His Turn To Be Obsessed

During my freshman year at NYU, I managed to lock down the campus golden boy. Because I loved him to the brink of insanity, my dark, obsessive streak ran the show. When my battery was fully charged, I was capable of checking in on him thirty times a day; I even had an AirTag-grade micro-GPS soldered into the silver pendant I bought him for his birthday. Harrison couldn't breathe under that kind of surveillance. Every couple of weeks, he’d reach his breaking point and try to cut the cord: "Marriage requires parity, Nora. Our families are from two completely different planets. It’s better if we just pull the plug now before we destroy each other..." He threw those tantrums constantly. Every single time, he pushed me into a manic corner, and every single time, I’d turn the screws until he ended up sobbing on the floor, apologizing to me just to make the siege stop. Then college ended. I became just another corporate drone drowning in the grind. Harrison, on the other hand, parachuted straight into a vice presidency at his father’s Midtown investment firm. Just like he’d predicted, once we entered the real world, the chasm between us grew so wide that our conversations started lagging like international calls. I simply didn't have the hours or the bandwidth to stalk his every move anymore. When I finally scrounged up a comp day so we could see each other, Harrison—desperate to provoke a reaction—casually dropped that a new female intern at his office had just confessed her feelings to him. My head throbbed. The old Pavlovian instinct flared; I moved to snatch his phone off the coffee table, but as I stood, my lower back seized with a blinding, electric spasm. The pain nearly dropped me flat onto the hardwood floor. In that single, humiliating second, reality washed over me. I was just an exhausted wage slave running on lukewarm cold brew and a deteriorating spine. I couldn't afford to cosplay a high-energy psycho anymore. So, I let my pulse settle, looked at him, and said: "Oh. Do you want to break up, then?" The man who had spent four years crying for his freedom went entirely mute. Every drop of color drained from his face. 1 "Are you tracking me again?" "I’ve told you a thousand times, Nora. I hate this." It was lunch hour. I was crouched on the concrete curb outside my office tower, trying to inhale some fresh air between back-to-back spreadsheet reviews, when I initiated our daily FaceTime. Harrison took the call with his guns already blazing. My brain lagged for several seconds before I realized what he was talking about: the tracking chip inside the silver chain. I’d given it to him four years ago. It had been the height of my paranoia, back when we first started dating. I was terrified that this silver-spooned, impossibly handsome boy was going to humiliate me behind my back, so I’d scrimped together three months of tips from my campus bartending gig just to buy the tracker and have a jeweler seamlessly seal it inside the pendant. The receiver synced directly to my smartwatch. As long as Harrison wore it, his coordinates and the ambient audio within a ten-foot radius fed straight to my wrist. Except today, I hadn't opened the app once. My morning had been an endless conveyor belt of status meetings and performance check-ins with my manager. I hadn't even had three uninterrupted minutes to pee, let alone spy on him. "I probably brushed the screen when I checked the time," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "I didn't even know you were wearing it today." On the screen, Harrison’s jaw was set tight, one manicured hand propping up his chiseled face. The storm clouds on his brow didn't clear. He clearly didn't believe a word. I sighed, softening my tone to soothe him. "Look, how about this? Just stop wearing it. Take it off and throw it out. Okay?" Silence hung heavy over the line. Harrison let out a sharp, humorless chuckle. "Fine. Gladly." With one violent tug, he snapped the silver chain from around his neck and threw it into the wastebasket beside his mahogany desk. He angled his phone camera downward, giving me a high-definition close-up of the crumpled metal lying among discarded memos. "Take a good look, Nora. You told me to trash it. I’m never putting it back on." Beep. He disconnected. A tired sense of deja vu settled into my chest. He used to do this all the time. Back when we were in school, that necklace had landed in the trash at least a dozen times. 