The Static

Alie

The elevator hums the whole way up to my floor, that faint fluorescent buzz that gets under your skin and won’t let go. My reflection in the brushed metal looks pale and drawn, like I left half of myself back in that café.

I can still feel him.

The warmth of his hand over mine, that jolt of something sharp and electric that didn’t feel like simple contact. It felt like recognition — like the moment you realize the stranger in front of you has already imagined this.

I hate that I didn’t pull away faster.

Inside my apartment, everything looks the same. My half-burned candle. The dishes I didn’t wash. The sweater I dropped over the chair this morning. Normal, quiet, safe. Except… it isn’t. Not tonight.

I drop my bag onto the counter and dig through it until my fingers find the card.

Slick black. Embossed silver lettering. Mr. Black.

No email. No company name. Just a number.

I turn it over, half expecting some message on the back — a signature, an instruction, something. Nothing. It’s blank and heavy in my hand.

I should throw it away.

I should have thrown it away the second he handed it to me.

Instead, I set it beside my laptop and just stare at it. Like if I look long enough, it’ll make sense.

My phone buzzes with a notification, and I jump so hard the card slides to the floor. It lands face-up. The number catches the light and glints like it’s mocking me.

“Get a grip,” I mutter, pressing a hand over my heart. “He’s just a man.”

I make tea, scroll social media, watch half an episode of something stupid. None of it helps. Every sound outside — a car door, a laugh from the street — sounds like it’s coming for me.

And the worst part?

I keep replaying the way he looked at me. The heat behind his calm. The faint smirk that said he already knew what I’d do before I did it.

It wasn’t attraction. Not exactly.

It was something deeper, darker.

When I finally crawl into bed, the clock reads a little after midnight. The room feels too still, like it’s holding its breath.

Across the room, the card lies on the counter, catching a thin slice of moonlight.

And for one impossible second, I swear it glints — like an eye.

Caine

The city is quieter after rain.

The streets gleam silver under streetlights, cars hissing past like whispers. I park where I can still see the café’s windows, watching people laugh inside, their movements soft through the glass. But not her. She’s gone.

I should drive home. I should move on, pretend today was business.

Instead, I stay.

Her voice still hums in my head—measured, polite, then sharp when she told me off. The way she tried to make the moment small, to shrink it down to paperwork and professionalism, when both of us knew it was something else entirely.

I rest my hands on the wheel, thumb tracing the ridge of the leather. Every detail of her is catalogued: the way she lifts her chin when she’s irritated, the tremor in her voice when she’s trying not to show fear, the way curiosity flickers through her even when she’s angry. She’s everything I thought she’d be.

I open my phone and type her name into a blank note. Just her first name. Then a list of things I remember—the sound of her laugh, the words she stumbled over, the color of her sweater, the way she looked at my hands. None of it means anything to anyone else. To me, it’s proof. Proof that I was there, that she exists in my world now.

I tell myself it isn’t obsession. It’s connection. Recognition. A current that runs both ways. She felt it too—I saw it in the way she froze when I touched her hand. That kind of reaction can’t be faked.

I scroll through a few photos from her public profile, the ones anyone could see. Smiles caught in soft light. A picture of her desk, cluttered with notes. A half-read book. They make me feel steadier, closer, like I’m tracing the outline of something inevitable.

I type a few lines of a message I’ll never send:

You were perfect today. You just don’t know it yet.

Then I delete it. Not because I’ve changed my mind, but because I’m patient.

Everything worth keeping takes time.

When I finally start the car, the dashboard clock flashes past 6. The night feels lighter, calmer. I already know what comes next.

All I have to do now is wait for her to reach back.

The highway is almost empty, surprisingly. The wipers beat a slow rhythm against the glass, keeping time with the thoughts circling in my head.

By the time I reach the gates, the city glow has thinned to a distant haze. The house rises out of the trees like a held breath—glass and steel, too large for one man, too silent to ever feel lived in.

I swipe my card through the reader and the doors unlock with a soft click.

Inside, the air smells of rain and stone. The security system murmurs to life; rows of small blue lights blink across the walls. I move through the main room automatically, turning on no lamps. Darkness is easier. Only the quiet hum of equipment in the study broke the silence, a steady pulse that matched my heartbeat.

Every surface is precise, symmetrical. The kind of order people mistake for calm. But it isn’t calm—it’s containment.

The desk in my study waits where I left it, screens dimmed to black mirrors. I set my phone down and lean against the edge of the desk, letting the stillness settle. I turn them on one by one. A flicker on the nearest screen catches my eye—a familiar shape, moving through a familiar apartment.

She lingers everywhere. In the rhythm of my pulse, in the echo of her voice when she said my name, in the faint scent of coffee that clung to her sweater. I tell myself I’m only thinking, planning, mapping the next step. The truth is, I’m replaying the way she looked when she walked away—angry, certain she’d won.

I open a notebook, its pages filled with half-formed ideas: project notes, fragments of dialogue, scraps of thought about her. The pattern calms me. Patterns always do.

A storm moves outside, distant this time. The windows catch a flicker of lightning, and for a heartbeat her reflection seems to replace mine in the glass—an illusion born of exhaustion and want.

I close the notebook and exhale slowly. The urge to reach for her, to see her, is a living thing pressing at the edges of my restraint.

But tomorrow will come. And with it, another chance to make coincidence look like fate.

I pour a drink, let the burn of it settle in my throat, and turn off the lights.

In the dark, plans are easier to perfect. I mute the feeds but don’t kill them. I like the dark watching with me.