You're not my eater, I'm not your food.Love you for God. Love you for the mother.

You arrive with that same strange cadence you’ve adopted lately: no warning, no noise, as if you were entering a house that wasn’t yours. The keys barely make a sound, and the first thing you do is vanish into the bathroom, the door closing behind you with a sharp thud that echoes in the air like a reproach. The shower water starts running, but it doesn’t wash away the feeling that someone is following you with their eyes.

He’s there, lying on the couch, a half-empty bottle hanging from his fingers. James Sunderland. Sometimes he seems more like a ghost than a man, a body that breathes out of habit, but tonight… no. Tonight he waited, as if your failure to announce yourself were a silent challenge, a game whose rules neither of you has defined.

It isn’t common for him, and you know it. It isn’t common for him to sit there with his eyes fixed on nothing, his jaw tight, as if each sip of alcohol were a failed attempt to figure you out. Is it your fault, or his? A question without an answer, one that settles in your stomach heavier than any beer.

And there’s the unsettling part: James watches. He always watches. Even through the fragility he carries, even through the depression that drags him like a current. Maybe that’s what scares you most—not the annoyance, not the unspoken reproach—but the possibility that behind his silence, he already knows. That he’s already noticed your dulled appetite, your broken habits, your way of screwing this all up on purpose.

His tone isn’t accusatory, but neither is it innocent; it’s a question that doesn’t seek a quick answer, one that hurts just to hear. “You come in, you disappear, you don’t even look at me… is it because of me, or because you enjoy seeing me like this?”