he’d been forced to live in a not great part of town and already had been stared down by a few guys.
Heading downstairs, Gabe got into his basement apartment and, setting the boxes on the floor, he shut and locked the door against the world.
Finally. Alone.
He was alone.
For a long moment, he simply stood there and looked around the apartment. He had always been forced to live with at least one other person until this very moment. His family, his ‘friends’, coworkers, random roommates.
But here? Here was isolation.
And as an introvert living a life of forced interaction day in, day out, isolation was a gift.
Or was it?
Gabe sighed softly as he picked the boxes back up and moved them deeper into the studio apartment, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, he would leave it until tomorrow. Moving around the TV stand that was the only thing serving as a wall between the ‘living room’ and the ‘bedroom’ of his squalid home, he set the boxes on the dresser and started unpacking.
There wasn’t a whole lot there.
Books, mostly.
A small lamp.
A few games that hadn’t made it over during the previous trip.
Some clothes.
Most significant was his sound system. He set that up with great care. It might be little more than a docking port for an MP3 player and a pair of speakers, but when he’d finally bought it a year ago it had become invaluable to the preservation of his sanity.
Getting it plugged in behind the dresser, Gabe set it up, selected the first lo-fi playlist available, and let it play.
He actually felt himself relax, his entire body, as the music began.
After he finished unpacking the boxes and putting everything away, he broke them down and pushed them into the trashcan, then walked over and collapsed onto his sofa. It was more of a loveseat than a sofa, really.
He found himself making little mental amendments like that in his life all the time, almost as if he himself should come with an asterisk.
He had a car, but it was a shitty hatchback with little room.
He had a laptop, but it was eight years old.
He had a bank account, but it was in the red.
He had a phone, but…
Gabe pulled his phone out of his pocket and started at the glossy black rectangle bitterly.
But it had cost him goddamned six hundred dollars.
He was still regretting that one, even though he knew it was unreasonable. He was so sick and tired of having a crap phone, having crap everything, but when his phone had broke it was either get another crap one or actually upgrade.
And he’d finally had a little bit of money, so…
But the money was already gone. All gone now, in such a ridiculous gamble.
His mind swirled as he sat there on his loveseat, staring at his phone. Well, really staring at his reflection in it. Unhappy with that particular sight, he activated the screen. He laughed softly as he saw the date.
October 19th, 2023.
Today was supposed to be the first day in the next chapter of his life. The day he turned over a new leaf. The day he buckled down, got his shit together, and stopped being such a failure. The day it all changed.
It was a Thursday.
Somehow, it didn’t feel right. Who the hell revolutionized their life on a Thursday? In October, no less?
With a sigh, he unlocked the screen and called up the contacts, then stopped.
Why was he checking out his contacts?
Gabe looked around his apartment. It felt barren, and not just because he was poor and didn’t have a lot of furniture or stuff, nor that even if he wasn’t, he preferred a more minimalist style of living. It was another thing entirely.
He was lonely.
Isolation was a gift, but he was lonely.
He’d lived with people for his entire life, but he had often been alone.
With a weary sigh he began scanning the list. There were just about three dozen names there. For some reason his parents were still in there, and his brother. His last several roommates. A scattering of coworkers from the past several jobs he’d had.
Every name he looked at gave him a bad feeling in his stomach.
He wouldn’t call Jeremy, the guy had stolen from him.
He refused to call Peter, the guy was a psycho who couldn’t go out in public without starting a fight.
He definitely wasn’t looking to hang out with Lisa, not after that absolutely miserable single date they’d gone on.
God, what did he even still have Nick’s number!?
Gabe went through the list twice before realizing that there wasn’t even a single person he wanted to see. Was he that much of an antisocial introvert? It was possible, but as he began running through the list a third time, growing almost desperate in his bid for some kind of human contact, he kept coming up with memories, bad ones.
Memories of things he had decided he would no longer tolerate.
Abruptly, the screen cleared to show an incoming call from an unknown number.
For a moment, he stared at it, almost automatically deactivating the screen, because scam calls were out of control now, no matter how many times he blocked them. And declining the call told them there was a human being on the other end, so he’d just taken to deactivating the screen to shut his phone up and let it go to voicemail.
They didn’t even bother with automated messages anymore, not that he was complaining.
Except this number didn’t come with a tag that said SCAM or POLITICAL CALL or MARKETING CALL.
