Mercy on Maple Street

This was now the fifth night I felt it. That tinge in the air. The unmistakable feeling of being watched.

Every night for three months, I had no choice but to walk home. That's how long it'd been since Dax left. Three whole months. And now, he was enjoying the college experience while I was still stuck in this shit town delivering waffles and mediocre coffee to bigoted customers.

I thought that taking a different way home tonight would be safer. Just in case. And while I was sure it was all in my head, I could hear the voices of weepy mothers from all the true-crime documentaries I watched:

"If she had only told someone..."

"If she hadn't always seen the best in everyone..."

Or in my case, my mother would likely comment on how I didn't dress appropriately. How she knew that I would one day attract unwanted attention. How she told me not to wear shorts all the time, even though it's Florida, where summer lasts for ten months of the year.

But underneath the sexual billboard I raised, my mother believed that no one could ever want me. Desire me. Me?

But Dax did.

And he was my secret. The "fuck you" I chose not to share with her.

I smiled at the thought, but it didn't last.

I was jolted by the sound of shuffling leaves just beyond the tree line. I stopped. I narrowed my eyes, waiting for a deer, a rabbit, or—hell, anything that was more prey than predator.

My hands trembled. My mouth went dry instantly. As if every word I'd spoken as a rebuttal to my mother turned to dust.

I stood there. Still. From beneath the amber streetlight, I peered harder into the woods. Each moment that passed weighed heavier than the one before.

Then my phone rang.

Dax.

His name came up with the same stupid picture of him frenching an avocado. We laughed when I set it as his contact photo.

I answered quickly and reset my gaze toward the trees.

I forgot to speak.

"Hey," he said, soft and concerned.

"Everything okay?"

This was good. At least with Dax on the phone, I could disrupt any plans a potential stalker might have. Or if the situation turned, he could call for help.

I took half a breath of relief.

"Yesh," I sighed, "just in my head I think."

"Sounds about right," he chuckled.

I smiled and began to fidget with the mood ring he bought me before leaving. It was always black. I had never seen it change color, but my mother commented that she hated it, so I wore it every day.

"I miss you," I admitted.

"I know."

I could hear his smug grin through the phone.

I stilled again.

"Wait—why did you call like something was wrong?" I asked.

"Don't do that," Dax said. "Don't get in your head about me too."

"Just answer the question, Dax," I demanded.

There was an unsettling pause.

Finally, Dax huffed a sigh. His words were careful. Different.

"You changed your route home, and now you're standing in the middle of Maple Street, where there are only woods on both sides. I know for a fact that street creeps you out and that you'd never walk it at night unless you felt you had no other option."

My chest tightened.

I stumbled over my thoughts.

"Dax...how—how do you know that?"

"Because I love you. Did you think I would leave you unprotected? Vulnerable? I could never do that. Thanks to the moon ring I bought you, I can know for sure that you're safe. This little break from routine is so unlike you. I had to check. I'm always going to protect you. That's what love does."

He said it so gently that, for a second, I almost let him finish becoming right. That was the worst part. Not the woods. Not the ring. Not the fifth night with its hand on the back of my neck. It was how easily his concern stepped into the shape of love and waited for me to climb inside.

I looked down at the mood ring.

Black stone.

Silver crescent.

The tiny, stupid thing I had worn like a vow. I had never taken it off.

"Dax, I said carefully, "where are you?"

"I'm not there. Still at school."

Something in me loosened before it tightened again.

Then the crunching of leaves and sticks sounded again, just behind the edge of the woods.

"But I didn't want you walking alone," Dax continued. "Not with you acting like this."

"With me acting like what?"

"Scared. In your head. A little paranoid, perhaps."

I almost laughed. It came up sharp and died in my throat. My hands were shaking more now. Part fear, part anger.

The woods shifted again—the sound growing closer.

Not an animal. Too patient. Too careful.

"Who's here Dax?" I whispered.

Dax sighed as if I had disappointed him by arriving exactly where he led me.

"Just Benji and Holden."

I wasn't sure which part of his response was supposed to comfort me. The just, as though the two men following me every night were a small mercy. Their names, as though recognition would make me feel safe, suddenly. Or, the fact that he sent them, as though my relationship with him meant that I was now his responsibility.

"They're making sure you get home safely. That's all."

I felt the heat rise to my face.

"That's all? Tell them to leave, Dax. Now."

"Babe—"

"Now, Dax!"

"You're proving my point."

Then I saw them.

Benji and Holden stepped out from the trees with hands lifted, palms open, like I was a deer they didn't want to spook.

"Hey," Benji said, "you're okay. Dax just wanted us to check on you."

I stepped back slowly.

Their faces changed—not into anger, exactly. Into procedure. Like I had become a situation.

"Give Benji the phone," Dax instructed.

"No."

"Then you need to calm down."

"And you need to tell them to go away!"

"They aren't doing anything."

"Then why are they here?"

"Think about this from my perspective. You already have to walk home after working late now that I'm not there, then you take a new route home—which you would never normally take—and I know how you can get sometimes. You overthink things. I'm only trying to be helpful."

I froze.

Benji had too.

I realized then that Dax had engineered this. He planned for the circumstances to mask my truth—my fear—as hysteria. He was just another version of control.

I knew Benji. Not well, but enough. He came into the diner after church with the kind of guys who prayed before their meals and laughed too loudly afterward. He called every waitress "ma'am" and tipped two dollars folded inside of a gospel tract. Eli hovered near him now, the way he hovered then—waiting to be told what God required of him.

Dax wasn't religious. He was smarter than that. He only borrowed religious men the way some religious men borrowed faith.

I knew already that in the minds of those who lived in this town, I was whatever they said I was. Even my own mother would believe, support, and promote whatever narrative they constructed.

She would love Dax. Maybe he would love her, too. But could either of them learn to unlove me?

Benji took one step forward. As if kindness could not be violent. Holden followed.

I glanced down. The mood ring was still black.

Of course—

It had never cared how I felt.