The street lights blurred into long, yellow smears as I practically ran across the road, my mind still stuck on Anna's message. Don't forget what you asked me today. The words kept replaying like a bad, insistent guitar riff in my head. They were so casual, so devastatingly confident.
A taxi horn screamed. A car fishtailed around the corner, tires coughing up a dirty spray of rainwater. I froze, half-step into the lane, utterly paralyzed by the flood of anxiety, and some driver swore at me with the kind of colorful intensity that suggested I'd personally ruined his entire life. I stumbled blindly to the curb, heart pounding so hard my ribs felt boxed in and bruised. For a second I thought my chest would explode with the sheer volume of my fear. People kept walking, their faces closed off and indifferent. I wanted to shout, to grab one of them and tell them my whole life had just tilted onto a dangerous, impossible axis.
Back at my apartment, I fumbled with the lock, pushed the door open, and everything left my hands, my messenger bag, my coat, landing in a disorderly, defeated heap on the worn couch. I didn't look at the mess. I just peeled off my shirt and stepped into the shower, moving with the desperate, primal need to wash the entire evening, the bar, the text, and the impossible reality of Anna, off me.
Cold water hit the back of my neck and for a moment the sharp, stinging shock cleared my head. Then the voices came, a roaring, chaotic duet. One small, reasonable voice, the familiar voice of self-preservation, saying: Don't be an idiot, you could lose your job, you could ruin everything. And another darker one, whispering like a hungry, seductive thing: You wanted this. Think of her in that skirt. Think of the impossible curve of her back. One night. One single "Yes" that meant everything.
I pressed my forehead to the cool, tiled wall and let the water drum on my scalp, the sound a sensory overload. "No," I told myself out loud, the word thin and ridiculous against the water's roar. "Don't be stupid. Don't throw away the small life you have." Still, the memory of the cold, considering way Anna had said "Sure" tightened something hot and unsettling behind my ribs.
I toweled off like someone moving through thick, resistant honey, phone clutched in one damp hand. I typed a reply, a stuttering sentence about misunderstanding, then deleted it instantly. Typed another I just wanted... deleted it too, I just wanted to pretend this never happened. I watched the half-sentence stare back at me, a pathetic confession, and felt the shame creep in, choking the breath in my throat. My thumb hovered over the keyboard, paralyzed. My fear of losing everything, my the job and the small life I'd scratched and clawed for—warred with the stupid, bright, reckless thrill of possibility.
In the end, I did nothing at all. "Whatever happens, let it be," I mumbled, surrendering to the fatigue. Sleep stole me instantly on the couch, my head not even hitting the cushion properly, the anxiety having finally burned itself out.
I woke to a knock. A sharp, determined rap against the door. Who knocks at ten-thirty at night? My voice in my head sounded small and paranoid. I opened the door, my muscles tight with sudden dread, and froze because for a heartbeat my brain fed me a cinema of two terrifying possibilities: Anna standing there, demanding what I asked her, or some generic office nightmare.
It was neither.
A woman stood there with a moving box and a tired, genuine smile. She wasn't Anna. She was softer, less dramatized—no impossible and aggressive curves, but neat, pleasant angles that suggested a good figure. Not a model, not a showpiece, just… pretty in a normal, real way. Her hair was tucked neatly behind an ear, and she wore a simple dress that sat well without shouting for attention.
"Sorry to bother so late," she said, her voice warm. "I'm Nicole. I'm your new neighbor—moving in tomorrow. I thought I'd check in and say hello."
I mumbled a welcome like a sleepwalker who'd forgotten his lines. She thanked me, her smile broadening slightly, and carried her box down the hall. I closed the door and leaned back against it, half laughing at the absurd timing of it all. Of all the times for new, perfectly normal neighbors to show up. Of all the nights to be confronted with a completely sane and reasonable version of female interaction.
