Standing Next To You Novels & Stories

"One at a time. A room of twenty-six all oriented toward me is different." He was quiet for a moment. "They won't be looking at you," he said. "They'll be looking at us." I turned to look at him. "That's either comforting or doubles the problem," I said. "Which is it?" I thought about it. "Comforting," I said. "Because you're good at being looked at." "I've had practice." "You actually don't mind it." "I don't experience it the way you do." He paused. "But I'll be standing beside you. Whatever the room is doing I'll be right there."

“You say that like it is easy.” “It is not easy,” he said. “But you will not face it alone.” The hall was quiet. The air felt heavy but in a warm way. Like he was shielding me from something I could not see. “Can I stay out here a little,” I asked. Ronan nodded. “You can stand here. Or you can sit.” He pointed to the floor beside him. I sat. He sat next to me a moment later. Our shoulders did not touch. But they were close enough that I felt less like I was drowning.

He stopped beside me. Close. Closer than necessary. “You came,” he said quietly. “I said I would,” I said, just as quietly. He looked at me for a moment in that way he had –steady and thorough, like he was checking something off against something he already knew. Then he turned to face the room and I understood without being told that I was meant to do the same. Stand beside him. That was the arrangement. I stood beside him. The next hour was an exercise in restraint.

It was about them. "You're smiling." Adrian's voice came quietly beside me. He was standing close enough that I could hear him clearly. I turned toward him. "A little." "It suits you."

"You should be." I stop less than two feet from him. I know what I am standing next to. He is significantly taller. More powerfully built. He commands the space around him in a way I do not, and that is simply a fact about physics and presence that I cannot argue with. But I do not step back, because stepping back is information and I am not giving him any.

He sat next to Rose and held her gaze before reaching forward to touch her cheek, “You can only go if I'll be the one by your side.”

"But there's one thing I can promise you for sure: you're not alone in this. We're all in it together, and that's something to hold onto." She stood on the pavement beside the water. “Okay,” she said.

“So this is also a message.” “Yes.” “To her.” “And to everyone watching.” I exhaled slowly, running a hand through my hair. “You’re pulling me into this deeper.” “You’re already in.” “That doesn’t mean I have to stand in front of it.” “Yes, it does.” I looked at him, searching for something—hesitation, maybe. There wasn’t any. “Say it clearly,” I said. His gaze didn’t shift. “I need you beside me.” The words landed heavier than they should have.

A woman with a pushchair negotiating a kerb. A man walking fast in the direction of the tube. Two people outside the coffee shop they sometimes went to on Saturday mornings, not talking, just standing together with their cups in the particular companionable way of people who had been somewhere together and were not yet ready to stop being there. What are you thinking, he said. Nothing, she said. Genuinely nothing. Just here. He held her a little closer. Good, he said. She drank her coffee.

⁠ At our ho‍me. In the living room. Smiling. But not alon‌e. A man s⁠tands beside her — tall⁠, dark-suited, an⁠d leaning closer than comfort allows. The im‍age isn’t‍ clear enough t‍o see faces fully, but the intimacy of the angle burns li‌ke acid.