Put a Leash On It

Holland

The morning tried to be ordinary. It wore the same light as yesterday—thin sun smeared over the lot, breaths of cold rolling in with every swing of the shop door. I unlocked the counter, turned on the lobby lamps, and told myself to keep my head down and my hands busy. Contracts, keys, clean surfaces. Order.

I could still feel the echoes of last night—dream or not-dream or something that sat right between. My salt lamp had glowed this morning like it always did. The deadbolt had laughed at me with how perfect it still was. The pistol in the drawer had been exactly where it should be. The only evidence of anything at all were four small ovals on my arm, finger-bruises that would fade in a few days. Evidence, or imagination that left marks.

I wiped the counter until it didn’t need wiping. The ficus looked like it wanted to talk to a therapist. I told it to get in line.

A bell chimed as the side door from the shop swung in. A parts runner waved and dropped an envelope on the counter. “Drop for Banks,” he said, and forgot me the second he turned around again. Normal. The kind of normal that used to feel like a cage and now felt like oxygen.

By nine I’d answered two voicemails, one of which was mostly someone breathing and then hanging up. Spam, probably. I logged a routine box-truck reservation. I printed and stapled a form that had been updated three times this year to fix one sentence no one read anyway. I almost convinced myself that my body didn’t still remember the shape of being picked up and carried, the way a drumbeat had steadied under my ear.

My phone buzzed against my thigh, a gentle insistence. I pulled it out expecting a spam text or a sale on cheap leggings. The notification read: DM request.

The username wasn’t a name. Just “OldTownTruths” with no profile pic, no posts, two followers. The message preview showed a single word: Holly?

My brain stuttered over the spelling. I looked over my shoulder like the message might have a body attached to it standing somewhere in the lobby. No one was there. The shop noise hummed the way it always does when everyone’s busy: a chorus of impact wrenches and shouted part numbers.

I tapped.

OldTownTruths: Holly? You still using this?

My thumb hovered. Common sense took hold of my wrist and set my phone on the counter face down like it was a hot plate. A customer came in—a woman in a pink beanie who needed to extend her rental and wanted to talk about how the backup camera made her dizzy. I did the contract dance, smiled at the right places, nodded in the others. My phone sat like a secret, buzzing twice, then again.

When beanie woman left, I lifted the phone and scrolled. Another message had arrived, then another.

OldTownTruths: Don’t ignore me.

OldTownTruths: Thought you should know. I saw him.

OldTownTruths: At the Marathon lot by the highway. Last night. Looked messed up, but alive.

The letters didn’t just make a sentence; they made my stomach flip over. I could feel the exact moment gravity shifted in my body—the way the floor suddenly felt like I was standing on a boat. I saw him.

Half my brain scrabbled for a practical answer. Troll. Wrong person. Sick joke. The other half went very quiet, the way you get quiet when you hear a noise in a dark house and you’re trying to decide if you imagined it.

I typed.

Me: Who is this?

Me: Who did you see?

A typing bubble appeared, then vanished. Appeared again. The seconds stretched.

OldTownTruths: You know who. He asked around about you a couple times. I thought… thought you’d want to know.

A name swelled in my throat like a flood. I didn’t type it. I didn’t give it air.

Me: Stop.

Me: Lose this account.

I blocked the user before they could reply and set the phone down like it might bite me. The room felt too bright. My sweater itched along my collarbone. I swallowed and it felt like broken glass.

Shame came in first, hard and useless. Shame for leaving, shame for choosing myself, shame because part of me had waited for this—to get punished for surviving. Shame always shows up to strangle self-protection. It’s good at its job.

I locked the lobby door and flipped the sign to Back in 5. Then I walked as calmly as I could to the restroom in the hall off the lobby. I shut the door, locked it, and leaned my forehead against the cool metal of the paper towel dispenser. My breath came in short, shallow pulls. I tried to take a deeper one and it felt like trying to drink through a straw with a hole poked in it.

“Okay,” I said out loud, because sometimes sound is a rope. “Okay. You’re okay.”

The mirror wasn’t kind. It showed me a woman who looked like she’d stood up too fast. I turned on the faucet just to make noise, pressed my wrists under the cold water until they ached, and watched the goosebumps run up my forearms like lightning.

You could call someone, my brain suggested, reasonable, helpful. The police? About what—an anonymous DM? Hi, I think the ghost of my past has a burner account. I could call Todd and say what? Hey, remember how normal lunch was? Surprise. I could call Remy—

The thought of his name hit me with a complicated heat. He would show up, a sure part of me knew, like he had in the not-dream. He would take up space without taking my breath. He would listen in that quiet way that felt like a steady hand on the lower back nudging you through a door.

Which was exactly why I didn’t call. Pride is a poor bodyguard, but it’s the one I grew.

I dried my hands until it felt pointless and went back to the counter. The sign still said Back in 5. I flipped it to Open, unlocked the door, and stood there long enough to pretend I was fine.

The bell chimed again. A man in a hi-vis jacket had a question about the refrigeration unit on a trailer. I pulled out the binder, found the laminated sheet, and talked. My voice did the job without me.

When he left, the lobby felt too big and too small. My phone buzzed once more: No caller ID. I stared at it. The line between don’t answer and you have to know is thin when fear holds the pencil.

