The Window Across the Street

Maya didn’t notice the window until her third month in the city.

Her new apartment was nothing special—just a fifth-floor walk-up with cracked walls and plumbing that moaned in protest every morning. Still, it was hers, and that meant freedom. No roommates. No overbearing parents. Just the hum of traffic outside and the cheap comfort of boxed wine on weeknights.

It was on one such night, while leaning against her own window frame with a glass in hand, that she finally looked across the street and saw it.

A window, same height, same size, directly opposite hers. Curtains sheer as gauze. Behind them—someone watching her.

Maya froze, glass halfway to her lips. A man’s outline stood faintly in the glow of a single lamp. Broad-shouldered, still as stone, his face obscured by the curtain’s blur.

She almost laughed at herself for the chill racing up her spine. Big city, big building—of course there’d be neighbors. But when she glanced back thirty minutes later, he was still there. Still watching.

The next night, the same.

And the next.

Curiosity gnawed at her. After a week, she tried waving.

At first, nothing. The figure remained motionless. But then—slowly, deliberately—he lifted his hand and pressed it to the glass.

Maya let out a shaky laugh, embarrassed at how her heart flipped. She pressed her own palm against her window, mirroring him.

It was silly. Childish, even. But the gesture felt strangely intimate, as if they’d touched through the pane of air and street that divided them.

Then the man leaned closer. She saw the faint curve of his mouth move.

You can see me?

Maya’s breath caught. She couldn’t hear the words, but she read them clear as day.

Her stomach twisted. What did that mean? Of course she could see him—he was standing right there.

But when she blinked, the curtains fell closed, and the window across the street was empty.

She didn’t see him again for three nights.

By then, she was restless. She found herself pacing the apartment, glancing out the window too often, her mind inventing excuses: maybe he was traveling, maybe he’d moved out. Maybe she’d imagined him altogether.

On the fourth night, the light returned. So did he.

Closer this time.

He had sharp cheekbones, dark hair curling untamed at his temples, and eyes that gleamed even through the curtain’s filter. Handsome, yes—but there was something else. Something distant.

Maya hesitated, then mouthed across the gap: Who are you?

He tilted his head, then scribbled something on a notepad. Holding it up to the glass, she squinted until the letters sharpened.

Adrian.

She laughed under her breath. Pulled a sticky note from her desk. Wrote: Maya.

And so it began.

Over the following weeks, they built a strange ritual. Notes on bright slips of paper pressed to windows. Silly drawings. Silent jokes. Nights when the city drowned in sirens, and yet their windows became a private bridge between two lonely people.

Adrian rarely smiled, but when he did, it was like the room around Maya warmed. He never turned his lamp on before dark, and never stayed past dawn. He told her he was a writer. That he hadn’t spoken to anyone in years. That her attention felt like sunlight after a long winter.

Maya, against all logic, found herself falling.

Then came the whispers.

Mrs. Delgado, the old woman who lived on the floor below Maya, stopped her one morning in the stairwell.

“You keep looking across the street,” she said, squinting. “At that corner window.”

Maya flushed. “Just—neighbors.”

The old woman’s face tightened. “That building’s been empty for years, cariño. Condemned. No one lives there.”

Maya laughed it off, but her hands shook all the way to the subway.

That night, she pressed her sticky note against the glass. Someone said your building’s empty.

Adrian appeared slowly, as though pulled from shadows. He read the note, then met her eyes. For the first time, he looked…afraid.

He wrote back: It is.

Maya didn’t sleep. Her rational brain warred with her gut, clawing for answers. Maybe Adrian was squatting there. Maybe Mrs. Delgado was wrong. But a deeper part of her whispered the one thing she didn’t want to admit.

The next evening, she confronted him.

What are you? she scrawled in bold letters.

Adrian hesitated. His pen hovered over the paper, stopped, started again. Finally, he pressed a note to the glass: Trapped.

She stared, her pulse hammering. He looked fragile suddenly, like his edges were fading into the dim glow behind him.

Her next note trembled in her hands: How?

He pressed his palm flat to the glass. His lips formed the words she’d first seen.

You can see me?

Maya’s throat tightened. She nodded.

His eyes softened, wet with something like relief. He scribbled one last note: Then maybe you can free me.

Over the following days, Adrian explained in broken fragments.

He had lived there once, decades ago. An accident, a fall down the stairwell—his words faltered there. He hadn’t left since. Most people never noticed him. Couldn’t. They looked right through him, as though his window were empty space.

But Maya did. Somehow, she saw.

The connection between them wasn’t chance. It was a bridge. And if they strengthened it, maybe—just maybe—he could cross.

The nights that followed blurred into a fever dream.

They tested the edges of their connection. Adrian pressed his hand harder to the glass until Maya swore she felt warmth against her palm. He whispered, though no sound carried, and she heard the faintest murmur inside her chest.

And through it all, her feelings tangled into something undeniable. He was gentle, sharp-witted, and desperately lonely. She’d catch herself grinning at his notes, her cheeks flushing like a schoolgirl’s.

But the danger of it crackled in the air, too. Doors in her apartment sometimes opened on their own. Lights flickered when she touched the window. A shadow once moved through her kitchen when she was certain she was alone.

Adrian apologized for these disturbances. Said the bond was bleeding too far. But Maya didn’t care. The fear was real—but so was he.

And so was the way her heart clenched every time he smiled.

One storm-slick night, the tension broke.

The street outside howled with wind, rain lashing the buildings. Maya pressed her hand to the glass, and Adrian mirrored her. This time, his shape glowed faintly in the storm’s flicker, like he was lit from within.

She whispered without thinking: “I want to see you. Really see you.”

His eyes widened. His lips formed the question again, almost reverent.

You can see me?

Tears stung her eyes. “Yes.”

Something gave. The glass between them trembled. For a heartbeat, Maya felt heat and skin and the thundering of another pulse against hers.

And then—he stepped through.

Adrian collapsed onto her apartment floor, drenched as if he’d been standing in the rain. Maya dropped to her knees beside him, clutching his shoulders, half in shock, half in joy.

He was real. Solid. His breath ragged against her ear as he laughed, shaky and wild.

“You pulled me through,” he whispered, voice raw but alive. “God—I didn’t think it was possible.”

Maya cupped his face, overwhelmed by the warmth of him. No curtain. No glass. Just him.

Outside, the storm raged. But in that fifth-floor apartment, two people clung to each other as though they’d both been saved.