Loving A Moretti - THE OBSESSION

Chapter One

Three days after someone sent me a photograph of myself walking home, I was still checking the street before opening my curtains.

I hated that more than the photograph itself.

That morning, I stood beside the window with a toothbrush hanging from my mouth and pulled the curtain back just enough to see the laundromat across the street. A delivery van was double-parked near the corner. Someone in pajama pants was trying to convince a tiny white dog to step around a puddle, and two men were unloading boxes from the back of a truck. Nobody stood beneath the awning.

I let the curtain fall and went back to the bathroom. My phone was propped against a bottle of moisturizer on the counter. Jennie had sent four reels after midnight, followed by a picture of a dress with U WOULD EAT THIS UP underneath it. My mother had called while I was asleep. An email informed me that a subscription I’d forgotten existed had successfully taken another twelve dollars from me.

Nothing from an unknown number.

I opened my Recently Deleted folder anyway. The photograph was still there, rain blurring the streetlights around the edges but doing nothing to hide the black coat, the blonde hair disappearing beneath my hood, or the tote pressed against my side. I’d stared at it enough times to know there was nothing useful hiding in the background. No reflection of whoever had taken it. No face caught inside a parked car. Just me walking past the deli less than ten minutes before the picture arrived.

Deleting it had seemed stupid. If somebody was actually following me, destroying the only proof I had would be an impressive contribution to my own problems. So I’d kept it, along with a screenshot of the number and the call log. The police had crossed my mind. So had staying with Jennie, mostly because she’d spent the last three days insisting on it. I did neither.

Instead, I changed the privacy settings on every account I used and removed the photo I’d posted from the restaurant that night after realizing the location tag was visible. That part still pissed me off. I liked that photo.

I locked my phone and checked the time.

8:36.

“Shit.”

Twenty minutes later, I was outside with one boot not completely zipped and my hair still damp at the ends. New York had already gotten on with its morning without me. A delivery bike ignored a red light. Someone leaned on a car horn as if the six vehicles ahead of him might suddenly evaporate. Two men outside the produce shop were arguing loudly enough that by the time I reached the corner, I knew one of them owed the other’s cousin money.

I stopped at the little breakfast place near my building, where the same woman who worked most mornings slid a paper bag toward me before I’d finished paying.

“Egg and cheese.”

“No bacon?”

She looked offended. “You never get bacon.”

“I could’ve changed.”

“You didn’t.”

Fair. I took the bag and peeked inside before folding the top over. “And coffee?”

Her hand paused over the register. “You want one?”

“No.”

“Then why you ask me?”

“Just checking if you’d offer.”

She stared at me for a second before shaking her head. “One day you grow up.”

“I’ll let you know.”

The bell above the door jingled as I stepped outside. I ate half the sandwich while walking, something I’d promised myself I’d stop doing approximately two years ago. New York had a way of convincing you that sitting down to eat was unreasonable when you could chew while waiting for the pedestrian light and narrowly avoid being hit by a bicycle at the same time.

At the next block, the crowd stopped.

Someone stood behind me.

There was nothing strange about it. Eight in the morning in Manhattan wasn’t exactly the ideal time to demand personal space from the general population. Still, I found myself looking toward the dark window of the shop beside me. My reflection appeared first. Behind me stood a woman in a green puffer jacket, a man holding a folded newspaper and, farther back, someone in black.

Dark hair.

My chewing slowed.

The pedestrian light changed and people moved around me, shoulders bumping mine as they crossed. I turned, but the man was already walking in the opposite direction. I caught the back of a black coat before a bus rolled between us.

For a second, I remembered the bookstore. A stranger staring at me, then pretending to study a book he’d managed to hold upside down.

The bus pulled away. He was gone.

A woman brushed past my shoulder hard enough to knock me sideways. “Sorry,” I muttered automatically, then frowned after her because she’d been the one who hit me.