I slid my thumb across.

“Hello?”

The sound on the other end was a breath that didn’t know whether it wanted to be a word. A soft static like an empty room. Then, not a whisper, not a voice—just a careful, almost amazed: “Holland?”

Every muscle in me turned to stone. I could feel the exact shape of the letters of my name as they came through the phone and laid themselves along my spine.

I ended the call without remembering my own thumb moving and hit Block before it could ring again. Then I set the phone face down and rested both hands on the counter because I needed something to be solid.

“Hey.” Todd’s voice made me jump. He stood at the shop door, eyebrows up, a brown paper bag hanging from his fingers. “Brought you the good cookies from the deli. Sugar therapy. You okay?”

“Fine,” I lied, then hated myself for how familiar the word felt in my mouth.

He didn’t look like he believed me. He also didn’t press. “Consider this a bribe to make you take your break.” He set the bag on the counter. “And for the record, if you ever need someone to stand here and look intimidating at a person who needs intimidating, I’m very good at that for fifteen-minute increments.”

The stupidest laugh escaped me, like my body was embarrassed and betrayed me. “Is that an official job title?”

“It’s under ‘Other Duties As Assigned.’” He tapped the bag. “Eat one. Sugar does not cure anything, but it does put a better soundtrack on the problem.”

“Thanks,” I said, meaning it.

He started to go, then paused. “I’ll be in the back. Phone works. Or just yell. Or—” He peeled off a sticky note from his pocket and stuck it to the edge of my monitor. He’d written CHECK THE 23 in block letters. “Figure I’d give you the code in writing. If you call and say that, we come running. Nobody asks why.”

Something unclenched behind my sternum. “Okay.”

When he left, I ate half a cookie and regretted the pace immediately. The sweetness gave my jaw something to do besides lock.

The next hour happened in pieces. A man named Curt picked up a truck and told me about his daughter’s dance recital like we were old friends. Sharlotte popped her head in, borrowed a stapler, left me a compliment about my sweater in a way that didn’t feel like a deflection. Banks called from the back about a client who wanted to argue the definition of “full tank” and I made a note in the system that would save us all five minutes if he came in to fight about it.

And then, just when I thought the morning might let me skate through without further humiliation, the door opened and Remy walked in.

He didn’t storm or loom. He just… arrived. The air shifted. He wore a dark coat and a quiet expression that said he’d already read the room and chosen gentleness.

“Ms. Williams,” he said, and something about the formality made me want to cry. “Do you have a second?”

I straightened my stack of forms that didn’t need straightening. “Of course.”

He came to the counter and didn’t lean on it, didn’t invade the space, didn’t do anything except exist in a way that calmed the animal parts of me down to a manageable hum. His eyes searched my face the way people search weather for changes.

“You don’t look like yourself,” he said softly.

My laugh came out thin. “I’m not sure I know what that looks like yet.”

He nodded like I’d said something wise. “Would you like to step outside? Fresh air tends to remind lungs how to do their job.”

I hesitated. The idea of being anywhere with him that didn’t have a counter between us felt dangerous in a way I didn’t trust myself with. He seemed to understand the wobble in me and adjusted.

“Or here,” he said, and lifted a hand slightly. “May I?”

“May you…?”

He gestured to my side of the counter. “Stand on this side for a moment. No doors. No exposure. Just… change of perspective.”

Something about the ask made it easy to say yes. I stepped around and stood in the open with him, the lobby behind me, the glass in front, the whole place reflected faintly so it felt like we were in two rooms at once.

“Will you do something for me?” he asked.

“Depends.”

He smiled, brief. “Tell me five things you can see.”

“I— what?”

“Humor me.”

I looked around because it was easier than looking at him. “The ficus that refuses to thrive. The sign that says we close at five but we never actually do. Your coat. My monitor reflecting in the glass. And—” I glanced at my own hands and tried to decide if it was cheesy to say it. “—the cookies Todd brought me.”

“Good,” he said, like I’d solved something. “Four things you can feel.”

“My shoes are too tight today,” I said. “Still breaking them in. The counter edge under my fingers. The air is colder near the door. And… my heartbeat.”

He nodded. “Three things you can hear.”

“Air compressor in the shop. Someone laughing—Sean, I think. And the hum of the fluorescent lights.”

“Two you can smell.”

“Coffee.” I inhaled, surprised by the other one. “Your… soap.” The admission made my face warm.

He didn’t make a thing of it. “One you can taste.”

“Sugar,” I said, touching my tongue to my teeth. “From the cookie.”

“Good.” He didn’t smile like a teacher; he smiled like a conspirator. “Sometimes the body needs to be reminded it lives in more than a single fear.”

“I’m not—” I started, then stopped because lying felt exhausting. “I got a message. A weird one. And a call. From a blocked number. It—” I swallowed. “It sounded like someone I used to know.”

“Someone,” he repeated. He didn’t ask who. He didn’t reach for the story like a man yanking a rope.

“I blocked the number.” I stared past him at our faint reflections and the lot beyond. The big trucks parked in their respectful rows. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“I do,” he said, and his voice had a weight that wasn’t heavy. “Because sometimes saying a thing out loud puts a leash on it.”