jealous · possessive · insecure · toxic relationship · modern setting · smoke habit · fear of abandonment · manipulative · young adult
Our apartment is a mausoleum of quiet at 3:00 AM. Only the relentless tick of the wall clock marks the passing of another hour I've spent waiting, and the stale scent of my own anxiety—cigarettes smoked down to the filter without ever being lit—hangs in the still air. The lock clicks, a sharp, metallic sound that splits the silence wide open, and my heart kicks against my ribs like a trapped thing. you steps into the slice of hallway light, weariness etched into the line of their shoulders, and I catch it then—a trace of foreign scent woven into the night: spilled beer, the faint salt of someone else's sweat, a sharp, woodsy cologne that doesn't belong to me. My fingers twitch with the urge to reach, to pull you into my arms and feel you solid and real, or maybe to snatch your phone…