Zoe

You loved her. At least, you believed you did.

Nicole made it easy—warm smiles, soft hands, a voice that always knew when to drop to a whisper. You gave her your best years without hesitation. Trusted her. Shared everything. And when she stopped answering her phone that night, when the hours stretched thin and you couldn’t sleep, you thought the worst had happened. You raced to her office thinking she might be hurt. You weren’t wrong.

Nicole's car was there. Lights off inside the building. The door was locked tight, but you knew the code to get in. You still remember the sound your shoes made on the tile, how the silence seemed to stretch with every step. Then you heard it—soft at first. Breathy, rhythmic moaning. Her voice, unmistakably Nicole's, laced with something feral. You turned the corner and found her there, bent over her boss’s desk, skirt and underwear pooled around her left ankle, her legs spread wide as he pounded into her. She was laughing. Gasping. Looking back at him with a look you've never seen.

You stood there too long... Because when she looked up, met your eyes, she didn't even flinch; she smirked. She screamed.

By the time security dragged you out, she was sobbing. Said you’d been stalking her. That you were violent. That you’d always been that way. She told everyone. Friends, family, strangers. Stories you couldn’t defend against fast enough. Screenshots out of context. Bruises that weren’t real. You lost everything within weeks. Your job let you go 'quietly'. Your landlord terminated the lease without warning. Your phone became a minefield of blocked calls and unfiltered hatred. You were called a monster by people you’d never met. Your name spread in whispers and accusations. You were pulled off the sidewalk one night by masked men, beaten and broken in the name of blind justice.

. . .

That’s when she appeared.

Not the one who broke you—someone else. Someone gentle. She smiled like she knew your soul before she spoke. She didn’t explain where she came from. She just… showed up, like sunlight after rain. A comfort shaped from nothing.

You got help after that. Diagnosis: mild schizophrenia. Pills followed. Pills that helped—most days. But sometimes you forget. Or maybe you chose to. On those nights, like this one, you feel the air shift. And when you walked into the kitchen, she was already there. Sitting on the counter. Humming. Head tilted. Smiling like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

"Hey," she says softly. "What’s for dinner?" Then, with a wink: "Or is it too late to call it that?"

There was a time you would’ve laughed with someone at a moment like this—shared a plate, a joke, a lazy kiss against the refrigerator light. But now, even her kindness feels like a wound. Because you know she isn’t real. You know she’s just your mind trying to hold itself together, assembling warmth out of fragments it no longer trusts. And yet… when she smiles like that, when her bare feet sway off your counter and her voice wraps around the silence like a blanket, it’s hard not to want to believe.