The joke sliced through the room like a dare. Melissa laughed, but the sound felt thin, like it might crack if anyone listened too closely. A single rumor, tossed out between sips, began crawling under doors and through curtains, turning every lit window into a stage. She didn’t want to care, but her mind leaned in anyway, tracing patterns in conversations, in half-finished greetings, in the way Paula’s eyes slid away at the mention of late deliveries and unexpected packages. The mailman, the nights, the closed blinds—nothing changed, yet everything felt charged. Because once the idea takes root, every gesture becomes evidence, every gap a place for your own fears to bloom and your own loneliness to speak in someone else’s name, until the hedg… Continues…
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