I called him a doughy, ambitionless leech in front of our entire salsa class, and the only sound left in the room was the echo of my own cruelty.
Leo started as the nice guy, the one who sent helpful traffic updates and remembered how I took my coffee.
His thoughtful gestures became a constant hum of unwanted attention, a suffocating kindness I couldn’t escape. I tried to be gentle, to draw a clear line in the sand that I was a happily married woman who only wanted his friendship.
He just saw it as a challenge.
My politeness became proof I was leading him on, and every unanswered text was just an invitation for him to try harder. Our friends only saw his public devotion, not his private obsession, and they judged me for it.
He thought my public breakdown was his victory, but he never imagined that the tools of his own trade—a print shop and a digital obsession—would become the very instruments of a meticulous, career-ending revenge.
The Gentle No: Another Tuesday, Another Text
The ping from my phone was as predictable as the Tuesday morning traffic. I didn’t have to look to know who it was from. Leo. The message would be some variation of helpfulness I never asked for, a digital tap on the shoulder to remind me he existed.
*Heard on the radio that the 101 is a parking lot. Might want to take surface streets to your showing! Have a great day, Sarah!*
I sighed, the sound lost in the hum of my SUV’s air conditioning. It was a perfectly nice text. A thoughtful text, if it came from anyone else. From Leo, it felt like an anchor. Another tiny weight added to the chain he’d been forging for the last six months, one I felt constantly tugging at my ankle. My job as a real estate agent meant I was always on my phone, always navigating the city, a fact he’d latched onto like a barnacle. He saw it as an opening, a series of small problems he could solve for me.
My husband, Mark, was used to it. “Leo again?” he’d ask, not even looking up from his coffee. I’d just nod. It had become a piece of our domestic landscape, like the mail piling up on the counter or our daughter Lily’s soccer gear perpetually airing out by the back door.
The thing is, I liked Leo. In the beginning, anyway. He’d shown up at our salsa studio, a referral from a mutual friend, Maria. He was soft around the middle, with a kind, eager face and a laugh that came a little too easily. He was a beginner, clumsy and earnest, and I’d offered a few pointers, the same way I would for any newcomer. That was my mistake. I had opened a door, and he had walked through it and started redecorating.
He was a graphic designer for a small, local print shop. It was a fine job, a respectable job. But it wasn’t… ambitious. I’d worked my tail off for fifteen years to build a business where a single commission could be more than he made in a year. That disparity, that lack of a certain kind of drive, was a chasm. It was an unbridgeable, unattractive distance I couldn’t ignore.
I typed back a perfunctory, “Thanks, I will!” and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. The looming issue wasn’t just one text. It was the pattern. The constant, low-level hum of his attention, a frequency I couldn’t seem to tune out, no matter how much I wanted to.
The Dance Floor Perimeter
Tuesday nights were for salsa. It was my release, the one place where I wasn’t a realtor or a mom or a wife. I was just movement and music. The studio was a converted warehouse, all exposed brick and polished hardwood floors that gleamed under the track lighting. The air was thick with the scent of sweat, perfume, and the faint, dusty smell of old wood.
I loved the feeling of being led by a confident dancer, the silent communication through the pressure of a hand on my back, the exhilarating spin that left the world a blur of color and light. I danced with Ricardo, the instructor, whose movements were as fluid as water. I danced with David, an attorney who treated every song like a three-minute trial he was determined to win.
And through it all, there was Leo. He didn’t dance much with other people. He’d stand by the water cooler, nursing a bottle for an hour, his eyes tracking me across the floor. It wasn’t a leer. It was worse. It was a patient, hopeful gaze, the kind a dog gives you from the other side of a screen door. When my song with David ended, Leo was there before the final beat had faded.
“My turn?” he asked, his smile wide and expectant.
I gave him the same gentle smile I’d been perfecting for months. “Oh, Leo, I’m dying of thirst. Catch you in a bit?” I squeezed his arm, a friendly, platonic gesture, and made a beeline for the very water cooler he’d just vacated. It was a dance of its own, this intricate choreography of avoidance.
Later, I was catching my breath on a bench when he sat down next to me, a little too close. The heat from his body was immediate. “You were amazing with Ricardo,” he said. “You just float out there.”