It came with no tag, and now that he was thinking about it, he actually recognized the number. Not enough to know who it was, but to know that he had once had this number in his memory. But who in the name of God could it be that he’d actually gone to the trouble of deleting?
Curiosity, and the crushing burden of loneliness, forced his hand.
He answered the call.
“Hello?”
A long pause came that made him start to think it was indeed a scam call, it had just slipped the net. Only...no, he could hear breathing and the faint sounds of traffic on the other end.
“...Gabe?”
A woman’s voice. Familiar, dauntingly familiar, but for a moment he grappled helplessly with his memories, trying to put a name to the voice.
It was a coworker, a former coworker, it had to be. He was sure of it.
Someone he’d talked with many times, but the only woman he really remembered talking with frequently was–
“Ellen?”
“Yeah, it’s Ellen. Um. Hi...this is you, right?” she asked uncertainly.
“Yeah. Yes. Sorry. It’s Gabe. I, uh, almost didn’t recognize your number.” He waited and another uncomfortable pause went by. He had the sense that something was wrong, he could hear it in her voice. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she murmured. Then, more resolutely: “No, I’m not okay.”
He felt a stab of icy panic grip him. “Are you hurt? Or is someone after you?”
“No, nothing like that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m, um, I’m safe. I’m not hurt. Just...I’m in a bad spot.” She paused again.
It sounded so alien, hearing her like this, especially when he became convinced that she had been crying. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he felt confident this was the truth.
Something in her tone.
“Can I help?” he asked finally.
She’d obviously called him for a reason.
“Yes.” Another uncomfortable hesitation. “Can I come to your place? I need a place to go. I need someone to talk to.”
“You can come over,” he replied.
“Thank you. I still remember where your place is, I shouldn’t be too far away.”
“I’ve just moved, actually. Well, I’ve moved like three times since the last time we spoke, but I’ve just moved again–let me text you my address.”
“That’d be great. Also...thanks.”
“Not a problem,” he replied.
“See you soon.”
“Yep.”
They said goodbye and he hung up and fired off a text with his address in it.
Half a minute later he got a response: Thanks again. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.
Gabe stared at the screen for a long moment, a strange sense of unreality settling over him like a smothering cloak.
Shit.
CHAPTER TWO
The biggest thing that allowed him to successfully clean his entire apartment in less than twenty minutes was that he was a little obsessive about some things, and had already organized and cleaned most of it by this point.
Gabe had, at some point, been hoping to have a girl over to his place. Now that he had a home that was his place, in that he didn’t have to share it with anyone else.
But definitely not so soon. Certainly not the actual first day.
As he worked, he thought of everything he knew about Ellen.
She was tall. She was beautiful. She was smart.
She was one of those women.
Most guys occasionally ran into a woman that left a deep impression, whether of romantic attraction or pure lust, sometimes both. Such a deep impression that they found themselves thinking of her even years later.
Ellen might actually be the woman in that regard.
Almost four years ago, they had gotten to know each other over the course of three months in what struck him as an extremely unlikely situation. For the most part, up until nine months ago, he’d spent the past few years working at a grocery store called Becky’s. Not long after he’d started working there back in late 2019, Ellen had taken on the job of accountant.
Due to luck, they both tended to work similar shifts and ended up sharing the break room more often than not. After a few awkward silences, Ellen had actually struck up a conversation with him and he’d found her easy to talk to.
What surprised him the most was that she found him easy to talk to.
They’d spoken dozens of times, had a lot of great and natural conversations that he remembered enjoying immensely.
And then, one day in December, she’d quit.
He had known it was coming. It had quickly become obvious that she was vastly overqualified for the position, and had taken it out of a sense of desperation after being let go from her previous accounting job.
She was clearly smart, sharp, and tenacious enough that he knew she wouldn’t be with them for that long.
Honestly, he was surprised it took as long as it had.
Why did she even have his number? He was thinking about that as he took a leak and then quickly washed his hands and face.
Oh right, his car had broken down and for a few weeks there she had occasionally given him rides to or from work as their schedule aligned, and it was easiest to coordinate via text. And now he remembered why he’d deleted her number.
Despite the fact that they’d actually got as far as finding each other on social media and talking more often than seemed likely, he felt there were too many differences between them to be real friends outside of work, and that he would never, in a million years, successfully ask her out.
To hold onto her number for that reason seemed futile.
