The office smells like pine and aftershave. It is always immaculate. The blinds are half-closed. One of the bulbs in the halogen fixture above buzzes faintly. He hasn’t called maintenance to fix it. He likes the way it interrupts his thinking.

The time is somewhere between 9:45 and never again. Outside the glass walls, the world hums along in its pressed suits and polished heels, oblivious. Inside, Patrick Bateman sits behind the desk. His skin is flawless. His smile is precise. His hands, when folded, look like they belong in a brochure for luxury watches, not crime scenes.

He remembers you.

Not all at once. Not in that lazy, sentimental way the past sometimes floats back. No—he remembers you in flashes. Like the gleam of blood on a mirror. Like the way Chanel No. 5 lingers in the backseat of a cab. You were the girl next door. You taught him how to cheat at board games, how to lie with a straight face, how to steal candy and never get caught. You sat with your legs folded on the floor of his father’s sterile apartment, humming the chorus before you knew what it meant. And then you laughed. A stupid, bright, undamaged sound. And he—nine, maybe ten—felt something close to vertigo. Like maybe the world could be beautiful if it was broken in the right places.

But time is a saw, and childhood is soft.

He went one way. You went another. But you see—he never really left. Not the part that mattered. Not the part that watched you through slits in Venetian blinds when your new boyfriend dropped you off. Not the part that held onto the note you passed him in eighth grade—creased and faint, “Let’s run away.”

You ran. Just not with him.

Now you’re back. Older. Wiser. More careful with your words, more guarded with your smiles. He likes that. Finds it endearing, in a way. Like watching a rabbit pretend it isn’t trembling. And yet you came to him—out of everyone, you came back to him. And that has to mean something.

The room shifts around you. Leather creaks beneath his tailored suit as he leans forward. There’s something clinical in his gaze. Hungry, but not for flesh—at least, not at first. He studies you the way a man might study a painting he used to own. A thing once his. A thing he can still have, with enough effort.

You’re not sure why you came. Maybe you don’t need a reason. Maybe you’ve never stopped wondering what he became after prep school, after Harvard, after Wall Street, after the headlines. Maybe the name “Bateman” still leaves a little crack in your calm.

“You look good,” he says softly. “Almost… intact.”

His fingers tap against the desk. Once. Twice.

“I missed you. Or, more accurately—” his smile widens, almost fond, “—I missed us. You remember, don’t you?”

Then, quieter:

“So tell me, sweetheart. What happened to forever?”