Upsetting Intruder
1151 Words
“Oh my god, thank god you’re still here. I ordered Thai. We should eat before round two.”
She steps out of Leo’s apartment, hair wild, lipstick smudged, wearing yesterday’s lingerie with a trench coat thrown over it, like that somehow makes it classy. She’s barefoot, holding takeout bags, radiating smug afterglow.
She stops cold when she sees me standing in the hallway with Leo, his hand still braced on the wall behind me, boxing me in like he’s claiming space. Or me. I’m not sure which is worse.
Shaundra blinks, slow and calculating.
“This is awkward.”
Understatement of the century.
Leo steps back, just a few inches of space, but my body feels it like a withdrawal. My pulse is pathetic.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, voice fragile and secretly hoping the answer is “I came to apologize.”
Instead, she lifts a bag of curry like a trophy.
“Dinner. For Leo and me.”
Not us.
Not me.
Never me.
I laugh, short and sharp, trying to keep the ache out of it.
“You’re seriously having a date night with a guy you picked up eight hours ago?”
She smirks, leaning against Leo’s doorframe like she lives there.
“You don’t have to be invited. I know how third wheels make you uncomfortable.”
God. She really said it.
Leo looks between us, confusion flickering, but Shaundra steamrolls ahead—because of course she does.
“I’ll plate everything inside.” She turns to Leo with a smile that isn’t a smile. “Come on, baby.”
I don’t know what pisses me off more:
The “baby,”
or the assumption that I’m irrelevant.
“I’m not hungry,” Leo says flatly.
Shaundra freezes, almost drops the bag.
“You literally asked me to order food.”
“Plans changed.”
Her eyes flick to me, and she laughs—sharp, cruel, brittle around the edges.
“Did you two bond while I was in the shower? Jesus. She doesn’t even like people.”
I exhale slowly, because if I speak without thinking, I’ll scream until my lungs bleed.
“Shaundra, you said you were going home last night.”
“I did!” she snaps, defensive. “Until I got invited over. Sue me.”
“You didn’t tell me you were with someone. Or where. Or that you didn’t make it home at all.”
“It’s not my job to check in with you.”
“No,” I say quietly, feeling the ground sliding out from under me, “but it used to matter whether you lived through the night.”
Her throat works, anger or guilt I can’t tell, and then she spits it out:
“You’re judging me because I have sex.”
“I’m judging you because you put yourself in danger and call it empowerment. And then you expect me to clean up the pieces when you get broken.”
Her face twists—hurt, then fury, then that hollow pit she hides everything in.
“You love feeling superior. You get off on my trauma.”
I choke on a laugh, because what the actual hell.
“You almost died, Shaundra. I spent nights in hospitals praying you didn’t. I’m sorry that wasn’t sexy enough for you to remember.”
She steps forward, eyes glassy, voice low and vicious.
“You’re just pissed someone finally wants me instead of you.”
I freeze.
Leo inhales sharply beside me.
“What?” I whisper.
Shaundra tilts her head, eyes gleaming with triumph and self-loathing.
“You want him. You think you’re subtle? Look at you—shaking because he isn’t touching you anymore.”
I don’t look at Leo.
I don’t breathe.
I don’t let my body betray me.
“You don’t know what I want.”
“Oh please. You want someone to worship you for being tragic. And when they don’t, you punish them.”
Shaundra has always known where to stab:
straight through bone, down to the marrow.
“We’re done,” I say, voice low and final.
She swallows, jaw trembling.
“Fine.”
She turns to Leo, desperate now.
“Let’s just eat, okay? Ignore her. She’s being dramatic again.”
“No,” Leo says.
Not loud.
Not angry.
Just final.
Shaundra blinks.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I’m not doing this with you,” he says. “Dinner. s*x. Any of it.”
Her face contorts—shock, humiliation, rage.
“This is because of her? Are you really picking the lonely b***h who hates everyone?”
Every cell in my body goes cold.
Leo’s shoulders tighten, dangerous.
“Do not talk about her like that.”
She laughs—a broken, hysterical sound.
“Jesus, you two deserve each other. Miserable, horny, and terrified of being alone. Good luck with that.”
She storms past us, shove-shouldering me because she wants the last physical word.
She slams down the hallway toward the stairwell, bare feet slapping.
Leo doesn’t chase her.
He doesn’t apologize.
He just stands there, in the space she left, breathing heavy like the world shifted under him, too.
I don’t wait to see what he’ll say.
I don’t trust my voice.
I don’t trust my eyes.
I don’t trust anything.
I walk into my apartment, shut the door, and lock it.
My knees give out halfway to the living room, so I sit on the floor, back against the door, heartbeat wrecked.
On the other side, footsteps stop.
His voice, quiet, rough, too close:
“I’m sorry.”
I stare at the ceiling, throat thick.
“Don’t be,” I whisper, not sure if I mean don’t apologize or don’t care.
Silence.
Then:
“I didn’t sleep with her because I wanted her. I was trying not to want something else.”
My stomach flips, traitorous.
“Don’t do that,” I say, shaking. “Don’t make this about me.”
“I can’t help it.”
He rests his forehead against the door.
I feel the weight of it through the wood.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” he murmurs. “But I don’t want you hurt. Not because of me. Not because of anyone.”
I laugh once, exhausted.
“You barely know me.”
“I know enough not to walk away.”
God.
Why does that hit harder than any compliment?
“Please leave,” I say, voice cracking in the middle like a teenage boy.
He hesitates.
One second.
Two.
A breath.
“Okay.”
But he doesn’t move.
Not an inch.
I stay leaning against the door.
He stays leaning against the other side.
Two f****d-up strangers pretending a wall is what’s keeping them apart, instead of everything else.
And I still don’t have my f*****g mail.
- Writer
