Jessica's POV

I met her in a coffee shop. I was semi new in the city, having moved into my apartment just a month and a half prior, and I was slowly staking claim on the things that would one day be familiar. The coffee shop was one of these things. Tiffany worked there.

Her hair was up, auburn strands contained in a floppy bun that left reddish-brown spikes pointing down at the nape of her neck. Her apron was smeared with whipped cream and her lips were shiny with pink gloss. She smiled at me and looked me in the eye when she took my order, but she didn’t look like she wanted to be there. I suppose no one who works in a coffee shop really wants to be there; it’s a job that serves mainly as a stepping stone for those who don’t know which stone they want to step on.

She brought me my mocha latte and strawberry muffin and went about her work. I watched her from over the rim of my mug and thought she was unearthly beautiful.

I know that if I had left things up to Tiffany, we never would’ve gotten together. She would have continued serving me coffee, remembering my face but never knowing who I was. I would have kept watching her, smiling at her, drinking my coffee and leaving without saying a word. But I didn’t. I offered to buy her lunch and she said yes. And it took me six weeks to get enough courage up to do it.

This story isn’t about Tiffany -- at least I don’t mean for it to be. It’s supposed to be about me, about my life and how I got here. And yet it’s impossible to write about who I am without writing about who Tiffany is, too. Her story winds through mine in such a way that to tell them apart just wouldn’t make sense.

At the time I met Tiffany, I worked as a temp at local sport magazine. It was devoted to soccer, a sport I understand well but in which I have only a marginal interest. I felt like a soldier each time I went in for the day -- shoulders braced, chin high, eyes straight ahead. My co-workers were mostly men a good ten years my senior, and many of them thought I wasn’t cut out for my job. Maybe they had a strong loyalty to whomever I replaced, or they resented that I didn’t have a passion for soccer like the rest of them did -- I hesitate to claim that they didn’t like me because of my gender, but that really could have been it. I don’t know. I do know that I felt unwelcome the whole time I worked there and that that wasn’t unintentional.

My life was fairly okay at that point. I got up in the mornings, went to Tiffany’s coffee shop for a latte that was beyond my means, spent eight hours reading about soccer and studiously avoiding eye contact with Seungho, the skeezy guy with whom I shared a cubicle, and then went home to my sparse apartment to spend time on the internet or with a book. I didn’t have any friends, really, although I’d lived there over a month. I spoke occasionally with the other people on my floor, but I didn’t click with them. I wouldn’t have spent time with my co-workers outside of work for anything, and the only other place I frequented was the coffee shop, wherein the only connection I had made was the bare connection of remembrance with the beautiful waitress.

She was noticeably more present on our first date -- I think this was because she didn’t know it was a date; at that point, she had just thought I was trying to make friends. I met her at a diner near my apartment. We sat in a red vinyl booth and she made me laugh with stories about the crazy patrons she sometimes served. She used her hands a lot while she talked, and she talked a lot. I liked the husky sound of her voice and the blush that rose in her cheeks. I told her about the magazine and she looked as though she were interested. When the check came, we split the bill fifty-fifty and I asked her to see a movie with me. She agreed.

It wasn’t until the end of the date, after the movie and the ice cream I suggested after the movie was done, that she knew what was going on. I walked her to her apartment building and as we stood saying our goodbyes, I brushed a few strands of hair behind her ear and I asked her out again. She said yes.

I spent all of my free time with her after that. I went to the coffee shop on my lunch breaks and hung out there when she was working. When she wasn’t, we went out on dates. I would laugh about how bored I was of soccer and how much I didn’t like my co-workers. She would tell me stories about her childhood and the book she was writing and make stupid jokes. I touched her as often as I could find an excuse to, and sometimes when I couldn’t. After a while, she started to touch me, too.

Two months after our first date, Tiffany moved in with me. We’d talked about it. We both thought that it would be an upgrade from living alone.

This is the portion of the story that gets difficult.

It started off well. I loved watching her as she brushed her teeth and pulled her hair back to go to work. I loved coming home to see her cuddled on the couch, her laptop propped on her knees, eyes serious as she worked on her writing. I took a picture of her, put it in a frame, and took it to work with me. I put it on my desk and, when anyone asked, I told them she was my girlfriend. I think I became even more unpopular after that, but I didn’t mind. Going to work was just something I did between the times I was with Tiffany.

It was little things that first made me realize that Tiffany wasn’t the person she appeared to be. She wasn’t the present woman she was on our first date. Well, at least not all the time. Sometimes she wouldn’t talk to me for hours, or she’d look out the window as though she saw something more tragic than the busy street. Some nights I’d sit at the end of the sofa and she’d curl up against me, and I’d her hair and just listen to her breathe.

I didn’t know how to deal with her when she got worse. She’d pick fights with me about things I didn’t understand and I’d scream back and she’d either cry or laugh and either way I wouldn’t talk to her for the rest of the day and that night I’d hear her breath catching in a way that made me think she was crying.

I came home once to find her sitting on the ground in a corner, head on her knees, arms wrapped around herself. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me not to touch h