4.
In the end it was a stranger who noticed how wrong I looked.
He held me up all the way to the pharmacy window, got me something for the pain, sat me down to rest, and only then did I start to feel a little better.
Once I'd steadied myself, I told myself Timothy had only said all that in the heat of the moment.
I cried, tears running down my face, and at the same time went digging through my memory like a madwoman for proof that he'd once been good to me.
I couldn't forget how, right after graduation, he'd carried me down six flights of that old walk-up, step by step, when I was sick, and taken me to the hospital and looked after me so carefully.
I couldn't forget how he'd gone hungry, meal after meal, and climbed over the school wall to bring me the biggest, best food he could find.
I remembered how, in my last life, I'd been handling a case as a lawyer, and someone deliberately hurt me, driving a car door through my shoulder blade until I died.
Timothy had been across the street from me then, on the other side.
That day he'd said he was finally letting Pansy Fox go for good, that from then on he'd be good to me.
But right there, waiting at the red light, he watched me die with his own eyes.
He cried so hard that day.
His obsession ran too deep.
I couldn't leave. I became a lost, wandering ghost, drifting at his side.
I watched him refuse to eat or drink, shut in his room every day, holding my photo and weeping.
He half lost his mind. Every day he knelt and prayed to the heavens, saying, "If I get to do it over, I'll treat Laura Swanson right."
"Every step. I won't take a single wrong step."
He begged like that, bitterly, for forty-nine days, and drifting there beside him I felt like Timothy was going to die too.
The next second, I found myself back in this stretch of time, carrying all my memories from before.
But now, given it all over again, without the distance between us, he was somehow worse to me than he'd ever been.
Timothy, is it possible you never loved me at all?
I wiped at the tears, one swipe after another, unable to answer my own question.
Everything went black, and I finally crawled home and dropped onto the couch, only to spike a fever and pass out cold.
My mind was hazy, my whole body aching. I picked up my phone and sent Timothy a muddled string of messages.
"I have a fever. Can you stay with me?"
"You never used to treat me this badly."
"In about five days I'll be gone."
"Timothy, I've repaid every kindness you ever showed me."
"……"
Timothy didn't answer a single message.
Not until four days later did he finally appear in front of me, like he was granting me a favor.
Holding a ring box, he shoved it straight into my hands and said:
"No matter what, we've been together since we were kids. I have to take responsibility for you."
"And I will marry you."
"Our engagement ceremony is tomorrow. Clean yourself up, make yourself presentable, and just show up."
I felt my body slowly draining of everything, and I stared at the necklace around Timothy's neck, the one Pansy Fox had given him.
I shook my head.
"I can't. My time's up. I won't make it to tomorrow."
Hearing that, Timothy flew into a rage again.
"Disappear, then! Go on, disappear, let me see it! Laura Swanson, lately you really make me sick!"
He strode toward the door, ready to storm out again.
But before he shut it, he didn't forget to give me one more order, a warning:
"Whatever happens, I want to see you at the engagement tomorrow. This is a big deal. Don't pull any more of your nonsense."
Timothy was gone, and I looked down at my own hollowed-out body, which was starting to feel light.
I drifted around the room for a day. Timothy didn't come back, and didn't send me any messages.
On the day of the engagement, Timothy came storming in and kicked the door open.
He shouted in my direction: "Laura Swanson! Think a lot of yourself, don't you! What kind of game are you playing—"
His voice trailed off, smaller and smaller.
I was right there in the room, but he couldn't see me.
Timothy, I really have disappeared from your life, completely.
