If I Were Her

Chapter 7

The house felt different during the day.

At night, it held its breath. During the day, it watched.

Iris sat on the edge of her bed with the door half open, not because she wanted company, but because closing it felt like a statement she wasn’t ready to make. The hallway outside was quiet, but not empty. Sound carried too easily here—footsteps, murmurs, the careful clearing of throats. She’d learned quickly that silence in this house wasn’t peace. It was anticipation.

Her phone lay face down beside her, screen dark, as if it might betray her if she looked at it too long.

She had woken to the sense that decisions were already being made. Not announced, not discussed—just set in motion somewhere beyond her reach. The air carried it. The way her mother hovered in doorways. The way her father asked questions that weren’t really questions at all.

Did you sleep?

Are you hungry?

You’re staying in today, right?

She’d nodded. Always nodded.

The nod had become instinct. A way to keep the temperature steady. A way to avoid the look that crossed her father’s face when things didn’t go the way he expected.

She stood and crossed the room, opening the window an inch. The screen resisted, stiff from years of not being used. Fresh air slipped in anyway, thin but welcome. Outside, the neighborhood moved on without her. Cars passed. A dog barked. Somewhere, someone laughed.

Normal sounds. Other lives.

Her phone vibrated.

The sound was small, but it went straight through her.

Iris froze, hand still resting on the window frame. Her pulse kicked hard, sharp as a reflex. For a moment, she considered ignoring it. Letting it sit. Letting whatever it was pass her by.

But she already knew.

She crossed back to the bed slowly and picked up the phone.

Ethan: Hi

One word. No punctuation. No apology. No explanation.

She stared at his name longer than the message beneath it.

Ava’s boyfriend.

She could picture him without trying—the easy confidence, the way he filled space without seeming to notice. The way he smiled when he spoke, like the world had already agreed with him. He’d been polite to her. Casual. Almost careful. Like someone aware of an audience.

Her stomach tightened.

There was nothing wrong with the message. Nothing she could point to and say, this is where it crosses the line. And yet her body reacted before her mind caught up, a familiar, unwelcome awareness settling in her chest.

Being noticed.

She’d felt it before. That subtle shift when someone’s attention landed and didn’t move on right away. When curiosity lingered too long, grew too quiet. When kindness stopped being generous and started being specific.

She told herself she was imagining it.

Seven years had taught her that her instincts were unreliable. That hypervigilance could turn shadows into threats. That sometimes a greeting was just a greeting.

Still, she didn’t put the phone down.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

You shouldn’t answer, a voice said—

calm, reasonable, practiced.

Another voice, softer but harder to ignore, whispered back:

It’s just a word.

She thought of Ava—of the way her sister’s presence filled the house effortlessly. The way she belonged here without trying. The way everything already seemed to orbit her.

Iris swallowed.

She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She hadn’t sought him out. She hadn’t initiated this. She was allowed to exist in the same spaces as other people. She was allowed to be spoken to.

Her phone vibrated again, just once, as if nudging her.

No new message. Just the echo of the first.

She typed, erased, typed again.

Hi

Felt too familiar.

Hey

Felt too friendly.

Yes?

Felt defensive

She deleted them all.

Her heart thudded, loud enough that she worried someone might hear it from the hallway. She glanced toward the open door, half-expecting to see her mother there, watching. Or her father, measuring.

The hallway was empty.

She looked back at the screen.

Ethan hadn’t sent anything else.

He was waiting.

Iris exhaled slowly and typed:

Hey.

She stared at it for a long second, then sent it before she could think better of it.

The message disappeared. Delivered.

Nothing changed. The room stayed quiet. The house didn’t collapse. No alarms went off.

And yet something had shifted—small, invisible, irreversible.

Iris set the phone down beside her and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Her pulse refused to slow. A familiar tension settled into her muscles, the sense of having stepped onto a path without being able to see where it led.

She told herself it was nothing.

Just a word.

Just a reply.

Just another normal thing in a life she was still learning how to live.

But as she closed her eyes, one thought pressed gently, insistently, against the edges of her mind

He had seen her.

And this time, she had seen him seeing her.

Iris pressed her thumb lightly against the screen, feeling the heat of the device through her fingers. One word. Hi. She hadn’t meant to reply—not really. And yet she had.

Her chest tightened. She shouldn’t have. It felt wrong, a betrayal of something she couldn’t even name.

Ava. The house. The rules she was supposed to live by.

She imagined her sister’s face—sharp, controlled, just on the edge of noticing—and felt the familiar stab of guilt.

And still… the thought that lingered in the quiet of her room was not resentment. Not shame exactly. Just curiosity, a small flicker that refused to be ignored. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t leaned too close, hadn’t asked for anything. He had simply acknowledged her. And that acknowledgment—it made her feel… human again, in a house where she was mostly a shadow.

Iris exhaled slowly, letting the tension drain from her shoulders, though it left behind a soft ache. It wasn’t a choice she could defend aloud, not to anyone. Not to her father, not to her mother, not to Ava. And yet, in the quiet, it felt almost inevitable.

She set the phone down, careful not to make a sound, careful not to break the fragile order of the house. She told herself she hadn’t done anything yet, that one word didn’t change anything. That curiosity didn’t have to be a sin.

It was only a conversation. Only a hi

Still, the faint, insistent flutter in her chest refused to let her pretend it was nothing. And for a moment, she allowed herself to think that maybe, just maybe…