“Thanks, he’s a great lead.” I kept my eyes on the floor, watching couples whirl by.
“I’m getting better,” he said, a hopeful note in his voice. “Maybe soon I’ll be good enough to not step all over your feet.” He laughed. It was meant to be self-deprecating, but it felt like a plea.
I didn’t answer. I just watched the dancers, wishing I could be one of them, free and unobserved, instead of pinned to this bench by the weight of his unrequited everything.
Coffee and Clarification
The following Thursday, I decided I couldn’t live in a state of perpetual evasion. It was exhausting. It was also, I had to admit, a little cruel. He deserved clarity. I texted him and asked if he was free for coffee. His reply came back in less than ten seconds.
*Absolutely! Name the time and place! :)*
We met at a sterile, corporate-feeling coffee shop midway between his office and mine. He was already there when I arrived, sitting at a tiny table with two coffees. One for him, one for me. A black Americano, just how I liked it. He’d remembered. Of course, he had. My stomach tightened.
“Hey,” I said, forcing a brightness I didn’t feel as I sat down. “You didn’t have to get me one.”
“My pleasure,” he beamed. “It’s the least I can do.”
We engaged in a few minutes of pointless small talk about work, the weather, a new restaurant. The whole time, I felt like I was standing on a diving board, trying to get up the nerve to jump. Finally, I just took a breath and did it.
“Leo,” I started, my voice softer than I intended. “I really value our friendship. You’ve been such a great addition to the salsa group, and I’m so glad we’ve gotten to know each other.”
He was nodding, a little too eagerly. “Me too, Sarah. I really…”
“And,” I cut in, needing to get it out before I lost my nerve. “I want to make sure we’re on the same page. I feel like sometimes… you might be hoping for something more than friendship. And I need to be clear that for me, it’s just that. Friendship. I’m married, and I’m very happy.”
The eager light in his eyes dimmed, but the smile stayed pasted on his face. It was a ghastly combination. “Oh. Oh, yeah, of course. I know that. I would never… I mean, I respect you and Mark so much.”
“Good,” I said, a wave of relief washing over me. “I’m so glad we could clear the air.”
“Totally,” he said, taking a long sip of his coffee. He looked down at the table. “I guess I’m just not ‘that guy’ for you, huh? The exciting type.” His voice was quiet, laced with a familiar strain of self-pity that was designed to make me feel guilty. It was working.
“It’s not about that,” I said quickly. “You’re a great guy, Leo. A really great guy.”
He gave me a watery smile. “Yeah. A great friend.” The words hung in the air between us, tasting like ash.
The Lingering Gift
The coffee conversation bought me exactly four days of peace. Four days of normal texts, of space on the dance floor. I started to think, maybe, that was it. Maybe I had finally gotten through to him.
Then, on Monday, I came back from a lunch meeting to find a package on my desk at the real estate office. It was a small, square box, beautifully wrapped in thick, textured paper with a silk ribbon. There was no card.
My assistant, Chloe, raised an eyebrow from her desk. “Looks like you’ve got a secret admirer. That was dropped off by a courier a little while ago.”
I knew, with a sinking certainty, who it was from. My fingers felt clumsy as I untied the ribbon. Inside, nestled in a bed of tissue paper, was a heavy, silver compass. The kind you’d see in an antique store. It was intricately engraved on the back.
*So you always find your way. – L*
My blood ran cold. This wasn’t a friend gift. This was a lover’s gift. It was intimate, symbolic, and wildly inappropriate. It was a flagrant dismissal of our conversation, a declaration that he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. Or worse, he’d heard it and had chosen to ignore it completely.
It was a test. If I accepted it, if I said, “Thank you, it’s beautiful,” I would be validating his pursuit. I would be undoing the one difficult, honest conversation we’d ever had.
I picked up the heavy, cold object. He was a graphic designer at a print shop. This compass was probably a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred dollars. It was an extravagant gesture from a man who likely couldn’t afford it, and it was meant to indebt me to him emotionally.
I shoved it back in the box and pushed it to the corner of my desk, behind a stack of files. I couldn’t look at it. It felt like a surveillance device, a tiny, silver piece of him, sitting in my space, watching me. Waiting.
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