I almost didn’t. But I wrapped it around my neck anyway, because it smelled like him: sweat and soap and something older I couldn’t name. Then I stepped out into the hallway.
Toronto hit me like a punch.
Colder than New York, and somehow meaner about it. The wind knifed under my hood and slapped my cheeks, like it was trying to freeze the attitude out of me. I hunched my shoulders, kept my head down, and just moved.
I needed this. Not just the vitamins. Not just the excuse.
I needed to remember who the fuck I was.
Inside, the pharmacy was all fluorescent lights and the hum of refrigeration units. I moved slow, grabbing prenatal vitamins, calcium chews, protein bars. Anything that made me look like a tired woman in a gray coat with too many things on her list.
For a few minutes, I pulled it off.
I drifted the aisles for a solid ten minutes, staring at neat rows of ibuprofen and cough syrup, knee braces and vitamins for conditions I’d never even heard of. Old people shuffled past, heads down, faces blank. Nobody looked at me. Nobody cared. I could have been anyone.
I finished my circuit, arms full, and landed in line behind a woman wrestling two screaming toddlers and a basket of cold medicine. The quieter kid—maybe four—stared at me, blue eyes wide and unblinking. I stuck out my tongue. He giggled. Normal, I thought. Safe. See? Just boring, normal, safe.
Then I felt it. That prickling shift. Like static across the back of my neck.
A man, browsing the cold remedies. Early forties. Brown jacket, sneakers, no cart, no basket.
That was it. The tickle of bad electricity. I didn’t dare turn for a better look. Instead, I slid up the aisle toward the checkout, eyes flicking to the mirrored ceiling tiles. The man moved, too. One aisle over. Cough drops now. Not looking at me. But I could feel it—the weight of his attention, even when his head was bent to the label.
I clutched the vitamins tighter, forced myself not to rush as I dropped them on the conveyor. The cashier—a girl with silverbraces and a phone wedged in her palm—barely glanced at me as she rang up my stuff.
I paid in cash, like Dante drilled into me. Tried to keep my hands from shaking as I bagged the items myself. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the man in brown drifting closer, arms folded, face blank. He didn’t look like a cop, didn’t look like a hitter. Looked like someone who fixed HVAC units or sold insurance. But I’d stopped trusting appearances months ago.
Fuck. Had I been followed from the hotel, or did this guy just pick me at random?
I walked toward the exit, counting ten slow beats before I heard the squeak of sneakers behind me. Not hurrying. Just…keeping pace.
I hit the sliding doors. The cold slapped me again, burning my nose and icing my lashes. I turned left, away from the hotel, toward the busy intersection, and forced my body to stay loose, casual. Not prey. Just another woman late for work, scarf snug around her chin.
A block down, I looked back. The man had stopped in front of the pharmacy. Just stood there, hands jammed in his pockets, shoulders hunched like he was waiting for a cab. Then he tilted his head, caught me looking, and smiled—a quick, apologetic curve, more polite than threatening. He turned and walked away, melting into the snowy rush hour.
But I didn’t trust it.
I doubled back, ducked into a bakery, and bought a chocolate croissant I didn’t want. Sat at a corner table, busied my handswith the paper bag, and kept the man in sight through steamy glass. He was gone. Either a ghost or just smarter than he looked. I forced myself to take a bite, to get crumbs on my coat, to be so laughably harmless nobody could ever pick me out of a lineup.
On the walk back to the hotel, I took a different route. Turned east, then north, then cut down an alley behind the old Queen Street post office just to see if I was being tailed. Stopped at the corner, checked my reflection in the window display, and waited. Nobody.
Still, I walked the last two blocks with a fistful of keys in one hand and my phone’s flashlight on in the other, like I was afraid of tripping. I could almost hear Dante’s voice, teasing: “Gonna blind someone with that?” Maybe I would, given the chance.
Inside the hotel, the carpet was overclean, the halls so quiet it made my teeth itch. I moved fast, tried not to think about the brown-jacket man, tried not to imagine him lurking behind every potted plant. Elevator to the fourth floor; left, right, room 423. I fumbled the key card once, twice, and by the time I stumbled into the room I was sweating under my layers.
When I got in the elevator and turned around, he was there. He’d taken off his coat and his dress shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, like he’d gotten uncomfortable and didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t look at him directly, tried to focus on my own reflection in the mirror—a little wild, lit from above by harsh LEDs, scarf halfway undone. The doors hissed closed. The lights flickered once, then the elevator started its gradual, glacial climb.
I reached for my room key. The man did the same, angling his body so our elbows nearly touched. Card in his left hand, phone out in the right. I could hear the shuffle of his indoor voice: a muted, polite “Sorry, didn’t mean to crowd you there.” He smiled again, but the smile hung crooked. Something about it set my skin crawling.
I kept my eyes on the floor. Couldn’t risk a glance; didn’t want to confirm anything.
But he said it anyway, just above a whisper: “You dropped something.” Held it out: a receipt, curled in his palm. My receipt, pale and curling, the store’s logo in jagged blue. He must have scooped it up after me, tracked me all the way here.
I reached for it, but he didn’t let go. His hand was cold, skin chapped where it brushed my thumb. I told myself it was nothing, that this was just some bored minimum-wage dude closing a loop. I told myself if I looked up, it would break the spell.
But I looked up.
His eyes were wrong—too wide, too bright for a man whose only job that day was to hand back a piece of paper. A pulse twitched in his jaw. He looked at me, and I saw that smile again, a little off-kilter, like he’d practiced it in the mirror just this morning.
