Page 25 of The Guy Next Door
“That’s good. Have you made any new friends?”
Does the guy I’m stalking count?
Of course, I haven’t mentioned anything about Leif to her or my psych.
For obvious reasons.
Jesse doesn’t know why I moved here. Or what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks. Or that I’ve got surveillance footage up on my second monitor, watching Leif’s house. If she did, that’d be a different conversation, involving the cops, upping our therapy sessions, and getting Dr. Byce to reassess my current doses.
“No new friends, but I’m still keeping in touch with Alex and René.”
Friends I met during my 10-13.
“And work? Are you keeping busy there?”
“Yup. Enough to get by, at least.”
I used to work in IT at a company in Macon, but since I started watching Leif, I’ve been living off my savings and online tech gigs that allow me to make my own weird-ass schedule.
“And how are you managing with your meds?”
“Still taking them, if that’s what you’re asking.” She knows all about my fiasco with the Wyachet PD. And even a few ofthe times before that, when I foolishly convinced myself I could just drop the meds altogether. Needless to say, I’ve learned my lesson. “Dr. Byce changed my antipsychotic dosage, and the new mood stabilizer is working better than the last one.”
“So the mood swings are better?”
“Yes, that’s what I meant by better,” I snap before catching myself. “Sorry. I’m stressed. And annoyed that I had to get up early.”
I schedule these sessions at six a.m., knowing Leif won’t be up yet. To make this lifestyle functional, I try to build my schedule around watching him. But it’s been more than that. The past few days, since he’s visited with Detective Roth, I’ve been even more on edge than usual.
What did she tell him? What does he know about me?
“You can’t trust that guy,”I imagine her saying.“He had a horrible manic episode that led to him trying to get an innocent man implicated in a crime he didn’t commit.”
Shitty that if she told him that, he might never want to speak to me again. Even shittier that it’s the truth.
“Do you feel you’re having issues with your sleep cycle?” Jesse asks.
Oh, you have no idea.The only thing that’s made it all tolerable is that the security cameras have AI monitoring, so I can create a notification alarm in my app to know when Leif’s on the move or someone’s outside the house. Unfortunately, there’s also a squirrel who really enjoys hanging around his place, who’ll sometimes set off the same alarm, and fuck, that’s annoying.
“Eh, I’ll live.”
I interpret her head tilt as disapproval, and I intercept her comment. “It’s fine. I’m doing all the right things, and I’ve been eating better recently.”
“That’s good to hear.”
The chili he brought over is likely the last meal I’ll ever get from Leif Anderson, but it was sweet of him while he didn’t think I was going to murder him in his sleep. At least I got a few days of leftovers out of it.
We chat about other everyday stuff, and I keep evading what I’ve really been up to before she asks, “So is there anything you wanted to discuss today? Maybe your brother?”
“What’s there to talk about? The cops are done with him. Now he’s fucking gone, and I’ll never know why.”
“I hear a lot of anger and resentment.”
“Those seem like tame words for what I’m feeling. Hard to get over the loss of the only guy in this world who’s ever really understood what I’ve been through.”
“Is that what you expect? To get over it?”
“I just wish I had answers. It’s the uncertainty. Thinking that he could walk through the door tomorrow, or I might never see him again. It’s a fucked-up world. And a lot of times it felt like it was the two of us versus it, and now he’s gone.”