My boyfriend, Jordan Gilbert, was a hollow man. He had almost no wants, no feelings, none of the things that move ordinary people.
In six years together, I had never once heard him say "I love you," and I had never felt a single ripple of emotion in him.
His kisses were cold. His embraces were going through the motions. Even in bed, in the most intimate moments two people could share, his eyes stayed as still as dead water.
Then one day, after a company team outing, I walked out of the haunted house with him.
His eyes were red, his voice choked and trembling. "Carrie, I finally understand what it feels like to be alive."
I cried with joy, thinking six years of ice had finally begun to thaw at one corner.
That very day I bought a year pass to the haunted house and told him, "Let's come here often from now on, all right?"
After that, every other day, Jordan would go and run the whole thing again.
I thought he was just chasing that rare flicker of feeling. What I didn't expect was to catch him at it. The man who was distant and cold to every outsider was smiling at a haunted house actress, some young woman playing an NPC.
Humbling himself, all just to beg her to stay for one meal.
"Penny, I don't care whether you can speak, because it's only when I'm with you that I can feel my heart beating!"
I slipped away quietly, my face streaked with tears.
That night, after the usual, I did what I always did. I curled up against Jordan's bare back and asked softly, "Jordan, when we finish, does your heart pound hard?"
"Or is it that it only bothers to move when you're looking at her?"
...
His arm slid off my waist. "You went to the haunted house today."
His voice was flat. That face I'd looked at for six years had gone cold as early-winter frost.
"Why didn't you just come in and ask me?"
I looked at him and swallowed hard, forcing everything down.
In six years, the times he'd shown me any love could be counted on one hand, and every time I coaxed the word "love" out of him it came out like a block of wood.
Only in bed did the faintest ripple ever cross his face.
I understood that. I accepted all of it.
Until today, backstage at the haunted house, when I saw him smile at that girl, the one called Penelope Pruitt.
Like all the winter snow had melted at once.
That was when it hit me. He wasn't a man without feelings. He'd just built a wall of ice in front of me.
Then Jordan spoke, a little faster than usual.
"The story in that place is just so good! I got so deep into it that I projected all those feelings onto the NPC. Let me apologize, all right?"
"But I can cry now, I can laugh. Aren't you happy for me? Carrie, I can feel things now."
I couldn't smile.
Those feelings, good or bad, love or hate, all of them existed because of another girl.
Robert Bishop, who owned the haunted house, had told me long ago that Jordan asked for Penelope Pruitt every single time he came. The scenario changed by the day, but all he needed was Penelope standing in that one spot.
"You have no idea. Penny is incredible. She always shows up right where I need her, like she knows exactly where I'm going to run into danger every time! I've never felt anything like it. Like she's my savior. Do you understand?"
Jordan was talking more now, rambling as he described his new discovery.
I opened my mouth. My throat had gone tight.
But every one of those scenes that made his scalp prickle, I had written them.
Penelope was only an NPC, a mute both on and off the stage. All she had to do was hit her marks and follow the script I gave her.
What Jordan believed was some deep bond with Penelope came from nothing but how well I knew him.
My phone buzzed.
Robert, the haunted house owner, had sent a video. "Don't say I didn't tell you. This is the clip your Jordan specifically asked me to shoot for him. I figured you should see it first. He still doesn't know it's you."
