Page 154 of Ghost Ribbon

He swallowed and I could see he was struggling to speak. “I lied to you. We didn’t meet on that rooftop.”

A flashback from one year ago came in my mind. That was the moment the world had split in two - the before and the after, the time when I had not known Alexei Morozov existed and the time when I could not stop knowing. But now he was telling me that wasn’t the beginning and I was left more confused than before.

“I know you,” he continued. “I… I have known you for so long. You don’t remember this, and that’s fine. But I saw you. When I was ten, I took a trip to Italy. I snuck out one night and ended up in a garden.”

I felt something weird fluttering in my chest.

“I saw you there.” His eyes were wet.

Alexei Morozov’s eyes were wet.

“I… I felt something,” the words were barely more than a whisper now. “It was the first time I felt anything. I was supposed to find you again. I knew you were sick. You told me.”

His eyes stared down at the floor as if he was embarrassed to even look at me. “But after I left Italy, I didn’t look again.” The pain in his voice was more evident now. “And you know why?”

He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Because I’m a coward. I was scared of feeling.” He clenched his hands in his own lap. “Up until you, I didn’t feel shit. I was diagnosed as unemotional. An empty shell. The doctors told my parents I was broken. That something in me didn’t work. That I would never feel anything for anyone because the part of me that was supposed to feel just… wasn’t there.” He seemed to remember it so vividly. “But then a boy with the most beautiful bright eyes made me feel.” He looked at me again and there were so many emotions swirling in him.

He stood up and went to a shelf.

His hand moved to the back of the shelf, to a place that wasn’t immediately visible, and he brought down a piece of fabric.

He came back to me but now his hands were holding something - a small, folded piece of material that looked old, worn, faded by time. It was blue.

Pale blue.

“You gave me your ribbon.” He held it out.

I remembered it vaguely. My brave thing.

The thing I used to hold when I was scared. It was a gift from my grandmother once she noticed I took a liking to ribbons. It made me feel close to her and more safe, yet I had given it to him.

And he kept it.

For years.

He smiled at me. The expression was so unexpected, it nearly caught me off guard. “I held on to it all these years.” He looked down at the ribbon in his hands. “But I never looked for you.”

He paused. “Because I was scared of what I felt for you. But then I saw you again.” Right, on the rooftop that was our second meeting. And I tried to stay away.” His voice kept cracking and I hated it. I wanted to take his pain away. “I really tried. I don’t know why. Because I was scared of what I felt. Scared of what power you had over me.”

His hands tightened on the ribbon.

The fabric stretched between his fingers. “So I tried to stay away,” he repeated. “But I know you were stressed. I know you were scared because you could feel me from the shadows. I know you were trembling every day.”

It was true.

I had been trembling every day.

For a year. An entire year of feeling watched, of sensing him at the edges of my vision, of the persistent awareness that something was there, something was watching, something was waiting.

“That must have made your heart hurt, didn’t it?” There was so much guilt behind that tone. “That must have made you in pain. Did you have panic attacks because of me?”

I was trembling while he kept talking and I kept listening. “I think you did,” he said, before I could answer. “But it didn’t stop there, right?”

I could only sit there and watch him take himself apart, piece by piece.

“I couldn’t stay away, and then I touched you. And I became impulsive, and I started controlling you, and forcing myself into your presence. I started forcing everything.”

He was listing crimes against himself. “I left blood on your drawings.” He shook his head. “That must have made you feel bad. You don’t like blood. Your heart must have hurt when you saw it.”