JULIET WAS FREAKING THE fuck out.
"No offence, but I've made a perilous mistake," she said, pacing around the room. "He'll know."
"How could he?" I had mused. "Phil was miles away from town, and there's a million to one chance on of his mates would be languishing around the bar that night of your birthday. No one followed us, we were completely without identity in a room of strangers-"
"I'm not talking about Phil!" Juliet yelled back with sudden, panicky fire. "Him! You-know-who!"
I dearly wanted to make a Harry Potter joke. However, she gnawed away at the stubs of her glittery fingernails, pacing the hotel room. How could I tell her that my own roommates had barely notice my return to the apartment at the daydreaming hours of the red morning?
Juliet's fear was that the stalker would blackmail her. He may have possessed firm, dirt evidence of her character. And it got to her.
Over the next few weeks, her GPA dropped like autumn leaves on a suburban concrete footpath. Every time our eyes locked, Juliet would tear away and grip Phil's toned upper arm with some trepidation. Art even asked me if she was suffering from her mental health issues during our Saturday bowling match. I was hasty to fib.
"I think her anti-depressants weren't working for her," I invented, adopting a low voice of meaningful concern I'd learned from the many acquaintances who spoke to me these days. "The SSRI worsened mania or something."
The neon orange bowling ball clanged into the gutter. I screwed up my face.
I hated the tacky bowling centre, in honesty. The cheap snack bar, the broken air hockey table that got busted four years ago, the background squeals of children's parties. My shoes squeaked on the polished floor and pinched my feet, making it an unpleasant every time my turn came in the game.
Art and Ezra never believed me, though.
"Your boy is beating you after the perfect strike." Ezra threw himself on the bench, beaming at the animations on the scoreboard screen.
"Who's the last person you slept with?" I blurted out.
Ezra's eyes popped, taken aback by the audacity.
"Is this you're way of telling me I need to get laid?"
Sure, I'd seen him drunkenly making out with girls at parties, and he had a thing with a freshman called Colleen with the thickest, painted on eyebrows I'd ever witnessed. Then Ezra had to make a joke about it.
We didn't see Colleen around much after that. Touché.
Art was a shy kid. I'd even suspected he might be asexual or aromantic perhaps. I don't know- I'm not the sexuality police. Hannah and I did make him a tinder profile once and made a mockery every time he swiped left, in hindsight I felt pretty awful about that now.
"What are you guys talking about, huh?"
Art came and plonked himself down. The screen told us he had achieved a split.
I flexed my fingers. "Um..."
"Nothing really. Ezra seemed unruffled. "Do you want to get a lemonade?"
Shoes slid on the gleaming floors as the team next to us scored a foul. The man had overstepped the mark, the bowling ball clunking down with a dismal thud. The family groaned.
They didn't seem to share any secret, longing affection, my two mates. They'd almost had a rich friendship and inside jokes - but that was to be expected, they'd known each other for years longer than I had.
Two white spots clouded my eyesight temporarily. I let the ball unhook from my hand in surprise. It knocked into the other fluorescent colours, the montage hazy and vague as they doubled.
Instead of the paralyzed fear, the symptoms were more a nuisance now I had learned to expect them.
Ezra's own eyes slid over my ashen face. "Wrapping it up then, lads? God, I would kill for a decent chippie."
"We can go and pick up some pizzas," Art suggested. "The one on Baker Street - they take forty five minutes, but you can't go wrong with double bacon."
"With my pains and woes, I'll just be pleased to return to a hot drink and my toasty bed," I said precociously.
Someone tossed me the keys - I could barely distinguish who, my vision was up to so much trickery. At least they noticed my state, even if it was a bit depressing to end the night at eight o'clock.
The apartment was eerily still. Undisturbed, unlit, unloved. Hannah was out with her elementary friend Indira; so the house had been left cold on return.
I ran the tap, glugged down some water and a few pills - then the doorbell chimed.
Don't tell me the takeaway is closed! I thought, and in a silly way the thought made my eyes prick with tears. Why do bad things always happen to good people?
Killers and robbers would only come checking the premises during this time of the dying night. It was approaching nine - an usual hour for visitors, but nevertheless I dragged my apathetic ass to the door and turned the lock.
It was Juliet.
"I've come to return your camera," she said.
It took me a few minutes to register that she'd borrowed it to monitor her flat. However, her tone wasn't endearing. Gone was the cheeky grin that shone on her face, and the celestial brightness of her eyes.
"Oh. Thanks. Do you want to come in?"
"Yeah. Are you alone?"
My waning smile faltered.
The glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling shone shamelessly yellow. There was a crumpled water bottle on my desk, and a few textbooks dog-eared in a pathetic attempt at a mid-term paper. She didn't comment on the messy remains in my bedroom, or sign and shake her head affectionately like Hannah had a habit of doing.
Part of me felt restless, uneasy. She wanted to talk about what we did.
Shit.
