I Told My Therapist About My Stalker, but He Already Knew novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Everything He Did Not Say

Simon Vandermeer had never cooked for another person in this kitchen.

At nine o'clock that night he stood at the stove, stirring a pot of tinned soup.

He was aware of every breath in the room behind him.

Eli sat on the counter by the window with his boots off and his phone in his hand.

He had been looking at the same message for an hour.

Keogh had gone into the studio with gloves and a flashlight and told them to wait.

The bomb squad had come first, and gone again, and said the package held paper.

Simon had stood very still while Eli took that call, with the phone to his ear and his other hand flat on the glass.

He had wanted to cross the room and touch him, and he had stood still, because he had been told.

He turned the burner off.

He had a list of things he had never said to this man, and he went through them as he ladled the soup.

That he had listened to a recording of a hotel interview forty-one times.

That in it, at the nineteenth minute, Eli laughed at his own joke before he had finished telling it.

That laugh was why Simon had said yes to the second interview.

That the list found under Coburn's bunk had not been the start.

It had been the permission.

He had wanted to watch Eli for two years, and he had never found a reason that a decent man could give.

Then a smudged photocopy had given him one, and he had taken it.

He set the bowl on the counter beside Eli's knee.

"Eat," he said.

"I'm not hungry."

"Then hold it. It is warm."

Eli took it and held it.

He looked at Simon over the rim, a long, level, tired look.

"You haven't touched me since the ferry," he said.

"You did not tell me I could."

"No. I didn't."

Eli put the bowl down.

He slid off the counter onto his bare feet and stood close.

Simon could see the grey shadows under his eyes and the small white scar in his left eyebrow.

"I said the first wall in your mother's house," Eli said.

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