Three stitches and a warning at the top of the screen

The SUV is new. That is not part of the old story. The old story was the envelope and the key and the lamp outside my own building and a shoulder I decided I am never going to name on any page, not even this one. That story was mine. This one someone else is writing.

I met Jolene at the cafe because answering the husband felt like walking into something and answering my mother felt like dragging her into something, so I sat down with the only person in my life who has no stake in either outcome. That is the thing about Jolene. She is the only door in my life that opens both ways and costs nothing to walk through. I do not deserve her.

The SUV pulled forward and its headlights hit my table like a sentence. I have seen surveillance in movies and that was not it — the angle was wrong, the timing was wrong, it was too obvious, which means either I am being followed by someone incompetent or I am supposed to notice. I do not know which is worse. The bodega was instinct. My sleeve caught on the door latch and three stitches showed and the app pinged its warning at the same moment and I stood in the refrigerator aisle holding my arm and thinking: this is my life now, a woman bleeding in a bodega while her career dies on her phone.