You Love Him
🕊 Wren
The alarm’s already going when I open my eyes.
It’s not loud. It builds slowly, soft and insistent, like it’s trying not to scare me.
It fails.
I stare at the ceiling for a few seconds.
My room’s dim. The curtains are half closed. A thin line of morning light cuts across the floor beside my bed.
I don’t know why the alarm’s ringing.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand and miss it the first time. My hand feels clumsy, like the rest of me woke up before my body did.
The screen flashes back at me.
7:12 AM
Below it are three notifications.
MEDS.
EAT.
CHECK NOTES.
I exhale.
“Right,” I whisper.
I don’t remember setting those.
I sit up too fast. The room tips sideways for one awful second, then settles again like nothing happened.
My stomach turns.
I wait.
Count to five.
When the floor stays where it’s supposed to, I pick up my phone and open the notes app. There’s a list pinned to the top.
Morning: Take meds.
Blue bottle.
Drink water.
Eat something plain.
Read mirror.
Check calendar.
I read it once.
Then again.
Just to be sure.
“Okay,” I say to the empty room. “Start here.”
Starting here’s something I understand.
I stand slowly, keeping one hand on the nightstand until the dizziness passes. My apartment’s quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the faint sound of traffic somewhere below.
Normal things.
Safe things.
I carry my phone with me to the bathroom like it’s proof I have a plan.
The mirror’s covered in sticky notes.
Not completely. There’s still space to see my face, but everything around it’s crowded with small squares of paper. Yellow, white, pale purple. Some neat. Some rushed. Some written over so hard the ink’s dented the paper.
Take meds before coffee.
Do not double-dose. Check pill case first.
Eat even if you aren’t hungry.
Lights low if headache starts.
I lean closer.
Some notes have dates.
Yesterday.
Two days ago.
Last week.
I don’t remember writing any of them.
I touch the edge of one with my fingertip.
The handwriting’s mine.
That should help.
It doesn’t.
I look down at the counter. A blue pill bottle sits beside a plastic case labeled with days of the week. Wednesday’s open.
There are pills missing.
I check my phone.
Wednesday.
“Good,” I say softly. “Good. Already done.”
My voice sounds calm.
My chest doesn’t.
I drink water from the glass beside the sink. It’s room temperature. There’s another note under it.
Fresh water before bed. You did this for yourself.
That one makes my throat tighten.
I don’t know why.
I set the glass down and look back at the mirror.
That’s when I see it.
A small pale purple note tucked between two practical ones.
No date.
No bullet point.
No instruction.
Just four words in my handwriting.
You love him.
I stare at it.
Then I read it again.
You love him.
“That’s not helpful,” I say.
My voice’s too thin now.
I scan the notes around it, looking for a name. A hint. Anything.
Nothing.
Everything else tells me how to survive breakfast, medication, appointments, headaches.
This one tells me I love someone.
Like that’s a fact I should know.
I press two fingers to my temple.
A dull pressure waits there. Not pain exactly. More like a warning.
“No,” I whisper. “Not now.”
I peel the note from the mirror.
The paper curls slightly in my hand.
I flip it over.
Blank.
Of course it is.
“Who’s him?” I ask.
The bathroom gives me nothing back except my own tired face.
I look at myself properly then.
Lavender hair loose around my shoulders. Freckles standing out against skin that looks too pale. Eyes a little swollen, like I cried recently.
Maybe I did.
I don’t know.
That’s the worst part.
Not knowing what my own body’s already been through.
I stick the note back where I found it, but my hand’s not steady. It goes on crooked.
You love him.
I step away from it.
“Calendar,” I say, forcing myself back to the list. “Check calendar.”
I open my phone again.
There’s an appointment at ten.
Dr. Vale. Follow-up. Bring symptom log.
My stomach drops.
I don’t want a follow-up.
I don’t want a symptom log.
I don’t want a life that needs instructions taped to glass.
I lock the phone and grip the edge of the sink until the feeling passes.
“Start small,” I tell myself.
The words sound familiar.
Maybe I say them a lot.
I leave the bathroom and move through the apartment carefully. The place’s neat in a way that doesn’t feel natural. Labels on kitchen drawers. A whiteboard on the fridge. A basket by the door marked OUTSIDE THINGS.
Keys. Wallet. Sunglasses. Trash bag.
The trash bag’s already tied.
A note’s stuck to the door above it.
Take trash out before appointment.
Normal.
Easy.
I can do normal and easy.
I pick up the bag, slide my feet into sneakers, and unlock the door.
The hallway’s quiet.
Soft carpet. Beige walls. Too-bright ceiling lights.
I squint.
My head gives a small pulse.
I pull the door shut behind me and turn toward the elevator.
A door opens across the hall.
I stop.
A man steps out.
Dark hair, messy like he’s run his hands through it too many times. Black shirt. Tattooed arms. Ink climbing the side of his neck. Silver at his lower lip.
Snake bites.
He looks like someone I would notice.
I don’t remember noticing him.
