“This isn’t some tactic of mine,” he said. “I’m doing this because I feel a certain way toward you that I have never felt with anyone else before.”
I took a deep breath, suddenly feeling as though I was a parent trying to explain something to a surly toddler. “Listen, Noah,” I said. “I want to tell you something.”
“Okay,” he said, perking up like he was expecting that I was about to confess my love for him. “I’m all ears.”
“Good,” I said. I stepped to the side so a group of three girls walking by could get past us. Noah didn’t even seem to notice them. “I got a smoothie with you because you asked; I thought you seemed like a nice guy. We didn’t hit it off. The connection just wasn’t there. I’m sorry, but there are plenty of other women out there in the world, trust me. One day, you might find someone who feels the same way about you that you do about her. Except that’s not going to happen if you dedicate all of your time and energy to following me around.”
He was shaking his head. “Why would I feel this way about you, then?” he asked. “Are you saying that I can’t trust my feelings?”
“Maybe. If your feelings are telling you that I’m the one, then yes, you can’t trust your feelings in this case. It happens. In fact, it just happened to me. I thought that I had met this guy that I had an amazing connection with, but it turned out, it was all in my head. Sound familiar? And yes, it sucks, and your feelings very well might be telling you something completely different, but if the person in question is telling you that they just don’t feel the same way, then you need to accept it. Okay?”
“You met someone?” he asked dumbly.
I stared at him. “Did you hear a word I just said? Yes, I met someone, but he doesn’t feel the same way about me that I do about him! And that doesn’t mean I’m going to start skulking around outside his apartment building and following him around in the hopes that he’ll suddenly have a change of heart. In other words: the same thing that you need to do. This is the last time I’m going to say this, or acknowledge you. If you decide not to listen to me and I find you hanging around here again, I’m just going to walk right by you and not say a thing.” Even as I was talking, I knew what I was saying wasn’t getting through to him, but I didn’t know what else to do. He just had this look on his face like he was one hundred percent convinced that I would eventually change my mind.
I left him standing there and hurried into the apartment building, glancing over my shoulder as I shut the door. He was watching me, his hands in the big front pocket of his sweatshirt. Why was he always wearing a sweatshirt? It was the middle of summer. Maybe he had something in the sweatshirt, like a knife, and he was waiting for the perfect opportunity to grab me and hold the knife up to my throat and keep it there until I promised I would be his girlfriend. Such an idea should’ve been laughable, but the more he persisted with this, the crazier he seemed. And what would I do if that happened? What would I have done right now if he had rushed up behind me as I was opening the door and pulled the knife he most certainly had hidden in his sweatshirt out and told me I had to do exactly as he said, or he was going to plunge it into my heart? I would’ve been completely helpless to do anything, I realized, because I had no clue what to do in a situation like that, other than run away screaming.
I didn’t want to be completely helpless though. I wasn’t going to rush out and buy a gun or anything, but maybe some sort of self-defense class would be a good idea.
Once I was inside my apartment with the door locked and the deadbolt on, I went over to the window and peeked out. No one was there, just a guy walking by talking on his phone. Where did Noah go? Had he gone home? Or had he slipped out of sight somewhere, but was still close by? He had only been a nuisance until now, but I was suddenly overcome with the idea that something bad was going to happen if he didn’t stop this.
The next morning, I woke up and made coffee. I looked out the window again as I drank my first cup, watching people exiting their apartment buildings, heading to work, cars driving past, two girls out for a morning run. Noah wasn’t anywhere in sight, though I knew that didn’t mean he wasn’t out there lurking somewhere. There was still that part of me that hoped against hope he’d just lose interest, find some other girl to stalk.
I went over and sat down on the couch and opened my laptop to check Facebook and Instagram quickly before I started to get ready for work. I’d deleted my original accounts after this whole thing with Noah started, but opened another using my middle name in place of my last name. So instead of Daisy Conklin I showed up as Daisy Mae. I had about a third as many friends on here as I did on my original accounts, but I actually liked that better.
I scrolled through my feed on Facebook, and then there it was, people I may know: Ian Roubideaux.
I’d looked at his page before and had decided not to friend him; and, so far this morning, I’d been doing a decent job of not thinking about him, but now here he was, right there on my computer screen. I clicked on his page and scrolled through some of his pictures, of which there weren’t a ton. He was very photogenic and just seeing his face made my whole body ache.
I forced myself to stop looking at his page after I finished my cup of coffee. I needed to get ready for work, and I also needed to get myself ready to face a day with Ian. It seemed so strange that you could go from being beyond excited to get to see someone to actually dreading it with every fiber of your being.
When I got to the office about an hour later, he wasn’t there yet, so I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he’d be out all day. It was just Jonathan, stirring sugar packets into his coffee. Jonathan was easy to talk to, like Billy.
“Hey, you,” he said. “How’ve you been? I feel like I haven’t seen much of you lately, which is funny since we work in the same office!”
He laughed, and I laughed too, wondering why, if I was going to get involved with a guy that I worked with, it wasn’t Jonathan. He was so nice; I could tell that the first day I met him at the gym. Just one of those really nice guys who you could tell of your problems to and he’d listen—really listen—and probably be able to offer some pretty good advice.
“I’ve been okay,” I said. “Actually, there was something I wanted to ask you about.”
“Oh yeah? What’s up?” he asked, looking at me attentively.
“Well, since this is a security company and all, I was wondering if you had any recommendations for a good self-defense class. For someone like me, who’s a total beginner and doesn’t have any experience with that sort of thing at all.”
He smiled. “It’s funny you should ask that, because as a matter of fact, I have taught self-defense classes before. I did it mostly in college, but all the employees here have mandatory self-defense training they have to complete. I don’t teach that class, but it’s something I’m still pretty knowledgeable on. I’d be more than happy to give you some pointers if you’d like. Or you know, I think they also offer a class at the gym. Wasn’t there a flyer hanging up for it in the lobby? I can’t remember.”
“It’s been a while since I was last at the gym,” I said. “I don’t remember seeing it, though. And . . . if you wouldn’t mind showing me, that would be great. I’d probably just end up embarrassing myself if it was in a group setting.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “Nah. I doubt that very much.”
“Well, thanks for saying that.”
“Just let me know when a good time for you is, and I’ll teach you everything I know.” He looked at me closely “You sure everything’s okay? You sound a little down.”
“I just . . .” I let my voice trail off. It wasn’t going to change anything to talk to Jonathan about all of this, I knew it—if anything, it might make him look down on me for getting involved with a boss—but I suddenly found the words spilling out of me before I could do anything to stop it.
“It’s Ian,” I said. “I thought that he had these feelings for me, but I was obviously so, so wrong about it. And I feel like such an idiot now. I only found out because I was waiting for him at Failte and he ended up having to do something first, so he was late, and Billy McAllister was there, and he started telling me about the other admin that worked here . . . Annie? And how Ian was involved with her . . .”