SOMETHING THAT WAS MINE
I had always believed that habits were efficient.
I had never considered that a habit could become something else.
That it could become the thing you built your day around without deciding to.
It started with small things.
The sound of her footsteps outside my office.
I learned the rhythm of them without meaning to — the way you learn the sound of a specific voice on a phone before the caller identifies themselves, through sheer repetition, the pattern embedding itself in you below the level of conscious attention. Three steady steps from the elevator. A brief pause at her desk. Then another set of steps toward my door — unhurried, the same pace regardless of what was waiting on the other side of it.
And then the knock.
Always once. Never twice.
Just once —