I crossed with the rest of the crowd. There were millions of people in this city and probably enough black coats to dress all of them for a funeral. I hadn’t even seen the man’s face.

At the other side of the street, I looked back anyway.

Nothing.

***

Jennie stole one of my fries before she sat down.

“Hello to you too.”

“Hi.” She dropped her bag onto the empty chair beside her and reached for another.

I slapped the back of her hand. “Get your own.”

“You never finish yours.”

“I haven’t had the opportunity to start.”

We’d met at a diner she’d been trying to drag me to for weeks, mostly because she’d decided their fries were better than the place we usually went. The table wobbled whenever either of us leaned on it, and someone had scratched CALL YOUR MOTHER into the wall beside our booth. I laughed and squeezed ketchup onto the edge of my plate.

Jennie let me eat exactly three fries before she asked, “Anything?”

“No.”

“No pictures? Calls? Creepy breathing?”

I raised an eyebrow. “No.”

She picked at the corner of a paper napkin. “And you’re still sleeping at your apartment.”

“Usually what I pay rent for.”

“Belle.” Jennie gave me a look. “ You answered a phone call from some random number after somebody had just taken a picture of you.”

“I didn’t know the call and the picture were connected. Besides, I blocked the number.”

“Right. Because No Caller ID famously respects boundaries.” I looked at her over my glass. Jennie didn’t smile this time.

“Belle,” she said.

I knew that tone. Her fingers flattened the little piece of napkin she’d torn off. “Come stay with me for a few days.”

“Your couch tried to kill me last Christmas.”

“It did not.”

“I couldn’t turn my head for two days.”

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth moved.

“If something else happens, I’ll report it,” I said. “I’ll tell the building too.”

“You could do that now.”

I pushed the fries toward her. She stared at the basket, then at me.

“Is this a bribe?”

“Take it or leave it.” She took one.

For the next few minutes, she left the subject alone. She told me about a woman she’d watched spend ten minutes arguing with a parking meter that morning. I told her about the subscription that had apparently been taking twelve dollars from me every month since May.

“You shouldn’t be allowed to have money,” she said.

I laughed as she reached across the table for another fry. “I think I saw bookstore guy again.”

Her hand stopped over the basket. “Upside-down-book guy? You never gave me another name.”

“Because I don’t know his name.”

“Minor inconvenience.” She took the fry anyway. “Where did you see him?”

“This morning. I think. I didn’t actually see his face.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Then how do you know it was him?”

“I don’t. That’s why I said think. All I saw was dark hair and a black coat.”

Jennie looked around the diner, then pointed discreetly with her fry toward a man waiting near the register. Dark hair. Black coat. Before I could say anything, she pointed through the window at another man walking past in almost the same combination.

I stared at her. “Exactly.”

“Okay, fair. So what happened?”

“I saw him in the reflection of a window and turned around, but a bus got in the way before I could get a proper look. I checked across the street after it passed, but he was already gone.”

Jennie’s smile appeared slowly. “Was he hot?”

I reached for my water instead of answering.

“Oh my God.” Jennie leaned forward, already smiling. “You’re avoiding the question again.”

“I didn’t see his face this morning.”

“I’m talking about the bookstore. I asked you the other night too, and you somehow managed not to answer me then either.”

I took a drink while she waited. The memory came back easier than I expected. Dark hair falling slightly over his forehead. Strong brows. The brief second we’d actually looked at each other before he’d apparently decided an upside-down book was a convincing way to look busy.

I set my glass down. “He wasn’t ugly.”

Jennie slapped the table hard enough to make the ketchup bottle jump. “That means he’s hot.”

“Can you behave?”

“No. Also, those are not the only two categories.”

“They are today.”

I shook my head and tried not to smile. Jennie caught it anyway.

“Maybe he was staring because he thought you were cute.”

“People stare.”

“You stared back.”

“I was trying to figure out why he was staring.”

“Sure.”

I kicked her lightly beneath the table. Her knee hit the underside with a dull bang, and she jerked backward.