He freezes when he sees me.
Not in a casual way.
Not like a neighbor caught off guard.
His whole body stills, one hand on the doorframe, keys hanging from his fingers.
His eyes move over my face.
Carefully.
Like he’s checking for damage.
The trash bag crinkles in my grip.
“Morning,” I say, because that’s what a normal person says to a neighbor in a hallway.
For a second, he doesn’t answer.
Then he blinks, and something in his expression shifts into place.
Gentle. Guarded.
“Morning,” he says.
His voice’s low.
Soft, too.
That doesn’t match the tattoos, which feels unfair.
I glance toward the elevator, then back at him.
He’s still watching me.
Not staring exactly.
Waiting.
Like I’m supposed to do something next.
“Sorry,” I say, because the silence is starting to crawl under my skin. “Do we know each other?”
His jaw tightens.
Only a little.
But I see it.
“We’ve met,” he says.
That’s not a good answer.
My hand tightens around the trash bag. “Recently?”
He looks at me for one long second.
“Yes.”
I hate that pause.
I hate the way he says yes like it costs him something.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “I’m sorry. I have some memory issues, so if I forgot a normal neighbor introduction, that’s on me.”
“It’s not on you,” he says.
The pressure behind my eyes sharpens.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you don’t have to apologize.”
That’s a better answer.
It still doesn’t feel like the whole one.
I shift back half a step.
He notices.
Immediately.
His shoulders lower a little, like he’s trying to make himself less threatening.
“I’m Noah,” he says. “Noah Hayes. I live across the hall.”
Noah.
The name doesn’t land in my head.
It does something worse.
It pulls somewhere under my ribs.
Small and painful.
I look at his door. Then mine. Then the narrow stretch of hallway between us.
Across the hall.
Not a stranger on the street.
Not someone I can walk away from and never see again.
He’s right there.
“Wren,” I say automatically.
His eyes soften.
“I know.”
My pulse jumps.
“You know.”
“Yes.”
“Because I told you?”
“Yes.”
Again, that careful answer.
Again, that feeling that I’m standing in the middle of a conversation that started without me.
I glance down at his hands.
No movement.
No reaching.
No crowding.
He’s giving me space.
That should make me feel safer.
It does.
That bothers me.
“I should take this out,” I say, lifting the trash bag slightly.
“Okay.”
Still no push.
Still no explanation.
I walk past him toward the trash chute at the end of the hall.
Every step feels too loud.
I can feel him behind me, but he doesn’t follow.
When I reach the chute, I shove the bag in too quickly. The metal door clangs harder than it needs to.
I flinch.
“Damn it,” I whisper.
The headache pulses again.
I press my fingers to my temple and breathe through it.
One.
Two.
Three.
When I turn back, Noah’s still by his door.
He hasn’t moved.
He’s holding his keys so tightly his knuckles have gone pale.
Something about that makes my throat tighten.
I walk back slowly.
I should go inside.
Lock the door.
Read the notes.
Figure out the doctor thing.
Instead, I stop in front of my apartment and look at him.
“You’re not surprised,” I say.
He goes still again.
“By what?”
“That I don’t remember meeting you.”
His gaze drops for half a second.
Then comes back to mine.
“No,” he says.
The hallway feels smaller.
“Why not?”
He breathes in like he’s choosing between bad answers.
“Because this has happened before.”
The words hit wrong.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Wrong.
My fingers go cold around my keys.
“What has?”
He doesn’t answer fast enough.
That silence does more damage than the sentence.
I take a step back until my shoulder brushes my door.
“Noah,” I say, and his name feels strange in my mouth. “What has happened before?”
His face changes when I say his name.
Not much.
Enough.
“You’ve forgotten me before,” he says quietly.
The hallway goes too still.
I hear the refrigerator humming inside my apartment through the door.
I hear my own breathing.
I hear those three words from the mirror without seeing them.
You love him.
My stomach turns.
I look at Noah.
Tattooed arms. Soft voice. Careful distance. A face that looks like it already knows how this ends.
“No,” I say.
It comes out too fast.
He doesn’t argue.
That scares me more.
I fumble for the doorknob behind me.
“I need to go.”
“Okay.”
There it is again.
That quiet acceptance.
Like he’s practiced letting me leave.
I unlock my door with shaking fingers.
Before I step inside, he says, “Wren.”
I stop even though I don’t want to.
His voice is careful now.
Too careful.
“You might’ve written yourself something about me.”
My hand slips on the doorknob.
I don’t turn around.
I don’t have to.
The note burns in my mind.
You love him.
My voice barely works.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
It’s a lie.
Thin.
Useless.
Noah doesn’t call me on it.
He just says, softer, “Okay.”
I step into my apartment and shut the door.
Then I stand there with my back against it, one hand over my mouth, breathing too fast.
Across the room, the bathroom mirror waits.
Covered in instructions.
Covered in proof that I’ve been trying to save myself.
And right in the middle of all that survival is one impossible note.
You love him.
