Page 5 of Love Me Stalk Me
You learn to live without attachments.
Or at least, you tell yourself that.
I toe off my boots, drop my keys onto the counter with a metallic clatter, and sit in front of my laptop. The distant sounds of city traffic filter through my windows, a constant urban lullaby I've learned to tune out.
I tell myself I'm just getting a head start. That it's normal to research the people I'm going to be working with. It's smart.
But as I type her name into the search bar, I already know that's bullshit.
Her LinkedIn pops up first—typical corporate headshot, a clean, professional summary. Store manager at an upscale department store, promoted quickly, strong track record.
Her Instagram is next. It's mostly safe, mostly work-related. Fashion, product launches, staff events. But the further back I scroll, the more personal it gets. A photo of her at a rooftop bar, laughing, her head tilted back. A post from three years ago of her and her family—three brothers, parents who look straight out of an old Italian movie.
I don't know what that kind of family feels like.
The only person left in mine is my dad, and even that feels like more of a technicality these days.
He's back in Pennsylvania, still in the same house I grew up in. We talk, but not as often as we should. I haven't seen him in almost a year. Meant to visit a few months back, but I kept putting it off. Told myself work got in the way, but the truth is, I'm not great at showing up. Never have been.
I should call him.
The thought lingers in the back of my mind as I keep scrolling.
Eventually, I find what I'm really looking for.
Evan.
I don't have to dig hard. He's one of those guys who makes himself easy to find—public profile, polished photos, all surface-level confidence. He appears to work in finance, the kind of man you'd expect to see at that restaurant, all clean lines and expensive habits. Every picture is the same—him in expensive suits, gym selfies that show off his gains, expensive dinners where he's tagged the restaurant like it's part of his personal brand.
I skim the captions, the comments. The ones where his friends hype him up, where women leave the sort of emojis that tell me everything I need to know about him.
Then I go back to her profile.
I scroll through the last year of posts. No pictures of Evan. No tagged dinners, no anniversary shoutouts. If I hadn't just watched them leave together, I'd assumeshe was single.
That tells me a story.
So does the fact that I'm sitting here, doing this at all.
I close my laptop, scrub a hand over my jaw, feeling the rough stubble there, and sit back in my chair, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the muted sounds of my neighbor's television through the wall.
This isn't like me. I don't get caught up in complications like this.
I don't care about people's personal lives, about what they do when they leave work, about the way a woman I don't even know looked at a man like she was waiting for him to see her and already knew he wouldn't.
At least, I tell myself I don't.
It's a lie, though, isn't it? Because I know exactly what that look feels like.
I saw it in the mirror once.
I wasn't supposed to care back then, either. It wasn't the job of a soldier to carry anything other than what was necessary, and that included emotions. You pack light. You don't make promises you can't keep, don't let yourself get too comfortable, don't expect anything to be waiting for you when you get home.
I broke that rule.
I was deployed when I got the email. It was short, clinical. No explanations, no real apology. Just a fact. She'd moved on. She was getting married.
And the real kicker? By the time my boots hit U.S. soil again, she wasn't just married. She was pregnant.