“b***h!”

“Stop.” She rubbed her knee, laughing. “Imagine if you see him again.”

“In a city of eight million people?”

“You already might’ve.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

Jennie pointed at me with a fry. “Exactly.”

There was something mildly embarrassing about the fact that I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. Not because Jennie was right. I wasn’t planning our wedding over a man who couldn’t operate a paperback under pressure. I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t even know whether the person I’d seen that morning had been him.

But I remembered his face. Apparently that was enough for Jennie. “If you see him a third time, you have to talk to him.”

“Absolutely not. I’m not walking up to some stranger and saying, ‘Hi, remember me? You stared at me in a bookstore.’”

Jennie barely hesitated. “Ask what he was reading.”

I stared at her.

She started laughing before I could answer.

“f**k you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, making absolutely no effort to look sorry.

I reached for the last fry before she could steal it. “You’re really not.”

For a few minutes, the man from the bookstore became exactly what he should have been: something stupid to tease me about over lunch. The photograph stayed somewhere else entirely.

***

Jennie had somewhere to be downtown, so we separated at the next intersection after she made me promise, again, that I would call if anything happened.

“And by anything, I mean anything,” she said. “Unknown number, someone following you, upside-down-book guy mysteriously appears for the third time, anything weird.”

“Yes, Jennie. I know what anything means.”

I looked at her. She grinned.

“Goodbye.”

“Love you!”

I flipped her off without turning around.

The afternoon had turned colder while we’d been inside. I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and headed home, taking the longer route because I needed toothpaste and kept forgetting to buy it. The pharmacy was crowded enough that I immediately regretted going in. A toddler was crying near the vitamins. Two teenagers were blocking an entire aisle while deciding between nearly identical bags of candy. Somewhere near the register, a machine kept beeping because nobody seemed interested in figuring out what it wanted.

I found toothpaste, remembered I also needed shampoo, forgot which shampoo I normally bought, then spent five minutes staring at bottles before recognizing mine by the dent in the cap. By the time I got home, bookstore guy had been pushed somewhere behind groceries, Jennie’s harassment, and whether twelve dollars a month for six months was enough money to justify emailing customer support.

I unlocked my apartment.

Nothing looked different. The curtains were still closed from that morning. My mug was in the sink. One cushion had slipped sideways on the couch. The refrigerator started its uneven hum the second I took off my coat, almost like it had waited for me to come home before being annoying.

I put the pharmacy bag on the counter. My phone buzzed, and for a second my hand stopped inside my tote before I pulled it out.

Jennie.

She had sent a picture of a man in a bookstore holding a book correctly.

JENNIE: thoughts and prayers for your illiterate boyfriend

I laughed.

ME: blocked

JENNIE: YOU WOULD NEVER

I put the phone down and started unpacking the bag. Toothpaste. Shampoo. A pack of gum I didn’t remember deciding to buy. I carried everything into the bathroom, replaced the nearly empty toothpaste tube, and spent several minutes trying to squeeze the last bit from the old one into the trash because throwing away anything with product still inside felt morally wrong.

By the time I came back, the apartment had grown dim. I turned on the kitchen light and noticed something white on the floor near my front door.

I stopped.

For a moment, I thought it was junk mail that had been pushed underneath the door, except my building didn’t deliver mail that way. It was a small white envelope with no stamp and no address.

Just my name written across the front.

ISABELLE

I looked at the deadbolt.

It was locked. The chain was still hanging loose beside it exactly where I’d left it.

I crouched and picked up the envelope by one corner. There was nothing on the back. When I opened it, a photograph slid into my hand.

Not the rainy street this time.

Daylight.

It was me standing at the intersection that morning, the paper bag from the breakfast place folded in one hand. This photograph had been taken from the front.

I could see my face. I was looking over my shoulder. Behind me, a bus filled half the frame.

I turned the photograph over.

Three words had been written on the back.

“You looked back.”