"I haven't told a soul, I swear -" my mouth raced ahead before my brain could configure a correct phrase. "No one suspects a thing, and I know we're not dating..."
"Well, I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not a cheater," Juliet stopped me in my tracks. "I don't harden my heart on this sort of thing. We were both emotional that night, we were both drinking, and we got carried away."
How was I meant to reply to that?
"I don't regret it," I said.
Wherever Art and Ezra were, I prayed that the line at the pizza shop was yards long.
Juliet moved closer, placing a warm hand over my chest. My body tingled at the contact. She really looked so beautiful in the dim lighting, shadowing her petite face, bushy hair curling into knots.
"I adore you, Orpheus... I really do. You've been nothing but kind and supportive and I think we have a lot of platonic compatibility. I have such strong feeling for you, but... I'm just struggling to differentiate whether I craved the affection or it was real."
This was one of the most somber heart-to-hearts I had ever had with a girl. Historically, girls had been easily replaceable, cute but not necessary to me. I naturally assumed I'd live out my college days scraping a pass in engineering, and would probably marry Hannah and have a few kids.
But the universe had other plans for me.
She was still talking, but my mind was faded away in the corners of the galaxy. I had the opportunity to change my direction. I didn't need Hannah. I didn't even care if Art and Ezra hated me forever because of it.
The revelation was so groundbreaking, I didn't even notice Juliet had stopped speaking.
"Huh?"
Her green eyes were fixed over my shoulder. For a few seconds I simply gawped at her petrified facial features, but then I followed her line of sight to the wooden dresser.
A bottle of perfume was visibly jammed into the third drawer, the glass winking off the light.
"What's that?" she said.
"I don't know. Hannah leaves her crap in here all the time," I shrugged, attempting to steer the conversation back by touching her waist.
Juliet pushed my advances away. The evening seemed to be darkening, the Canadian skies outside dripping with wet cold, the shiver of rain trembling in the threatening clouds. The blinds were open a crack. I saw my own face staring back in trepidation.
Her hands wrapped around the object. Juliet held it up, the label defined clear.
It was the same perfume.
"Hannah has the same guava-scented perfume exclusively from Belgium?"
A wave of tension overcame the pair of us. Juliet stared at me for a few seconds, scanning my face for any explanation. I could see every memory unraveling; from the dusty camera set down on the crumpled bedspread, the thought of lonely late nights, the planetarium and every time we rigged her apartment in hopes of catching a culprit.
The green bottle was ostentatious, screaming something that it didn't even know yet. Connections were weaving together, and I saw her lips form the dreaded phrase. This looks like mine.
There was quiet horror in her next three words.
"It was you."
"What?"
"You're my stalker, aren't you?"
The story of Orpheus replayed in my mind, over and over again...
- she could travel back up to the surface as long as he didn't look behind him. You can guess the ending. It's supposed to be a cautionary tale of human weakness and temptation -
"No. It was." Her breathing went all shaky. "Your camera has enough zoom and pixel quality to shoot clear pictures through my apartment window. You knew where I lived to steal my belongings. You were there that night I was out looking for him," Juliet's chest heaved with anxiety, begging me to deny the allegations with those pleading eyes.
"I- I don't -"
"Did you latch yourself on to me that day in the hospital - just because I was kind to you?" Suddenly irate, she was yelling so loud the house shook. "Creep around just to frighten me?"
She backed away from me. I couldn't stand the way she was looking at me, like I intended to rape her, murder her, keep locks of her hair in my basement or something. In that moment, I was engulfed in shame, fear, anger - no one could find out about this, no one could know how close I was... now, the perfect future was crumbling in my hands. I was shocked to find tears brimming my eyes.
"It wasn't like that!" I yelled back. "God, Juliet, just hear me out -!"
"What the hell is wrong with you," she said with disgust. A piece of me shattered when I saw tears glimmer back at me.
I hated how disappointed she looked. How broken. I'd never intended to scare her, to make her feel violated or fear in every waking moment. Juliet Emmerson was my drug. And I had been utterly addicted.
"Wait!"
Her body shuffled backwards automatically as I cried out. She looked like a terrified deer trapped by the predator.
"But I love you."
The words tasted bad. Even though every syllable was nothing but pure truth, I felt a stab of mourning as her expression didn't change.
She hated me. She was afraid of me.
Pictures of what would happen next played through my head like a sickening film. Juliet telling half the university what an obsessive weirdo I was. The belittling stares. My friends either not believing her, or having the courage to isolate themselves from me.
I don't what I planned to achieve - but suddenly, I felt the urge to hold Juliet close. Reassure her I wasn't some deluded monster who yearned for her flesh. My pace was quicker, more deliberate than I meant - and she took it the wrong way.
What occurred played out in fast-forward.
I moved hopelessly forward. She moved back, transfixed in terror. Her feet got tangled in the plastic bags strewn over the messy floor, full of impulse buys I'd hadn't bothered find a home for.
Then Juliet fell. Hit her head on the desk.
And then all was still.