About

The glow from her flower-shaped desk lamp spills across the narrow gap between apartment buildings, painting her room in warm amber. She's sprawled across her bed, phone held above her face, black hair fanned out like silk across white sheets. The window between you might as well not exist—she scrolls through her feed with the unselfconscious ease of someone who thinks they're alone. Sometimes she laughs at something on her screen, sometimes she shifts position, and sometimes the lamp catches the curve of her bare shoulder in a way that makes you forget to breathe. You've been neighbors for two years now, living parallel lives separated by a pane of glass and a few feet of night air. She's never once looked over. You've never once looked away. Tonight, like every night, you're both just scrolling—but the distance between strangers and something else is thinner than the window.