Silk and Lies

The first time I saw him after the end, he was standing in the rain, clutching the scarf I’d left behind - the one I let slip like a lie, daring him to chase me.

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A lingering tenderness

It began in the kind of autumn light that makes even a dusty library feel enchanted. I was 23, broke, and hiding from my student loans in a public library when he materialized between the stacks.

His fingers brushed mine as we reached for the same battered copy of Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Brontë. “Heathcliff’s a monster,” he said, grinning like he’d cracked a secret code. “But you’ve already reread this twice. You’re either a masochist or a poet.”

His name was Julian Hale. He had the kind of eyes that made you believe in stupid things - horoscopes, soulmates, forever. They were two different colors, one hazel, one flecked with gold, as though God couldn’t decide whether he deserved a warning label.

We spent that afternoon arguing about tragic love stories over burnt coffee, and by sundown, he’d memorized my latte order and the way I laughed when I was nervous, sharp, like a snapped branch.

Julian courted me in lowercase poems: Post-it notes left on my windshield (“Your smile is a comma in my run-on day”), mixtapes of songs that made rain sound romantic, and midnight drives to nowhere, where we’d lie on his truck bed and name constellations after our inside jokes. He smelled like ink and reckless decisions, and when he kissed me for the first time, outside a dive bar, neon lights bleeding into the pavement, I swore I tasted stardust.

For a year, we were a cliché in the best way. He taught me how to skip stones at the lake where his father proposed to his mother; I read him my half-finished novels under blankets fortressed in his studio apartment.

He called me his “muse,” his voice soft as a bruise. But even then, there were cracks. The way he’d vanish for days, blaming deadlines. The texts from numbers he’d dismiss as spam. The lipstick stain on his collar he swore was mine (I never wore red).

I found them on a Tuesday. The day itself was ordinary - gray skies, lukewarm coffee, the kind of unremarkable afternoon that makes you forget to lock your heart. I’d brought Julian lunch at his loft, a gesture fueled by guilt after a fight about his “work trips.” The door was ajar.

They were on the couch, her legs tangled in the sheets we’d bought together at IKEA. Her laughter was a blade. “You’re such a liar,” she giggled, and he kissed her neck, murmuring, “Only with you.”

The worst part wasn’t the betrayal. It was the way he looked at me when he noticed I was there - no panic, no shame. Just a slow, tired sigh, as though I were a chore he’d forgotten to avoid. Before he spoke, he adjusted the sheet around her shoulders, like shielding a secret he still thought he could keep.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, and I almost laughed. Because it was exactly what I thought.

He begged in the way narcissists do: flowers sent to my job, voicemails that oscillated between fury and desperation. “You’re overreacting!” he spat when I changed my number. “We’re not married, Lia. It was just fun.”

The last time I saw him, it was snowing. He stood on my porch, hollow-eyed and holding a box of my things - photos, letters, the scarf he’d stolen from my car. “You’ll never find someone who gets you like I do,” he said, and for a heartbeat, I believed him. Then I shut the door.

Grief is a shapeshifter.

Some days, I coughed until my ribs ached, like my body was trying to hack him out. Others, it’s the silence of a phone that never lights up with his name.

I moved apartments, dyed my hair black, and took up smoking, anything to shed the skin of the girl who loved him.

But Julian wasn’t done. Letters began arriving, postmarked from cities I’d never heard of. “I dream about your laugh,” he wrote. “You were the only real thing.” I burned them, but the ashes smelled like his cologne.

Then, the calls started. Always at 3 a.m., static breathing on the line. I’d scream, “Stop haunting me!” until my voice broke.

But last night, the caller spoke.

A woman’s voice, frayed and foreign: “He’s gone. And if you ever loved him, you’ll meet me.”

Now, I’m sitting in a diner at the edge of town, nursing coffee gone cold. The bell above the door jingles. A woman enters, her face shadowed by a hood, a familiar gold locket glinting at her throat - the one Julian swore he’d lost.

She slides into my booth, hands me a photo. It’s him, bloody and unconscious in a trunk. “They’ll kill him,” she whispers, “unless you come with me.”

For a breathless second, I wonder if the door will burst open, if this is a trap, if Julian is dead, or if the real danger is just walking through the door.

Outside, a car engine roars. Her eyes lock onto mine - one hazel, one flecked with gold.

“He’s not who you think he is,” she says. “And neither am I.”

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