Chapter 9: MAYBE I WAS MISTAKEN

MIA

I waited three days before bringing it up.

Three days of replaying that moment in my head and debating whether or not it was my business.

By the time I knocked on his door with two coffees in my hand, I'd almost convinced myself to let it go. Almost.

"Hey." Dante answered in sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair still damp from a shower. "What's this?"

"Peace offering. For eating all your carbonara the other night."

He took the coffee and stepped aside to let me in. "You didn't eat all of it. And I offered."

"Still." I followed him to the kitchen and hoisted myself onto one of the bar stools. "I wanted to ask you something."

"Okay."

"The other night when I was looking for dishcloths. I opened a drawer and saw a phone. Not your iPhone but an older phone I'm not sure I've heard of before. Why do you have two?”

He took a sip of coffee, expression unchanged. "What drawer?"

"The one by the sink on the left side."

"My left or yours?"

"Your left."

He set down his cup and walked to the kitchen, pulling open the drawer I'd indicated. Inside were random things. Takeout menus, rubber bands, a few batteries but no phone.

"This drawer?"

"Yeah but—" I got up and looked. "It was there. I saw it."

"When was this?"

"Friday. When we had dinner."

"Mia." He closed the drawer gently. "I don't have a second phone."

"I'm not saying you have two phones you actively use. I'm saying there was one in that drawer." Had I imagined it? No way, I saw it long enough.

"Show me."

We went through every drawer in his kitchen. One had utensils. One had dish towels and pot holders. One had various kitchen gadgets he probably never used but still no phone.

"Maybe I keep old electronics somewhere and you saw that?" He moved to a closet near the entryway and opened it. Inside was a shelf with exactly what he'd described. An old tablet in a case, a camera that looked like it was from 2010 and a laptop with a cracked screen.

He pulled out the tablet. "Maybe this is what you saw?"

I took it from him. It was the same size as a large phone with a similar shape. If I'd only glanced at it quickly, maybe—

No.

"I know what a phone looks like. I saw one."

"I'm not saying you didn't see something. I'm saying it wasn't a phone because I don't have one." His voice was patient and understanding. "You were tired and you also had wine. It's easy to mistake things when you're not paying full attention."

"I wasn't drunk." I got defensive.

"I didn't say you were drunk. I said you were tired." He put the tablet back and closed the closet. "Look, if it'll make you feel better, check the whole apartment. Go through every drawer, every cabinet. I don't have anything to hide."

That should have made me feel better because the offer was too open to be suspicious. But something about it felt wrong, like he was so confident I wouldn't find anything because he'd already made sure of it.

"That's not necessary."

"You sure? Because you seem pretty convinced you saw something."

"I am convinced."

"Okay." He nodded. "Then I don't know what to tell you. Either I'm lying and hiding a phone I have no reason to own, or you saw something else and your brain filled in the gaps. Which do you think is more likely?"

I hated that the question was reasonable and also hated the fact that I couldn't answer it without sounding paranoid.

"I saw a phone," I said quietly.

"Then where is it?"

I didn't have an answer.

We stood there in his apartment in silence and I finally decided to drop it. I wasn't even sure why I was so pressed about it in the first place.

"Maybe I was mistaken," I heard myself say.

"It's okay if you were. It happens."

"Yeah." I picked up my coffee from the counter where I'd left it. "I should go. I have editing to do."

"Mia." He caught my arm gently as I turned toward the door. "You can always ask me things. Anything. I'm not going to get defensive or upset. If you think you saw something that concerns you, I want to know."

I looked at him and found nothing but sincerity. "Okay. Thanks."

"And for what it's worth, I think you're probably just stressed. You've had a lot going on lately with the move, the stalker stuff and building your career. It's a lot. Your brain is probably just on high alert."

That made sense. It made so much sense that I felt stupid for not thinking of it myself.

"Yeah. You're probably right."

He walked me to the door and hugged me before I left. It was a brief, friendly hug that shouldn't have felt like comfort but did. I liked how he was grounding me in reality when my own perception had become unreliable.

I went back to my apartment and sat on my couch staring at nothing for twenty minutes. Was I going crazy?

But Dante had opened every drawer and shown me his closet and offered to let me search the entire apartment. What guilty person would do that?

Maybe I was just tired. The whole stalker plus Ren situation was getting to me.

Maybe Yuna's paranoia had gotten into my head and now I was creating problems that didn't exist.

I wanted to call her and tell her about the phone and how I somehow felt like he was gaslighting me but I could be wrong and he’s just kind and patient.

But I knew what she'd say. She'd tell me I was right to be suspicious. She'd tell me he was lying and I didn't want to hear that because I wanted him to be telling the truth.

I wanted the last three weeks to be real. The coffee and the dinners and the easy conversations. I wanted him to be exactly who he appeared to be and not some complicated dangerous person I needed to run from.

So I didn't call her.

Had it been a phone? Or could it have been the tablet he showed me? Was I adding details my brain thought should be there?

The more I thought about it, the less certain I became.

That was worse than being sure.

My phone buzzed while I was making dinner again from the unknown number.

I almost didn't open it and deleted it without looking. But some masochistic part of me needed to know what they'd say this time.

“He's lying to you. I saw the phone too.”

I dropped my phone on the counter then read it again.

My blood turned to ice.

How could the stalker know about a conversation that happened inside Dante's apartment? A private conversation between two people with no one else around?

Unless they'd been watching and they'd been close enough to hear through walls or windows or—

No. That didn't make sense. We'd been in his kitchen with the windows closed so no one could have heard us.

Which meant either the stalker had somehow bugged his apartment or they knew about the phone through some other way that made even less sense.

Or they were lying. Feeding into my paranoia because they knew it would mess with my head.

I picked up my phone and stared at the message until the screen went dark.

The stalker had confirmed what I saw and Dante was lying.

But how would they know unless they were watching me constantly? Unless they were close enough to see inside his apartment? Unless they knew things they shouldn't be able to know?

And why would they care about a second phone?

What was their business with any of this?

I stood in my kitchen with dinner burning on the stove and tried to figure out which reality was more terrifying.

That I was losing my mind and seeing things that weren't there.

Or that I was right, Dante was lying, and somehow the stalker knew exactly what was happening inside his apartment.