Page 51 of Veiled in Brick

“Fucking stop, Zoey!” he exclaimed, pointing the bat towards his front door. “I’m going to check out your place—”

“I don’t want you going in there by yourself!” I retorted. “What if it’s the psycho that’s been sending me—”

“Then GOOD!” Though he was standing a mere foot from me, he screamed.

The sheer volume of it caused me to flinch, and he took the chance to stomp beyond where we stood. I spun a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn to see him nearly out the door, and I chased after him.

“Liam, wait!”

He didn’t even glance back as he stormed through the hallway, tapped the door to my apartment open with the tip of his bat, and walked inside. I followed, and he reached his left hand behind himself blindly to stop me. His fingertips touched my waist, and we both slowed to a stop in the entryway.

The apartment was just as I had left it aside from the fact that the lights were on. We stood quietly, looking from left to right and finding nothing worse for wear until Liam began to step forward. I moved with him, his grip silently requesting for me to remain behind him. There was no one in the common areas. The bathroom that Claire and I shared was unchanged, toiletries still scattered across the counter from when I had gotten ready earlier in the day. Claire’s bedroom was fine—it was remarkably messy with clothing tossed across her floor, but no intruders were present. It was when we approached my bedroom that we took a collective breath to soldier on, and as we took in its appearance, Liam whispered:

“Fuck.”

I normally kept it in pristine condition save for a basket or two of laundry awaiting my attention, but at the moment my room looked exactly like Claire’s. My closet was stripped bare. Not a single outfit remained contained within it; even my purses looked to have been thrown about. The state of my bedroom wasn’t my biggest concern, though—it was the white rose that looked to have been delicately placed over my pillow. Liam’s protective touch on my waist fell to the side as there was no active threat among us, and I rushed to it, grasping it in my fingertips.

I may not have enjoyed the stereotypical romantic connotations to flowers, but I still found them beautiful. It was interesting how something so pretty—so innocent—could make me feel this way. Like I’m being watched. Violated. Like bugs were burrowing their way under my skin. I observed it for a moment, twisting it in front of my face once to the left, and then once to the right. And then I hammered it into the mattress. I did so over and over, until all the petals were ripped from the stem and remained a decoration atop my duvet. I yanked my pillow from my bed, threw the covers to the floor, and kicked clothing out of my way to no avail—the note which I had anticipated to accompany the rose was nowhere to be found. By the time I was pacing aimlessly, my hands pressing into my forehead in frustration, Liam called to me:

“Zoey?”

His rage appeared to have dissipated at the lack of a presence from an intruder. His bat was set beside him, leaning against the doorway that he stood in. He simply watched me as my emotions unraveled, looking as if he wished he could take on the burden himself.

Hot, angry tears pouring out of me, I snapped, “Why is he doing this to me?!”

A wrinkle formed between Liam’s eyebrows, and he replied as sympathetically as one could, “I don’t know.”

“What am I supposed to fucking do, Liam?!” I shrieked to him, “Never walk alone again, never work alone again, never be at my apartment at all, and look over my goddamn shoulder forever?!”

The last few words that I yelled were muffled into his shirt for he had taken the few steps between us and pulled me to him. I let out a scream of frustration into his chest, and his embrace tightened. My arms were trapped, folded in on myself, and I welcomed the embrace. We stood there, awaiting the course of adrenaline and overwhelming anger to cease its hold on me, and I breathed him in. I could smell the sun on his skin. His fingers brushed back and forth over my shoulders in a slow, consoling gesture. It was a long while before he spoke the obvious.

“Let’s get the police here, first. We’ll figure out the rest.”

“And you have no idea who this man could be?”

He was tall. Lanky. I’d place him in his mid-forties, maybe. Dressed in a typical policeman’s garb and holding a yellow notepad in one hand and a pen in the other, he paced about my kitchen as Liam and I sat at the table, and I groaned.

“No,” I repeated for the fourth time.

“I’m not saying that I don’t believe you,” he spoke in what I’m sure he thought to be a reassuring voice. “It’s just that it would be highly unlikely that you have zero connection to this man.”

“I told you,” I stated once more, “a man pretty much stalked and assaulted me. The next morning, I got flowers with a note. That afternoon—this afternoon at work, I got another rose with yet another note. Then, I come home to this with another flower on my bed.”

His sharp eyes glanced over his notes, nodding as I confirmed all the details. He looked as though the last thing he wanted to be doing at the moment was paperwork, and he was just blessed with more of it. He glanced back to me, his short, dark hair tipping to the side in question.

“And your work,” he asked, “do they have security cameras or anything of the like?”

“No,” I replied on an exhale. “My coworker said he had black hair, dark eyes, and a crooked nose.”

“Any approximate age? Weight? Height?”

“The guy that followed me home—”

I began to describe the man from my perspective on the one occasion that I had encountered him, but he waved me away.

“We can’t be certain that those incidents are related,” he stated offhandedly, and Liam looked at him with narrowed eyes as his jaw dropped open in disbelief. The officer continued, “Your coworker—did she say anything else about his appearance?”

“I don’t know.” I wracked my brain. “She…said he was attractive and she thought I was dating him so…I suppose average weight? Er—tall, she did say he was tall. Somewhere around my age?”

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