I thought of Jean. He was my roommate before I came here, that man with the open, perpetually ringing phone and a calendar that was a minefield of conquests. I remembered how I'd left because his apartment felt like living in a catalogue of one-night stories, because he changed partners like shirts and laughed while the world moved the wrong way for me. I dialed him before I even knew why I needed his repulsive counsel.
"Yo, bro!" Jean's voice exploded into my ear, loud enough to rattle my eardrum. And then, music from his line. And moans. Not subtle moans. I could practically hear the slick, crinkling sound of a condom wrapper being torn in the background.
"Jean!" I hissed, utterly mortified. "Dude, seriously? Now? Is there no concept of phone etiquette?"
"Now is always the best time, man!" Jean answered like I'd asked a spiritual question, his voice thick with breathless pleasure.
"You still living like a monk? Bro, get a life." He sounded proud of the chaos in the background. "Trust me, a little calculated recklessness, a single night takes the edge off."
I felt heat rush to my face, the contrast between my clean, safe shower and his messy reality overwhelming. "You're disgusting."
"And proud of it." He laughed, and a wet, unmistakable sound in the background made me want to slam my phone shut. "Try it sometimes, Luke. You'll thank me." He hung up with a raucous laugh, and I sat there thinking how scandalously brave and repulsively, utterly free Jean was.
I crawled into bed with the ceiling fan painting lazy, hypnotic circles above me, turning on music to drown the thoughts. Maybe.. maybe Jean was right. Maybe I should try. Maybe not. The options felt both absurd and suddenly possible, pulsing with dark energy. I promised myself one thing, a vow to hold onto sanity: no stupid, reckless moves. I'd be careful. I'd be smart about it.
***
Morning came like a slap. I woke late, full of a small, acidic, rising panic. The bus stop was a ghost town. My legs moved with the kind of speed that could only be called desperate, fueled by pure adrenaline. I booked a ride and cursed the price, watching the fare climb sickeningly as the driver took an extra, traffic-laden turn. I made it to the office with five minutes to spare, chest tight, shirt half tucked, my black hair doing its best to look like I'd slept in an electrical storm.
I darted into the elevator and slammed the button for my floor. The doors sighed shut. Relief flooded me, immediate and profound. Then they slid open again, a cruel, deliberate pause.
Anna stepped in.
I swear the air in my lungs forgot how to work. It simply evacuated. She wore a suit, clean-cut and sharp, the fabric dark and authoritative, the kind of outfit that should have been boring but instead seemed custom-made to torment me. Her hair was white like a bleach-wash flash under the fluorescent lobby lights—was tucked behind one ear. She smiled with a small, controlled expression that somehow carried more power than a shout.
"Good morning, Luke," she said, her voice smooth and cool as expensive silk. Her perfume brushed my face, a sharp, unforgettable floral scent, and for a ridiculous second I thought I was breathing in danger.
"Morning, Anna," I managed, my voice a broken, rusty thing.
The elevator hummed and rose three floors in suffocating silence. Her eyes flicked to mine, and she asked, calm as if ordering coffee, her voice betraying no nervousness, "Were you serious about what you asked yesterday?"
My tongue felt huge and useless, sticking to the roof of my mouth. "I—" I started, then tried to pull myself together. I told myself to breathe, to be an adult, to remember my dignity. My hands were damp, slipping against the papers I clutched. My heart thudded painfully loud, a clumsy, frantic sound in the small, reflective metal box.
Anna leaned in the tiniest fraction closer, a deliberate invasion of my space, and her mouth curved like she'd stored amusement for a rainy day. "If it's yes," she said, the command almost a whisper that the elevator walls greedily swallowed, "prove it."
I wanted to die. I wanted to laugh hysterically. I wanted to run screaming into the stairwell and never come back. Instead, I stood there, a bright, ridiculous, sweaty mess in a corporate elevator, and tried to find a way to say anything that wasn't a complete disaster.
The elevator kept rising, but my stomach had already dropped to the basement...