New Distractions
1529 Words
Back to Pretending
I told myself I was fine.
I told myself I didn’t need him.
I told myself I wasn’t unraveling—but I was.
Every night felt too big without Dante pressed against me.
Every silence got louder.
Every voicemail I played on repeat became another cut I let bleed.
But I didn’t chase him.
Not this time.
Even though every bone in my body ached to.
I went back to pretending.
Back to playing the part.
To forced smiles and hollow laughs.
To distractions that didn’t work.
I let my friends drag me out—bars, dinners, nights I wouldn’t remember and men I didn’t care to.
I let them buy me drinks I didn’t finish.
I let them touch me in ways I didn’t feel.
I let them kiss me like they were lucky, like I was present—but I wasn’t.
I watched their mouths move and wondered if he was somewhere else, pretending too.
If he was letting someone else trace the lines of his jaw, if he was biting back my name while he moaned for someone else.
The thought made me sick. The thought made me stay.
So I filled my days until they bled into each other.
I kept my phone on silent so I wouldn’t torture myself with its stillness.
I worked late. I smiled on cue. I let the world believe I had moved on.
I almost believed it, too.
But when the nights came—
when the lights went off—
when it was just me and the echo of what he left behind—
I wasn’t fine.
I was pretending.
And I was getting good at it.
But not good enough to forget.
⸻
Complications
I wasn’t ready for anything new.
Not a job. Not a man.
Not even a fresh start.
But life didn’t ask.
It dropped me into a sleek glass building full of fluorescent lights and forced smiles, handed me a name badge, and buried me in HR paperwork that smelled like toner and false promises.
I was still nursing the bruise he left—the one under my ribs, invisible to everyone but me.
Still checking my phone like maybe, just maybe, this time I’d get closure instead of silence.
Then I met him.
My new boss.
Mr. Carter, David Julian Carter
Sharp. Unapologetic. Dangerous in a quieter way.
Director of Strategy. Late 30s. All calm edges and quiet authority.
He was 6’1”, slim but undeniably built—like a man who didn’t spend hours in the gym, but could still hold his own in a fight.
His light skin carried a golden undertone, glowing faintly under the sterile office lights.
Dark hair, swept back with an effortless kind of precision, laced with just a few strands of gray at the temples—earned, not aged.
And his eyes—God, his eyes. Light brown with flecks of honey and something unreadable.
The kind of eyes that made you say more than you meant to.
And that smile—razor-sharp and devastating, like he knew the effect it had and chose to weaponize it anyway.
He saw me before I was ready to be seen.
Not just the polished version I wore to survive.
He saw the cracks.
And maybe that’s why I let him in.
He didn’t ask for attention.
He absorbed it.
Every room bent subtly toward him.
You didn’t notice until you were already caught in his orbit.
And I let him orbit closer
He wasn’t Dante.
But that was the point.
On my second day, he approached me like he’d been watching.
Like he waited for the exact moment I let my guard down.
He leaned one hand on the edge of my desk, confident and unhurried. His wrist peeked out from a crisp white shirt cuff—expensive watch, no tie, sleeves rolled just enough to show a hint of forearm.
Deliberate masculinity. Not loud. Dangerous.
“You’re the new one,” he said.
His voice was low, smooth, with the faintest gravel—like velvet dragged over a blade.
When he said my name, it felt like a secret he wasn’t supposed to know.
“That’s me,” I replied, tone guarded but eyes curious.
I didn’t want to notice how good he smelled—like cedarwood and restraint.
Didn’t want to feel the heat crawl up my neck just from the way he looked at me—slow, like he was taking his time cataloging all the ways I was trying to look put-together and failing.
I was here to rebuild.
To forget.
To start clean.
But Mr. Carter was a complication in tailored suits.
And complications were the last thing I could afford.
He smiled slowly, eyes sliding over me in a way that was neither polite nor professional.
"Welcome to the war zone."
It started with small things.
A smirk across the conference table.
His hand brushing mine when he handed over documents.
A compliment that lingered too long in my inbox:
You handled yourself well in that meeting.
Impressive... and distracting.
My breath hitched. My cheeks flushed. I should've reported him. Or ignored it.
But I didn't.
Because part of me liked it.
The attention. The thrill. The shift of power.
One late evening, I stayed behind finishing a client brief. The office was dark, quiet-just the soft hum of the HVAC and my keyboard tapping like a nervous heartbeat.
He appeared in my doorway like a shadow.
"You always work this late?"
I looked up. "Only when I'm trying to prove myself."
He stepped in, loosened his tie. His gaze was sharp, assessing, but softer than usual.
"You've already proven enough."
I laughed, dry and tired. "To who?"
He didn't answer with words.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that I could smell his cologne expensive and addictive.
He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, slow.
"You're a distraction, you know that?"
My pulse spiked. "Am I?"
His eyes locked with mine.
"Yeah. And I like it."
I told myself I was in control this time.
But the truth was—I was just pretending not to feel the holes where Dante used to live.
But the air between us? Feral.
As the weeks went by.
He'd asked me to stay late.
Asked me questions he shouldn’t.
Watched me like I was the answer to something he wasn’t asking out loud.
I'd let him take me to dinner.
I'd let him flirt in the office, let the tension knot itself between us.
It made me feel something again.
Wanted. Dangerous. Alive.
Every touch, every pause, every second of silence vibrated with the possibility of what we both knew could happen.
Would happen.
Julian touched my wrist once, just a brush of his thumb over my pulse, and my body betrayed me.
I wanted to be wanted.
I wanted to be seen.
I wanted to believe I could want someone else.
But when he kissed me—
I didn’t melt.
I waited for the earthquake.
Waited for the crash.
But it never came.
Because he wasn’t Dante.
And that was the problem.
I walked out of the office feeling like I had just touched the edge of a storm.
⸻
Becoming
Silence is a strange kind of hunger.
At first, it gnaws.
Then it teaches you how to listen.
I spent the next few days inside my own skin.
Didn’t text.
Didn’t chase.
Didn’t touch anyone.
I cooked slow meals.
Watered the neglected plants on my windowsill.
Took long showers that steamed out old ghosts.
There was no performance here.
No gaze to mold myself under.
No seduction to slip into like armor.
Just… me.
And for the first time in what felt like years, I didn’t feel hollow without someone else’s heat pressed against my spine.
I journaled.
Not the romantic kind.
The brutal kind.
Pages full of confessions I couldn’t say out loud.
Of names I’d carved into my body like temporary altars.
Of love that had tasted like violence.
Of violence that had dressed itself as love.
I wrote about the girl who used to make herself small in beds she didn’t belong in.
The woman who learned how to take up space but forgot how to let anyone in.
I wrote until my wrist ached and my chest cracked open and I stared at my own truth with something close to grace.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But clarity.
That night, I lit a single candle.
Played music low.
Poured myself a glass of wine and sat on the floor like I used to when I had nothing but dreams and trauma.
And I whispered to the dark:
“I don’t need to be healed to be whole.
I don’t need to be touched to feel real.
I am mine. First. Always.”
Something shifted.
Not loudly.
Not all at once.
But I felt it.
A soft click, deep inside.
Like a lock I hadn’t realized was mine to open.
And when I looked in the mirror again, I didn’t see a woman waiting to be chosen.
I saw a woman choosing.
And that changed everything.
- Writer
