"Ready," Victoria announced, strapping on her smartwatch with practiced efficiency. "Let's go."
James took her hand, feeling a surge of pride at having this stunning woman choose to spend her morning with him. He led her outside his apartment, both of them stepping into the fresh morning air as they began what would be their first shared workout together.
Unaware of the eyes that watched them from the shadows, Victoria and James held hands and walked toward their destination, their conversation light and comfortable as they made their way through the building's corridors. The morning sun filtered through the large windows, casting long golden rectangles across the polished floors, and their footsteps echoed softly in the quiet hallway.
Sophia was returning from the building's small mail room, a handful of letters clutched in her free hand, when she happened to glance through the corridor and met with something quite unexpected. Her steps slowed, then stopped entirely.
One of the blinds in the room's windows weren't fully closed, and through the narrow gaps between the slats, she saw something that made her breath catch in her throat.
A pair.
A gorgeous woman leaned against the man she recognized even in her dreams, James, although she could not see who the lady was as her back was facing Sophia's direction. The woman was speaking with James, and Sophia could see his shoulders were tense, but he welcomed whatever she was saying. His face... his face was softer than she had ever seen it. And his smile? It wasn't the polished, professional expression he usually gave for everyone to see. It was something else entirely. Something real. Something intimate. Something that belonged only to the woman standing before him.
Sophia's stomach twisted violently, a nauseating cocktail of jealousy and despair churning within her. The letters in her hand crumpled as her grip tightened involuntarily. Who was that woman? What was she doing with James? Was that his girlfriend? The questions hammered against her skull like physical blows, each one more painful than the last.
She watched, transfixed and horrified, as James's entire demeanor transformed in the presence of this mystery woman. Gone was the distant, professional mask he wore like armor. In its place was warmth, tenderness, and something that looked dangerously close to love. The way he looked at her, the way his body naturally inclined toward hers, the way his smile reached his eyes, it was everything Sophia had dreamed of, everything she had convinced herself she could eventually have if she just waited long enough, tried hard enough, proved herself worthy enough.
But there it was, playing out before her like a cruel theater performance, and she wasn't even an audience member. She was nothing. Less than nothing. A ghost haunting the periphery of a life that had never truly included her.
Her hands began to shake as the reality of the situation crashed over her in waves. All those months of careful planning, of engineering chance encounters, of positioning herself in James's orbit, all of it had been for nothing. While she had been building castles in the air, he had been living his real life with someone else. Someone who clearly already held his heart in ways that Sophia never would.
The woman moved, and for a terrifying moment, Sophia thought she might turn around and reveal her face. But she didn't. She remained a beautiful silhouette, an elegant mystery that somehow made everything worse. If Sophia could see her face, she could analyze her, find her flaws, convince herself that she was somehow lacking. But this faceless perfection was impossible to compete with, a phantom that could be anything, everything, that Sophia was not.
She tore herself away from the window and practically ran back to her studio apartment, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. She fumbled with her keys, her hands trembling so violently that it took three attempts to unlock her door. Once inside, she locked the door behind her with savage finality, as if she could somehow lock out the truth she had just witnessed.
But there was no escaping it. The image was burned into her retinas, James's face, transformed by love for someone who wasn't her.
She threw open her sketchpad with desperate urgency, as if artistic expression could somehow exorcise the demons clawing at her chest. Her charcoal pencils scattered across her small table, and she grabbed the thickest one with fingers that still shook with barely contained emotion.
Her hands moved furiously across the paper, almost of their own volition. Dark, violent strokes appeared as if by magic, forming shapes that spoke to the rage and heartbreak warring within her soul.
A woman in fire emerged from the charcoal dust. Not literally aflame, but burning from within, her hair wild and whipping around her face like smoke, her eyes hollow caverns of loss, her mouth open in a silent scream that seemed to echo through the small apartment. The woman's dress was torn, hanging in tatters around her body, and her hands were pressed against her chest as if trying to hold her heart together through sheer force of will.
A queen without her crown. That's what she was drawing. A monarch dethroned, stripped of everything that had once made her powerful, left with nothing but the ashes of her former glory. The crown lay broken at the figure's feet, its jewels scattered like tears across the ground.
Burning. Breaking. Alone.
The words echoed in Sophia's mind as her hand moved across the paper with increasing violence. She pressed the charcoal harder against the surface, leaving thick, angry marks that tore through the paper in places. The woman in her drawing seemed to pulse with life, with pain, with a fury that matched Sophia's own.
This was her. This was what James's happiness with another woman had reduced her to. A creature of pure emotion, raw and bleeding and utterly, completely alone.
She would paint that woman, whoever she was, down to the very bones of her vanity. She would create art that captured not just her beauty, but the cruelty of it, the way it had destroyed everything Sophia had built her hopes upon. Every stroke of her charcoal was an act of warfare, every shadow she created a weapon against the happiness she could never have.
The drawing stared back at her when she finally stopped, her hand cramped and her breathing ragged. It was her, but it was also every woman who had ever lost something precious to someone more deserving. It was universal in its pain, timeless in its tragedy.
And somewhere in the building above her, James was probably still smiling that soft, real smile at a woman who would never know what her mere existence had cost.