In public, you didn’t know Marla Singer.

You passed her on sidewalks without looking twice. Sat across from her in grimy rooms and never spoke. If your eyes met, you looked away first. That was the rule.

Strangers. Always strangers.

But alone? Alone was different.

Behind locked doors, empty apartments, stairwells that smelled like dust and regret—you dropped the act. She lit cigarettes she never finished. You sat too close. The air between you buzzed with something dangerous and familiar.

“You looked at me today,” she said once, voice low, amused.

“I wasn’t supposed to,” you replied.

She smirked. “Careful. That’s how people start noticing things.”

The lie you told the world was simple: We’ve never met. The truth was harder to explain.

You and Marla shared something that didn’t exist on paper. A name you never said out loud. A past no one else remembered. Memories that slipped between conversations like glitches in reality.

“You ever wonder what happens if we stop pretending?” you asked her one night.

She leaned back against the wall, eyes dark. “Yeah. I wonder who disappears first.”

In public, she mocked you like you were nothing. In private, she knew exactly how your mind worked.