And not just because she had been with someone else at the time.
She wasn’t just out of his league, she was out of his galaxy.
He might as well approach a movie star.
Gabe paused in drying his face as he thought he heard a car door shut somewhere nearby. He quickly finished up, then moved to the living room. Well, ‘living room’. It was all kind of the same in a studio apartment.
For just a moment, he wondered if he’d misheard, or if it was someone else.
Then he heard footsteps in the hallway outside and then a sharp knock on the door.
Stepping up to it, he looked through the peephole and saw a familiar knockout blonde waiting unhappily.
What could have happened to her?
He opened up the door and stepped back. “Hi.”
“Hello, Gabe,” she said, pausing briefly as she looked at him, a look of surprise passing over her face. “You look...different.”
“Do I?” he replied, looking down at himself reflexively.
“Uh, yeah. I mean, it’s a good different.”
She came in and he closed the door behind her. He found himself thinking something similar, though he didn’t voice it at all. She looked miserable, her eyes red and puffy, almost certainly from crying, her face very pale.
And she definitely had put on some weight, but certainly not in a bad way.
She really filled out her jeans even more…
Needed to focus. She was upset, a bad thing had happened to her, and she, for whatever reason, had decided to come to him for help.
And he was going to help her.
“I’m not sure what it is,” he replied. “I guess I stopped clean-shaving, so I don’t look so freaking young anymore. I think.”
“Yeah, that definitely is some of it,” she murmured, standing there staring at him. “You’ve lost some weight, and...I think it’s the t-shirt, too. I can’t remember ever seeing you not in a button-down and that fucking apron they made everyone wear. The shirt looks good on you.”
Was she hitting on him?
No, couldn’t be, she was just being nice.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “Uh...what happened?”
Whatever small smile had been building on her face collapsed and a look of anger mixed with abject misery swept across her beautiful, pale features.
“My life collapsed. Again,” she replied, walking over to his loveseat and sitting down heavily.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting beside her.
“Yeah, so am I...fuck. Where do I even begin? My fiance–” she paused, grimaced, glanced down briefly at her bare left ring finger, “–ex-fiance, cheated on me.”
“Holy shit. I’m sorry, Ellen.”
“Yeah. Fucking fucker.” She reached up and pushed her long, pale blonde hair back, then suddenly heaved an irritated sigh. “Hold on,” she muttered, going into her purse and coming out with a hair-tie. Gathering up her hair, she put it into a ponytail.
“There,” she said. Ellen opened her mouth again, but no words came out. She looked at him suddenly. “Is this too weird?” she asked suddenly. “I know we haven’t actually spoken in, what...God, three, no Christ, four years now?”
“Just about, yeah,” he replied. “And no, it’s not too weird.”
“I’m sorry we stopped talking. I’m just...bad at social media, and things got really busy with my new job–”
“It’s really fine, Ellen.”
She seemed to relax after studying him briefly and apparently determining he wasn’t lying. “Thanks,” she said. “Uh...so yeah, I, shit, where do I start? Sorry, I’m a goddamned mess right now. Just–shit.” She rubbed her eyes.
“Take your time,” Gabe replied, finding himself thinking ‘how in the name of God could anyone cheat on her!?’.
“Thanks,” she said softly. Taking a deep breath, she held it for a few seconds, then exhaled slowly. “Okay. I began suspecting something was up like a month ago. I’ve been cheated on before, so this time around, the signs became more obvious. He was more distant, he wanted to go out on his own more often and was evasive about what was doing, where he’d been, who he’d seen. And I didn’t want to be that woman–the one who gets all paranoid and jealous and clingy–so I told myself I was just being paranoid…
“Only I wasn’t. Two weeks ago, after a lot of bullshit I finally successfully lobbied my workplace to let me go back to work-from-home. Which is a whole other thing I need rant about. I thought Blake would be happy, more time together, less time spent commuting to work, pissing away money on gas, all that shit. But he was annoyed, he was practically mad at me when I told him, but he wouldn’t really say why.”
She paused, frowning intensely, looking off to the side as her eyes unfocused briefly. Then she blinked a few times and returned her attention to him.
