The First Time
851 Words
Lucien
They say the first time you see the person who will ruin you, you know.
But I didn’t know she’d ruin me.
I thought I’d ruin her.
And I will.
It was a Tuesday.
Ordinary. Bleak.
Oslo’s winter swallowed the sky in fog. Everyone walked with their heads down, wrapped in gray scarves, lost in the rhythm of cold survival.
Except her.
She wasn’t rushing.
She moved like she belonged in the silence.
I saw her in front of the hospital. Not inside yet-still untouched by the sterile white of it. Her hands were tucked into her pockets, nose red from the cold, her lashes dusted with frost.
She blinked like snow hurt her.
It made me want to protect her eyes from the world.
And then make her cry for me anyway.
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She dropped her glove.
Something so stupid. So mundane. But I noticed. I always notice.
It fell by her boot, fingers of soft wool resting against the snow.
She didn’t pick it up.
She just kept walking toward the entrance, too busy fumbling for her ID, too busy being innocent.
I bent and took it. Her scent was on it.
Coconut. Warm sugar.
And something… human. Too human.
I didn’t return it.
I brought it home.
Placed it on my pillow.
Whispered goodnight to it.
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I followed her for the first time the next evening.
Not far. Not even close enough for her to notice.
I just… watched. Studied.
She ordered the same coffee every time. Stared out the window like she was waiting for something, or someone. It wasn’t sadness-it was discontent. She wasn’t lonely. She was bored.
No one sees a woman like that and listens.
But I did.
I took her picture when she laughed on the phone outside.
Captured it. Froze it.
Printed it in my apartment like an art piece.
The way her lips curled. The shape of her teeth. Her neck bent slightly, exposing the delicate skin that would bruise so easily under my fingers.
She didn’t belong in this world.
She needed a different one.
A smaller one.
Mine.
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She didn’t see me.
But her eyes passed over me.
It was at the bookstore.
She reached for a spine I’d already touched.
My fingerprints were on the cover. My energy soaked into the pages.
And then her fingertips landed on the same spot mine had.
Her breath hitched.
A reaction. Subtle.
But I saw it.
She felt something.
She didn’t know what it was-but it was me.
A smile tried to tug at the corner of her lips.
She looked up.
Right at me.
And then looked away.
But not before I felt it that tiny, almost imperceptible click inside my ribs.
Mine.
I didn’t want to cross her threshold too soon.
But when she left the window cracked one afternoon… I took it as a sign.
Not a big intrusion. Just a toe over the line.
I climbed through like a ghost.
Didn’t touch anything. Didn’t disturb anything.
I just… inhaled her world.
The books stacked on the nightstand. The perfume bottles on the dresser. The sweater slung over the back of her chair still warm from her skin.
I didn’t steal anything.
Not then.
I just left something behind.
A note.
Tucked into a book she hadn’t finished yet.
The page she always marked but never returned to.
“You don’t see me yet. But you will.”
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The man. The friend. Aarav.
He hugged her too long one day.
Outside the hospital.
Hand on the small of her back. His touch was familiar. Intimate.
She let it happen. Smiled. Laughed.
It made something snap inside me.
I went home and stared at her photo for two hours.
Then I scratched his face out of every image he was in.
He doesn’t belong.
He’s interference.
And when someone interferes…
They don’t get warnings.
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Aloud.
In the dark. With no one around.
I whispered it like a prayer.
“Neha.”
Again. Slower.
“Neha.”
Like silk in my mouth. Like a blade on my tongue. Like she was stitched into my lungs and saying her name was the only way I could breathe.
It’s funny. Most people say names to remember someone.
I say it so I don’t lose myself in her.
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She’s sleeping.
But in my bed.
Her lips are parted like she’s dreaming of me. She’s warm, but I let her feel the cold so she craves my heat.
I whisper her name against her neck.
She trembles. But she doesn’t scream.
Because she knows by then…
That there’s no one else.
Just us.
Forever.
You think obsession is sudden. That it explodes. It doesn’t.
It grows. Slowly. Intimately. Like a seed beneath the skin.
By the time you feel it it’s already taken root in your spine.
She’s inside me now.
In every breath. Every decision. Every plan.
She’ll never leave.
And she won’t want to.
Not once she sees what I’ve built for her.
Not once I show her how beautiful it is to be owned.
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- Writer