2 "Nora, why are you sitting out here? Derek’s looking for you." I was halfway through drafting a text to assure Harrison that I wasn't trying to start a fight when my coworker materialized beside me. My thumb froze over the keyboard. I let out a low, defeated groan. What did that prick want now? "Isn't it my lunch hour?" I asked, looking up. "Is there an actual emergency?" She gave a small, unsympathetic shrug. "Couldn't tell you. You’d better just go up." The elevator ride back to the fourteenth floor was hellish. It was crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with junior analysts clutching greasy Sweetgreen bowls and takeout bags. The air inside the small metal box smelled like vinegar, burnt sesame oil, and someone’s damp gym shoes. I was wedged into the back corner, forced to inhale the recycled funk. I pulled the collar of my knit sweater over my nose, pretending to cough, watching the floor numbers crawl upward in agony. "Nora, your portfolio's conversion rates are tanking this month. You’re bordering on dead last in the department." When I knocked and entered Derek Palmer’s office, he didn't even look up from his leather executive chair. He went straight for the throat. "Our team carries this division, but that doesn't mean your seat is guaranteed. Are you having personal issues? Sick? You look like a ghost." Before I could answer, Derek tilted his head, flashing that practiced, oily smile of his. It was his signature corporate choreography: terrorize you first, then offer a patronizing pat on the head. "No, I’m fine," I said, folding my hands in front of my skirt, playing the docile, anxious subordinate. "It’s just... the commute from Queens is long. I’ve been feeling a little run-down." Derek leaned back, observing me like an interesting specimen under glass. He stood up, walked around the mahogany desk, and gave my shoulder a heavy, condescending squeeze. "You’re not in college anymore, Nora. In school, you fail a midterm, you take a makeup exam. In corporate America, one bad quarter gets you escorted out by security. You just cleared your probation period. Don't you think you should protect the offer you worked so hard for?" An offer? A forty-thousand-dollar base salary, no remote flexibility, and mandatory weekend Slack check-ins. He called that an offer? The man had clawed his way into a director title inside six months entirely on the back of his sociopathic talent for gaslighting. He could look at an open sewer and pitch it as prime waterfront real estate. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing in his face. "I understand. I'll turn it around, Derek." Until I had another offer in hand, I had to eat dirt and pretend it was caviar. 3 The threat of a PIP kept me chained to my desk until seven-thirty. By the time I shut down my laptop, Harrison’s tantrum had slipped entirely from my mind. It wasn't until I checked my phone on the walk to the subway and saw his sunlit, dazzling smile on my wallpaper that I remembered I had a boyfriend who was supposed to be furious with me. I hadn't always been like this. There was a time when Harrison Hayes was the center of my universe. That wasn't hyperbole. I’d been quietly, dangerously obsessed with him since our sophomore year of high school. Back then, to make sure we landed at the same university, I literally bribed a guidance counselor's aide to find out which schools he had on his early decision list. Harrison was brilliant, wealthy, and carried that effortless, golden-boy charm that made every girl within a three-mile radius lose her mind. During our first week on campus, I orchestrated a half-dozen "accidental" run-ins, determined to reel him in before the rest of the freshman class realized what a prize he was. A face like his was impossible to hide. Once, while we were grabbing lunch at the dining hall, a girl snapped a candid of him and posted it on the campus crush board, begging for his handle. She had deliberately cropped me out of the frame. I saw red for days. Even though Harrison swore on his life that he’d never accept a stranger’s follow request, the paranoia took root. I had zero security. Deep down, I knew the only reason he’d agreed to date me was the soft-spoken, low-maintenance persona I’d meticulously performed to fit his type. If he ever saw the feral, territorial creature living beneath the skin, he’d run. Sure enough, three months in, the cracks showed. Harrison reached his limit. He slid an open-ended personal check across a café table, his tone sounding like a wealthy philanthropist paying off an inconvenient tenant. "I moved too fast," he told me, looking pained. "Dating isn't a game. It’s supposed to lead somewhere permanent, and our backgrounds... our lives just don't fit. We should call it before we get deeper." Before he could finish the sentence, I took the check, tore it into confetti, and let the pieces flutter into his cold brew. From that afternoon on, the mask came off. I haunted him. I monitored his location, tracked his transit passes, demanded to see his phone whenever we breathed the same air. If I had an idle hour, my brain spun in frantic circles: What is he doing? Is he looking for an exit? It’s been twelve minutes since he read my text—who is he talking to instead? For four years, I wore him down to the bone. There were nights when Harrison collapsed onto the floor of his dorm room, sobbing, begging for mercy. "I can't do this anymore! Please, Nora, just let me go! Do you not have a single other thing in your life besides me?!" I wouldn't budge. I would drop to my knees beside him, wiping the tears from his cheeks with my thumbs, matching his desperation with my own quiet, terrifying plea: "No. Just you. Only you. If you want out of this, you’ll have to wait until I’m dead. Unless you want me to do it right now?" He would go quiet, paralyzed by the sheer weight of it. Those days felt like another lifetime now. Since entering the rat race, my brain didn't have the luxury of obsessing over him. If I blinked during business hours, our department Slack channel exploded with ninety-nine unread pings, all demanding my blood, sweat, and apologies. 