Chapter 4 – THE DAY WE LEFT THE SCREEN
I don’t think there is a correct way to prepare to meet someone you’ve fallen for but never touched.
There is the fantasy version of preparation—
flawless hair, cute outfit, calm nerves.
And then there is the reality—
Checking your reflection too many times.
Changing your perfume twice.
Breathing too fast.
Wanting to throw up.
Wanting to run.
Wanting to run toward the very person who made you feel like this.
The morning I met Marc in person, I did all of those things.
Twice.
The train ride felt longer than it should have.
Every sound jolted my nerves—
someone coughing,
the wheels screeching,
a toddler crying two seats down.
I kept replaying his voice in my head.
“Meeting you is going to make everything real.”
My stomach twisted with anticipation and fear in equal measure.
What if he didn’t like me?
What if I didn’t live up to what he imagined?
What if everything felt different in person?
And beneath all of that, a quieter fear:
What if I like him too much?
I already did.
That was the problem.
I saw him before he saw me.
He stood near the edge of the car park, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind.
His hair was messier than usual.
His blue eyes scanned the crowd with an expression I couldn’t read.
And then—
He looked at me.
A smile broke across his face so naturally that every fear I’d carried with me evaporated.
He walked toward me, slow at first, then faster, as if his body didn’t know how to pace what his heart already wanted.
“Hey,” he said when he reached me—
the same word he’d always used,
but heavier now, fuller, real.
I smiled back, and the world briefly steadied.
He hugged me.
Hard.
Longer than a greeting should last.
When he pulled away, his eyes lingered on mine like he was memorising something.
“You look exactly like I thought you would,” he said softly.
“So do you,” I whispered.
It wasn’t a lie.
He looked exactly like his photos—
almost too exactly.
Like a man wearing his own face like a costume.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s sit in the car. It’s freezing.”
He led me toward a blue hatchback.
And that’s when I saw them.
Two child car seats in the back.
Pink.
Small.
Strapped in securely.
My heart flinched.
“You said you… babysit today?” I asked lightly, hoping the question sounded casual.
He nodded too quickly.
“Yeah—yeah. My sister dropped the girls off earlier. Had to take them somewhere but they’re not with me now.”
I swallowed the unease.
Told myself not to overthink.
Men who take care of children are good men.
Right?
—
We sat in the front seats, angled slightly toward each other.
He talked about his journey.
I laughed at something he said.
He brushed a hair from my face.
Normal.
Natural.
Effortless.
Then he kissed me.
It wasn’t tentative.
It wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t unsure.
It was hungry.
His hands slid to my waist, my neck, guiding me closer.
The kiss deepened.
The air thickened.
And suddenly, the world blurred.
Clothes shifted.
Breathing quickened.
Heat flooded the cold car.
We had sex—
fast, intense, overwhelming,
a collision of want and nerves and emotion.
It wasn’t planned.
It wasn’t tidy.
It wasn’t graceful.
But it felt inevitable.
When it was over,
the silence was louder than anything that had come before it.
—
The Crying
I don’t know what triggered the tears.
Maybe the intensity.
Maybe the vulnerability.
Maybe the realisation that something irreversible had just happened.
Whatever it was,
my chest tightened,
my breath hitched,
and suddenly—
I was crying.
Not dramatically—
quietly, helplessly,
tears sliding down my cheeks faster than I could stop them.
Marc didn’t move.
He didn’t reach for me.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t comfort me.
He just looked.
His blue eyes, so warm minutes earlier, had gone cold—
not cruel, but distant.
Detached.
Almost studying me.
Like he’d shifted out of a role he no longer needed to play.
Embarrassment flooded me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered quickly, wiping my cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
His face softened slightly, but only at the surface.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“It just means you feel it too.”
Feel it too.
As if the tears were proof of some deeper connection.
I nodded, swallowing the unease clawing up my throat.
But something in the air between us had changed.
Imperceptibly.
Irreversibly.
—
The Coldness
When he drove me back,
he held my hand loosely—
not the tender grip of before,
but a gesture performed out of obligation.
At the drop-off point, he hugged me.
It was shorter.
Quieter.
Less full.
“We won’t see each other for a while again,” he murmured.
My heart sank.
“Why?”
“Just… life,” he said.
“I’ll explain later.”
He kissed my forehead—
a soft, almost hollow gesture—
and then he left.
The car drove away with two empty child seats
and one man
who had already begun detaching himself from me.
—
The Aftermath
When I got home, I waited for a message.
Something sweet.
Something reassuring.
Something that said the meeting meant as much to him as it meant to me.
Instead, hours passed.
Then a single message arrived.
Marc:
> I’m tired.
Talk tomorrow.
No warmth.
No heart.
No voice note.
Just a sentence that felt like a door closing.
And in that moment,
lying alone in my room,
the ache of knowing something had gone wrong pressed against my ribs.
Something had shifted in him.
Something that I didn’t understand yet.
I would learn later
that this was the moment he realised the lie had gone too far.
That he had crossed a line he couldn’t uncross.
That intimacy had consequences.
That I had seen him without the screen,
and that made him dangerous.
He didn’t pull away because he didn’t care.
He pulled away
because he cared in all the wrong ways.
Because he could no longer hide that Marc
was just a character.
And James—
the man behind the lies—
was starting to crack under the weight of the story he’d built around me.
