Sofa Stowaway

The key turns in the lock and my lungs forget how to work.

I press myself deeper into the couch cushions, which is stupid because I'm already as flat as a frightened cat can get. The foam molds around my spine like a second skeleton. I can smell the inside of this couch now. Popcorn dust. Something spilled and dried years ago. The particular must of fabric that's been farted on by generations of people who thought nobody would know.

I know. I know everything about this couch.

Three months of planning. Three months of watching Maya's schedule, learning her habits, memorizing the way light fell through her apartment windows at different hours. I knew she went to trivia night at O'Malley's every Thursday. I knew she'd come home buzzed and laughing, kicking off her shoes before the door was fully closed. I knew she'd flop onto this exact couch and scroll her phone for forty minutes before brushing her teeth.

What I didn't know was that she'd bring people.

The door swings open. Maya's voice cuts through the dark apartment, bright and already half-drunk.

"God, I'm so full. Why do they give you those giant pretzels? I can't say no to a giant pretzel."

Another voice, male, lower. "You said no to the nachos."

"Nachos are a commitment. Pretzels are a promise."

A third voice, female, sharp with amusement. "That doesn't mean anything."

"It means I'm a coward and I'm okay with it."

They're laughing. Light floods the living room as Maya hits the switch. I feel it through my eyelids, a warm red glow through the fabric. The couch shifts as someone drops onto the cushion above my head. My teeth clamp together so hard my jaw aches.

This was not the plan.

The plan was simple. Elegant. I'd slip in through the fire escape window she never locks, the one painted shut but not actually shut, just stuck enough that nobody noticed. I'd hide in the couch before she got home. I'd wait until she fell asleep. Then I'd come out and stand over her bed and watch her breathe for a while. Maybe touch her hair. Maybe just leave. The point wasn't what happened after. The point was the being there. The knowing.

But now there are three of them. Maybe more. I can hear footsteps still, someone in the kitchen, the refrigerator opening and closing.

"Who wants wine?" Maya calls.

"Me," says the sharp-voiced woman.

"Obviously," says the man. "What kind of question is that?"

The couch groans as another person sits down. I'm pressed between two bodies now, the weight of them compressing the foam around me. I can feel the warmth of a thigh through the cushion. I can hear the fabric whisper as someone shifts. They're so close. If I moved my hand six inches, I could touch the bottom of their spine.

I don't move my hand.

The couch has a hollow space beneath the seat cushions, a pocket I discovered during my second week of surveillance. Maya had left her keys on the coffee table, and I'd let myself in just to stand in her apartment, to breathe her air, to see what she saw when she woke up. I found the gap by accident. A missing spring, a loose panel, a darkness that invited me in. I tested it with my arm first, then my whole body. It fit me like a coffin fits a corpse.

I've been inside this couch seven times now. Twice while Maya was home. Once while she had sex with someone on top of me. That was the first time I realized this wasn't a game anymore. That was the first time I felt the heat rise in my chest and didn't know if it was shame or hunger.

"So," the man says, "are we going to talk about Evan or pretend he doesn't exist?"

"We're going to pretend he doesn't exist," Maya says. "That's the whole point of wine."

"He sent me a text," the sharp-voiced woman says. "Three paragraphs. All caps in some parts."

"Delete it."

"I can't. It's beautiful. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion while the driver recites poetry."

The couch trembles as Maya laughs. I feel it in my ribs. I feel it in the space between my teeth. She's right there. Her weight is pressing down on the cushion directly above my chest. If I breathed too hard, she might feel the rise and fall of me through the foam.

I breathe shallow. I breathe through my mouth.

"The thing about Evan," Maya says, and I can hear her settling deeper into the cushions, "is that he thinks wanting something badly enough makes it romantic. He doesn't understand that wanting something is the cheapest thing a person can do. Anyone can want. It's the not doing that costs you."

My blood goes cold.

"Oof," the man says. "That's specific."

"It's true. Wanting is easy. It's free. It costs nothing to sit in your own head and imagine a life where you get what you want. The hard part is living in the world where you don't."

I think about the fire escape. I think about the window that isn't locked. I think about the three months I spent learning everything about her, the schedules and habits and the way she hums when she's brushing her teeth. I think about the seven times I've been inside this couch. I think about the wanting.

She's not talking about me. She can't be. She doesn't know I exist.

But the words settle into my chest like stones dropped into still water. The ripples spread. I feel them in my fingers, my toes, the hollow space behind my eyes.

The sharp-voiced woman says something about Evan's job. The man laughs. Maya refills her glass. The conversation moves on, light and easy, the way conversations move when you don't know someone is underneath you, listening to every word, memorizing the shape of your voice.

I stay still.

I stay silent.

I stay inside the dark, pressed between foam and fabric, feeling the warmth of bodies I can't see, and I think about what it costs to want something so badly that you'd hide inside a couch for it.

I still don't know the answer.

But I'm starting to understand the question.