4 Did you eat dinner? I just left the office. I sent the message as I elbowed my way into the evening rush-hour crowd on the L train. Even after seven, the train was packed. A commuter reached for the overhead rail, their elbow knocking hard against my knuckles and nearly sending my phone flying. When I stabilized the screen, the little red exclamation point was staring back at me. Message Failed to Send. Blocked again. His favorite passive-aggressive hobby. I was too drained from Derek’s threats to even attempt calling his real number. Getting my key into the lock of my cramped apartment took the last ounce of adrenaline in my system. When I pushed the door open and saw the silhouette sitting on my lumpy thrift-store sofa, my heart didn't even skip a beat. I just offered a tired, flat smile. "You're here." Harrison lifted his gaze. His jawline was sharp, his skin clear, his dark hair parted with clean precision. Other than a slight pout on his lips, there wasn't a trace of exhaustion on his face. He had spent the day working too. He was still wearing a custom charcoal suit and a silk knit tie. Why didn't he look hollowed out? Right. I kept forgetting. We lived in different tax brackets. Harrison hadn't spent his senior year blasting out two hundred resumes on LinkedIn, sweating through behavioral interviews only to be offered an entry-level wage. The second he tossed his graduation cap, his father created a tailored VP title for him at Hayes Capital. I didn't entirely understand what he did all day, but I knew for a fact nobody was threatening him with performance plans. "Did you eat?" I asked, echoing the text that hadn't gone through. "No," he muttered crossly. "You pissed me off too much to have an appetite." I kicked off my flats, dropped onto the cushions beside him, and let my eyes fall shut. When the room went quiet, Harrison shifted, his voice taking on an irritated edge. "I got here at five. I’ve been sitting alone in this tiny room for over two hours. Don't you get off at six? Where the hell were you?" "At my desk. Overtime." My legs ached down to the marrow. Every joint felt rusted. "Come closer, Harry. Rub my shoulders. Please." I took his hand and placed it on the knot behind my collarbone, leaning into him like a petitioner. Harrison pressed his lips together, putting up a token resistance, but his long fingers immediately started working the tension out of my muscles. "I’m still mad at you," he grumbled. "We haven't settled this." I rested my head against his chest, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw. "Why? I told you, I wasn't tracking you today. Haven't you noticed how different things have been these past few months? I only FaceTime you once a day now." During our sophomore winter break, when I’d been stuck back home with nothing to do, I’d called him thirty times in a single afternoon. 5 Harrison’s hands slowed. "Harder," I murmured. Instead, he stopped completely. He pulled his vibrating phone from his pocket, took a pointed look at the caller ID, cut a sideways glance at me, and deliberately flipped it face down on his knee. "Why didn't you pick up?" I opened my eyes. It didn't look like spam. Harrison gripped the phone in his palm, his voice suddenly thick with performance. "Just an associate from my floor. She’s exhausting. She bothers me all day at the office, and now she’s blowing up my phone after hours. I’m not dealing with it." My eyes narrowed. "What associate? You never mentioned her." An ugly prickle of annoyance flared in my chest. My voice climbed an octave, sharp and thin. Harrison lowered his eyelashes, letting the dark fringe cast shadows over his cheekbones. He subtly shifted the phone behind his hip. "You live all the way out here now, Nora. We only see each other on weekends. How would you know what my days look like?" "What’s her name?" I demanded, the old, poisonous impulse clawing its way back to the surface. "Harrison, tell me her name right now." I moved to lunge across his lap to grab the device, but the sudden twist tore through my lower spine. Crack. A white-hot burst of pain spiked from my lumbar straight down my right leg. "Ah—fuck!" The air was sucked from my lungs. I froze halfway through the movement, gasping, my hand slamming against the backrest as I sank back onto the cushions. I clamped my fingers over the burning knot in my lower back, breathing through my teeth. God. Twenty-four years old and