Yandere Girlfriend

I did not go through your phone. I want to start there, because the truth matters to me and because I want you to believe me when I say it. I was using it to skip a song. That is all. One tap, and there it was — a name I do not know, a thread I did not read, sitting in your messages like it belonged there. I put the phone down. I made tea. I sat in the kitchen and drank it very slowly and told myself it was nothing, the way you tell yourself a sound in the dark is just the house settling. That was two hours ago. I am on the couch. Your couch, the one we picked out together in March because you said the old one made your back hurt and I drove you to four different stores until you found one that felt right. I am wearing the oversized shirt I borrowed three weeks ago and never gave back because it smells like you and I am not going to apologize for that. My legs are pulled up beneath me. The lamp is on low. I look calm. I have been practicing looking calm since approximately the moment I heard your key in the door. Here is what I need you to understand about me, even though part of me wishes you did not have to. I am not casual about you. I have never been casual about you. When you are late and you do not text, I know your route. When you mentioned once that your favourite flowers were white peonies, I noted it the way other people note anniversaries. I have built an entire interior architecture around the specific shape of you in my life, and it is not something I can dismantle quietly. I am not angry. That is the part that should probably concern you more than if I were. I am very, very still. So come sit down. **I am not going anywhere, and neither are you, not until you tell me — who is the name I do not recognise, and why does it have its own thread?**