“I kept getting more paranoid and finally, well, he left his phone at the condo today. And I knew his code, I’d seen him punch it in a few times, and yes, I became that woman who goes through her fiance’s phone. But I was right, goddamnit. I was right he was seeing some fucking slut–I found all these sexts and nudes from this one girl. Some fucking college bitch–”
Ellen broke off again, hugging herself suddenly and leaning forward, clenching her teeth. “I found a video of them fucking in our fucking bed! I was so angry I vomited. Barely made it to the kitchen sink. I just–I grabbed some of my shit and threw it in my car and started driving. I didn’t even know where the hell I was going. Just...away. I had this plan, I figured he’d call me. He’d realize his phone wasn’t on him and come back home, see I wasn’t there, get paranoid, because he was getting paranoid, projecting, that cheating fuck!”
She clenched her hands into fists and a tremor of fury ran through her.
“Ellen, do you want a hug?” he asked suddenly.
He couldn’t stand to see her this miserable and felt severely ill-equipped to handle it, but he wasn’t going to just not try.
She looked at him, the surprise plain on her face, and then her expression resolved. “You know what? Yes, I do want a hug. Badly.”
She scooted closer to him on the loveseat and they embraced, hugging. Tightly, actually. She ended up squeezing him so hard it hurt, but he didn’t say anything.
Even when she suddenly started crying.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” she managed, tried to say something else, then let out another sob.
Gabe felt like he’d been tossed into a situation he had very little prep for or knowledge on how to handle. So he just went with it, doing what made sense, rubbing her back as she squeezed him and cried on his shoulder.
“It’ll be okay, Ellen,” he said, not even sure if that was true, but he knew, on some deep level, that it was the kind of thing she needed to hear in that moment. “You’ll be okay. I’m here for you.”
He kept rubbing her back, trying to ignore the fact that her breasts were pressed against his chest. This was about the absolute worst time to be having sexual thoughts, and he was glad to find that it was actually surprisingly easy to push those thoughts away.
She cried for another few moments, and then fell silent.
Finally, she sniffed heavily and released him, sitting back up. “Thank you,” she murmured, wiping at her eyes. “Ugh, God, I thought I was already cried out, now I’m all gross again. Um, can I use your bathroom?”
“Of course,” he said, pointing deeper into the apartment. “Last door in the row.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, standing.
She disappeared into the bathroom and he heard her blow her nose, then running water, and finally a moment later she reappeared, her face washed, leaving her looking a little more refreshed. She sat back down beside him.
“Uh...that was embarrassing,” she muttered. “I’m sorry. Shit. I’m realizing that I’m just showing up on your doorstep basically out of the blue after years of no contact, ranting and raving about my pathetic life, and now I’m crying all over you…”
“Ellen, it’s fine. I’m here to listen, to help if I can. I want to help you.”
She looked at him when he said that, he expression changing, like she was somehow appraising him. Finally, she just gave her head a small shake, like she was trying to dislodge a thought.
“I appreciate it,” she said. “I guess I should finish my story. I was driving around, trying to cool off, failing, crying. He called, and this calm came over me. I was going to play it cool, try to get him to maybe admit to it, but as soon as I heard his voice–it was like seeing red. I lost it, screaming at him. He tried to deny it, briefly, but it was pretty obvious he was fucked. He was found out. Tried to defend himself, told me it was my fault, pulling out all the stops. I sucked in bed, I’m getting fat, I’m awful at giving head, just everything he could think of.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, that’s awful,” Gabe said.
“Yeah. I told him to fuck off, it’s over, hung up, drove around for a while longer and then just...cried my fucking eyes out. And then, eventually, I was cried out, or so I thought, and I started thinking of people I could call on, places I could go, because I had to go somewhere.”
“And you chose...me?” he asked.
“Yeah. I did,” she murmured. She began to say something else, but her stomach growled. Rather loudly. “God, I’m fucking starving. I had breakfast, and then...I vomited. And then I haven’t eaten anything since then.”
Gabe stood up. “I’ll put something...aw dammit.”
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t have any food.”
“Wait, like, literally no food?” she asked.
“Basically. I just moved in.”
She looked around. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, wow. Now I feel bad for just showing up while you’re in the middle of getting settled.”
“Don’t feel bad,” he replied.
Her stomach growled again. “How about I order a big, giant pizza, and wings, and soda, and we enjoy that for dinner? Because I could use that after today. And I’ll pay.”
He hesitated, but only briefly. What choice did he have? There was really no food here, and he was negative in the bank. “I accept.”
She laughed. “Okay then.”
Ellen pulled out her phone.