dealing with a herniated disc because my office chair was bought at a liquidation auction. The pain was so sharp, so brutally mundane, that it snuffed out the rage like a bucket of ice water. Harrison, seeing my face twist, assumed I was gearing up for a thermonuclear meltdown. Panic flickered across his features. He scrambled to unlock his screen and thrust it into my lap. "Here! Check it! Go through it! I didn't even give her my personal cell, I swear!" I didn't pick it up. I just sat there, looking at him. The flawless ivory skin, the symmetrical features, the tailored Italian wool that fit his broad shoulders without a millimeter of excess fabric. He looked like an ad for generational wealth. "Do you ever have to stay late?" I asked out of nowhere. Harrison blinked, thoroughly derailed. "What? No." He was still desperate to clear himself of the first accusation. "I wear the chain every day! You can see my location. I leave the desk at five sharp, go straight to the loft, and wait for you to call. I don't go to happy hours. Nobody even talks to me there." A heavy, acidic knot formed in my stomach and worked its way up my esophagus. A wave of bitter regret hit me. If I hadn't shredded that open check four years ago, maybe I wouldn't be living in a mold-scented walkup, popping ibuprofen just to sit through a standup meeting. I’d known from day one that someone from my background was never going to marry into the Hayes family, yet I had dug my claws in anyway. Back then, I was stupid enough to think: What if? What if I graduate, climb the corporate ladder, make six figures, and finally have the standing to face his parents? The reality was that I was tearing my body apart just to clear three thousand dollars a month after taxes. Maybe it was time to let go. The thought bloomed in my mind, terrifyingly quiet. "I’m telling the truth," Harrison said, tugging on my sleeve when I didn't reach for the phone. "She... she’s been trying to get close to me. Exactly like you used to." When I remained still, his nervous tone hardened into something confrontational, trying to provoke a spark. "She confessed to me on her first day! Told me I was the only reason she took the internship. I found it annoying, but I didn't shoot her down hard enough, which is why she’s bold enough to call me now." He clutched my sleeve like a lifeline. I tugged my arm back, but his grip was iron. I didn't have the energy to fight him off. I just looked at him, completely hollowed out. "Okay," I said quietly. "And?" "And what?" "Do you want to break up?" 6 Harrison froze. The color vanished from his lips. His dark eyes widened, filled with an utter, paralyzing incomprehension, as if I had spoken in a dialect he’d never heard before. "What did you just say?" "I asked if you want to break up," I repeated, my pulse steady, the words sliding out with terrifying ease. "If you do, I agree." It turned out people really could change. A sentence that would have required pulling my own teeth two years ago felt entirely weightless now. Harrison, however, couldn't process it. His chest began to heave in short, erratic hitches. He looked like a swimmer who had just been shoved under the ice. "Harry?" Seeing him tremble, I reached out and rested my palm against his cheek. The second he felt the warmth of my skin, he snapped out of the trance, leaning heavily into my touch, rubbing his cheek against my palm like a starving stray. "Is your blood sugar low?" I asked gently. "Let’s just eat." 7 There were three packs of Shin Ramyun in the pantry. I cracked two eggs into the pot, which was more than enough for the two of us. I was starving. My bowl was empty in under five minutes. Harrison sat across the laminate kitchen table, his chopsticks barely moving, slowly twirling a single strand of noodle. "That’s all I have in the house," I told him, clearing my bowl. "If you’re still hungry, you can head back to your place and sear a steak later." His head snapped up. "Why the hell would I go back? It’s the weekend. I always stay here." "I used to make you stay," I said casually. "I’ve had time to think. If we’re ending this, I don't have the right to hold you hostage anymore." His lips parted, but no sound came out. "Do the dishes when you're done," I added, heading toward the hall. "I’m taking a shower." Weekend hours always slipped away twice as fast. By the time I’d washed the grease from my hair, dried off, and stepped into an oversized tee, my limbs felt like lead. When I unlocked the bathroom door, Harrison was standing right outside in the dim hallway. He looked like he’d been waiting there the entire twenty minutes. "Need the bathroom?" I asked, stepping aside. Instead of moving past me, he lunged forward, wrapping both arms around my ribs and pulling me against him with terrifying force. He was shaking. "I lied," he choked out against my neck. "There is no intern. I made her up. The phone call was just a recurring calendar alarm I set to sound like a ringtone. Nora... please don't be mad at me."