“Curiosity,” I muttered. “That’s all this is. A controlled experiment.”
I turned my back on the tracks.
As I climbed the station stairs, I told myself I’d feel stupid in half an hour. That I’d call Daniel, tell him something came up, and fall asleep in my own bed, annoyed at myself for being influenced by a stranger’s cold hands and intense eyes.
Instead, at 7:12 p.m., I was standing in my bedroom closet, breathing in the smell of old winter coats and leather boots and cedarwood, feeling my heart pound against my ribs like it was trying to break out.
It was darker than I expected. I left the closet door cracked open just enough to see a slice of my bedroom: the edge of my bedspread, the corner of my dresser, the soft glow of the lamp I’d left on.
I felt ridiculous.
I also felt…uneasy.
“What exactly are you hiding from, Alina?” I whispered to myself, fingers tracing the seam of a wool coat. “Faulty wiring? Bad luck? A fictional train derailment?”
The apartment was silent. The kind of quiet that belongs to spaces you’ve left in a hurry. I could see the coffee mug I’d abandoned on the bedside table, a ring of brown cooling at the bottom. My laptop sat open on the desk, an unfinished spreadsheet frozen mid-calculation.
I almost stepped out.
Almost.
Then I heard my front door unlock.
The sound was unmistakable: the metallic click, the soft push, the muted creak of hinges. My body went rigid, my hand tightening around a hanger until my knuckles ached.
I wasn’t supposed to be home.
Daniel had a key. “For emergencies,” he’d said two years ago, when things were still soft and easy and uncomplicated. I had handed it to him with a smile, feeling adult and trusting. That had been before wedding planners and joint accounts and subtle criticisms disguised as concern.
“Maybe he decided to surprise you,” a hopeful, pathetic little voice offered.
If so, why wasn’t he calling my name?
“Alina?” he should have said from the hallway. “You here, babe?”
Silence.
Then his voice, casual and unhurried, drifted down the short corridor from the entryway. Not calling out. Just speaking.
“I told you she’d be on that train.”
Another voice answered. A woman’s. Light, amused. The click of high heels on hardwood backed her up.
“You’re sure she suspects nothing?” she asked, a smile audible in every syllable.
The air in the closet shifted, pressing against my skin.
My stomach folded in on itself.
For months, things had been off.
Not dramatically. There were no screaming matches, no dishes shattered against walls. That would have been easier to understand, maybe even easier to fight.
Instead, there had been…. erosion.
Little comments about my clothes. “You’re wearing that to dinner?”
Questions about my work habits. “You’re staying late again? You know, my mom says a wife should be home for dinner.”
Comments about my friends. “Nina’s still single, right? She doesn’t really get what it’s like to be engaged. Maybe you shouldn’t take her advice so seriously.”
Then there were the passwords—the way he angled his phone away when messages came in, the irritation if I so much as glanced toward his screen.
“You’re being paranoid,” he’d said when I told him it bothered me. “I’m planning the proposal video with my friend, you’re ruining the surprise. God, why do you always assume the worst?”
Wedding stress, he called it. He said people got weird before big life changes.
I believed him because believing him was easier than believing myself.
Because in my work, I saw patterns and red flags and anomalies clearly. But in love, I had a blind spot the size of a city.