SMOKE AND GLASS

CW: Stalking

Ophelia always said she loved Milo’s smile—the white, straight teeth, the way laughter rolled out of him, like sunlight through a dirty window. She’d watch from across the café, cigarette balanced between two fingers, eyes narrowed and calculating. His sandy hair always fell perfectly, no matter how he raked nicotine-stained fingers through it.

He looked healthy, like a promise. Ophelia knew how easily promises broke. You see what others miss. That’s why you’re always three steps ahead. When they were together, she was attentive, almost worshipful. His coffee, exactly how he liked it. His moods read in the angle of his jaw. Every midnight text, memorized. Every detail, filed away.

Milo sometimes felt smothered. Ophelia’s charm was a velvet noose—soft, alluring, impossible

to slip. She always knew how to bring him back: with a gentle touch, a sly joke, or a whispered phrase that said, "I know you better than you know yourself."

For a while, he believed her.

Milo ended it over dinner, voice low but steady. “I need something different, Ophelia. I’m sorry.”

The words clanged hollow inside her. She smiled thinly and nodded. “Of course. I want you to be happy.”

That night, she sat in her car outside his house. Her engine off. Her breath fogging the glass. As she watched.

In the days that followed, Milo moved on; Ophelia didn’t. She followed him from a careful distance, a shadow stitched to his heels.

First came the photographs: Milo in the park with his new girlfriend—Sarah—laughing under lamplight. Then the gifts on his doorstep: a pack of his cigarettes and a note in an unfamiliar hand.

Sugar in Sarah’s gas tank. A bobby pin left on her seat. A bump of chairs in the café, and their eyes locking for a single cold second.

Each move was sharper than the last.

Sarah eventually confronted her outside Milo’s building at midnight, voice shaking. “Why are you doing this? Could you please give us some space?

Ophelia’s smile spread wide and empty. All teeth. Sarah backed away, clutching her bag.

Fear. Always fear. That’s how you win.

Later, at home, Sarah made tea in the chipped yellow mug she’d brought from her grandmother’s house. She texted Milo a heart emoji and a bad joke about their cursed timing, then set a second mug on the table. on the table for when he got in. When he arrived, she touched his cheek and said, “I’m okay.

We’re okay.” She meant it, and he felt some small, tight thing inside him loosen.

Milo told himself he was imagining things. The shadow in the rearview mirror gave me a sense of being watched. on him when he crossed the parking lot at night. Ophelia was gone, he reminded himself. She’d nodded and even smiled. She’d let him go.

But then the photographs started appearing. Folded, anonymous envelopes slipped under his door: him at the park with Sarah, him standing in line at the grocery store, him laughing over coffee, his hand on Sarah’s wrist. The framing was deliberate—close enough to feel her breath behind the lens.

Sarah noticed the change before he admitted it. “You’re jumpy,” she said one night, setting a bowl of clementines on the counter and rolling one into his palm. “Vitamin C. Doctor Sarah.” He laughed, but the sound felt borrowed. She didn’t press. That night, she checked the windows herself and tucked the spare key into a new hiding place, then texted him: I’m proud of you for saying this stuff out loud.

Milo began tracing his routines the way Ophelia used to trace his moods. He checked mirrors, scanned rooms, and replayed the click of his apartment door after leaving. He couldn’t pinpoint when vigilance turned to obsession, only that it happened quietly, like mold in the corners of a room you stop really seeing.

One night, he found the note. It was tucked into his baseball glove, pressed deep into the leather.

I’m always cheering for you. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but the tone was hers—half playful, half ownership. His throat tightened.

Sarah came up behind him, touching his arm.

“What is that?”

“Nothing.” He crumpled it and shoved it into his pocket.

Later, alone, he smoothed it back out. The paper smelled faintly of her cigarettes. He washed his hands at the sink until Sarah gently reached over and turned off the tap. “Come sit,” she said. She wrapped him in a blanket and leaned her shoulder against his. “We'll handle this---together.”

After Sarah’s apartment was broken into, Milo moved her in to his. Ophelia watched from across the street as he carried boxes, pressing a soft kiss to Sarah’s hair. Gentle, open. He never kissed me like that.

Sarah unpacked slowly, making a small altar out of ordinary kindness: a sprig of rosemary by the stove, their shoes lined up by the door, and a handwritten list titled “Things We Can Control.” It had three items: Locks. Light. Each other.

One night, Ophelia broke in. She stood over their bed, moonlight painting her face in blue.

Sarah’s perfume filled the air. Ophelia’s hands were steady as she worked—defiling the room. Her print, left on the mirror, was like a claim.

She’d been here before. Long ago. A door left ajar. A father who never noticed until the shouting started. There was a hand on a shoulder that was not supposed to be there. She learned early: if you watch closely, people always tell you how to hurt them.

Blue and red lights carved the night. Handcuffs bit into her wrists. Milo stood behind the tape, pale.

“You should have run, Ophelia,” he said.

But you wanted him to see. You wanted him to understand it was always you.

In therapy, the therapist asked about her childhood. Ophelia traced the cuff marks on her skin and said nothing.

At home, Sarah handed Milo a pen. “Police report,” she said softly. “I’ll make tea.” When his hand shook, she steadied the paper with her palm and said, “You’re not alone right now.”

The house was too quiet. Milo noticed it most in the evenings, when Sarah’s humming couldn’t quite fill the silence Ophelia had left behind.

He stood by the window, hands wrapped around a cup of tea. Across the street, the

police tape was gone, and the grass was flattened where their lights had stood. Everything was supposed to be normal again.

Sarah folded laundry on the couch, arranging sleeves and collars to create a sense of domestic order. She was adept at building safety out of small, deliberate rituals. Then, they locked the windows at dusk. And turned the porch light on at exactly eight. She tucked lavender in the drawer where he kept his keys and taped a note inside the cabinet: Drink water, future Milo.

Milo followed the rhythm but didn’t trust it. Every time he caught his reflection in the window, he half-expected to see her behind him.

“She’s not getting out for a long time,” Sarah said, not looking up from the towels. “And if the fear spikes, we call your brother. We make noise. We don’t do it alone.”

“I know.” His voice was flat. He stared at the mirror near the door. The glass was clean now, but sometimes, in the right light, he thought he saw the faint bloom of breath on it.

Sarah crossed the room and slipped her hand into his. “You’re here,” she said quietly. “I’m here.

We’re okay—even when it doesn’t feel like it.” He nodded, yet the gesture didn't penetrate his bones. Some nights, he still woke with the feeling that someone had been in the room. He’d check the doors, the windows, and the closet. Always nothing.

What unnerved him most wasn’t the fear—it was the part of him that understood her too well.

She had a deep understanding of his routines, his pauses, and the precise trajectory of his life. He wondered if, somewhere in a white-walled room, she was still watching in her mind.

Sarah rested her head against his shoulder. “Tomorrow we plant the rosemary out front,” she

said. “New roots.” Outside, the streetlight buzzed softly, flickering once. Milo’s grip tightened, for a second, then eased as her humming returned, small and steady, like a promise kept.