He Wouldn’t Let Me Touch His Door, But She Wore His Shirt Chapter 07

He Wouldn’t Let Me Touch His Door, But She Wore His Shirt Chapter 07

I stayed at my parents’ place for half a month, slowly settling into a comfortable routine.

I started taking on freelance consulting projects remotely. A few corporate clients provided great

feedback, and the income soon became even more substantial than my previous salary..

My mom made sure I ate well and took daily walks, while my dad dragged me out to the local

reservoir to fish every couple of days.

Life was quiet, but grounded.

One evening, my dad walked back through the front door with a dark expression.

“There’s a car with out-of-state plates idling down by the gate. A guy’s sitting inside, asking the security guard which apartment unit is yours.”

I set my fork down. “What kind of car?”

“A black sedan, didn’t get a close look. The guard didn’t tell him anything and made him move his

car.”

The next morning, I went downstairs to grab a coffee from the local spot.

Julian was standing right outside the community entrance.

The dark circles under his eyes were terrifyingly heavy.

His face was unshaven, his button-down shirt was completely wrinkled, and he looked like he had dropped a significant amount of weight.

The moment his eyes landed on me, they turned red.

“Joanna…” he choked out.

I didn’t stop my pace, walking right past him toward the cafe counter.

He scrambled to follow me.

“I drove nine hours straight to get here. Can you please just give me ten minutes?”

I stopped outside the cafe door and finally looked at him.

“Speak,” I said.

…

He set down a grocery bag of fresh fruit and a carton of milk on the pavement, his hands twitching awkwardly as if he didn’t know where to put them.

“The whole thing with Alyssa-I want to explain.”

He admitted that Alyssa was a girl he had harbored an intense crush on back in college..

He had pursued her back then, only to be rejected with a laugh.

The words she used had haunted him for seven years.

“Julian, you’re just too boring.”

Seven years later, when they crossed paths again, Alyssa had been the one to actively initiate

contact.

She showered him with compliments about how mature and magnetic he had become, telling him he was someone she could truly lean on, and claiming she was utterly helpless and alone in the city with nobody else to trust.

“When she said those things, it felt like… like I finally wasn’t that inadequate kid she looked down on anymore,” he mumbled, keeping his head low, his voice dropping to a whisper. “She said I was her only lifeline, and I… I got addicted to that feeling of being needed. I know it was completely pathetic, but at the time, I just-”

“So your extreme neat-freak obsession was entirely fake,” I cut him off.

“You just didn’t want me entering your personal life. Because I never looked up to you like a god the way she did.”

His face drained of all color instantly. His lips trembled, but no words came out.

“Joanna, it wasn’t like that… My feelings for you were real, I just…”

“You just used your rigid rules to control and restrict me, while reserving all your flexibility to cater to her.”

I looked at him squarely.

“Julian, you were addicted to the validation of being put on a pedestal. That isn’t love for me. That’s just you having a hollow void in your own ego, and running toward whoever feeds it.”

“I’ll change,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I’ll change everything. Come back to the city with

I’ll give you the keys, the garage codes, whatever you want.”
I shook my head.

“I don’t want it anymore. I have no interest in soaking in a tub you let someone else use.”

His tears finally spilled over.

A grown man, well over six feet tall, stood crying on the sidewalk next to a local coffee shop.

An old man walking past to grab a morning paper glanced over twice before looking down to count his change.

I turned around to grab my iced coffee from the pickup window.

“Don’t come back here. My dad has an incredibly short fuse, and if he sees you again, he’ll call the

cops.”

I walked away without looking back.

He didn’t chase after me.

Later, my mom mentioned that he sat in his car down by the street for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t until the sky went completely dark that he finally started the engine and drove away.

I sat at the dinner table, quietly finishing every drop of my soup.

Outside the window, the streetlights illuminated a perfectly empty road.

He was gone. And he was no longer my concern.