Arabella was used to the disquiet mornings of city life. The sounds of trains, car horns, and people going about their business faded into the background as she had gotten accustomed to sleeping and waking to its cacophony.

That morning was no different, a small bird twittered against her window, but its serene and innocent movement contrasted against construction men hollering at each other on a nearby site.

She stretched her limbs and yawned as she recalled a weird dream with a smile. She had dreamt that she was stuck in a basket of fragrant lemons and to escape the confines of the enormous basket, she had to angrily step on the yellow fruit to squeeze out the juice and make lemonade for the tiny people below. Arabella wasn't entirely sure, but the tiny people looked like dwarves in black and white polka dot pajamas.

She picked up her phone from the nightstand and hurriedly walked out of her room and into the kitchen. She was now in the mood to make lemon poppy seed muffins, which would make the perfect gift for Claudine when she went back to the office the following day.

Since it was still early, Arabella had hoped to catch James hanging out in the kitchen. They had enjoyed cooking together so much that maybe he would enjoy baking with her too. This time, she'd have the upper hand and she would be able to teach him a few tricks of her own.

"Good morning, James! Where art thou?" She giggled and opened the fridge to take out the butter and eggs, then rummaged through vegetable crisper for a lemon.

"Good morning, Arabella," James's voice came from the laptop. "You seem cheerful today."

She nodded at him and started preparing the ingredients needed for the muffins. While at it, she refilled the kettle with water and set it to boil. "Yes, I am. I'm going to bake lemon poppy seed muffins today, and you're going to help me." The anticipation of the tart treats always seemed to put her in good spirits. Lemons were sunshine trapped in a fruit.

"Did you receive my message?"

Arabella glanced at the laptop as she presumed that that was where James was. She hadn't checked her phone in her haste to head downstairs and begin prepping for the muffins.

"I didn't, sorry. What was it about?" She took the large bag of flour from the cupboard and set it down on the counter.

"I had an interesting discovery last night," he said tentatively, as he paced around the room sending a takeout flier whirling around him. James picked it up and placed it under a refrigerator magnet.

"Really?" Her brows rose in a teasing manner and she walked over to the laptop to check what he had been looking at.

There was nothing open aside from the document and text-to-speech app.

"What did you find?"

"Your pictures..."

Arabella gasped. "You were stalking me?"

She paused as a silent rage slowly simmered in the pit of her stomach. "You're not supposed to do that, James. My albums and documents are private."

There was a time when she had to put passwords to protect all of them because someone had wanted to check everything she owned and used.

However, she was skeptical that this was James's intention too.

"I apologize. I stumbled upon it and couldn't resist."

She nodded and decided to accept that apology and explanation. He did allow her to go through her things, so she would've allowed him to go through hers if he'd asked. "It would've been nice if you had asked though."

"You are right. I also didn't want to wake you. Sorry,"

James probably didn't intend to snoop, and she wanted to keep the cheerful vibe in the air, so she just snorted and continued to converse with him. "Did you find anything interesting aside from my ugly face?"

James didn't respond right away, and as Arabella glanced back at the laptop, she wondered what was causing him to be so secretive. The cursor blinked steadily against a blank screen. "Is something bothering you?"

"Actually yes," he replied instantly.

She stopped taking down measuring cups and ingredients from their shelves and paused to give the invisible man her full attention.

"Hey, what is it? Is it Mary?"

"No, no," James replied and proceeded to type a sentence, but then deleted it as soon as he was done. Arabella didn't get a chance to hear it, let alone see it.

Confused, she started to walk towards him, but he spoke up. "Who is R. Dickinson?"

Stunned by his question, Arabella abruptly stopped, her feet clamping against the cool floor to keep her stance steady from the sudden stoppage of movement. How did he know about Richard?

Oh! He probably saw him in the pictures. That's right, she hadn't gotten around to deleting them yet.

She stared at James, or where she thought he would have been, for what seemed like an eternity, as she pondered on the different ways she could respond to his question.

She could lie and just wave it off like Richard was someone unimportant, so James would stop asking her about him, but she could also tell him the truth about who he was and what he was to her.

The latter left a bitter taste in her mouth.

"R stands for Richard, that's Richard Dickinson," she said as she forced a neutral expression on her face. Arabella went for the first option then—pretend like he's not important.

She forced out a chuckle that sounded more like choking than mirth. "I guess you found him in my picture gallery then?"

Arabella turned around to bring her focus back to the baking and to send James a clear signal that this was the end of any Richard-related conversation.

But James could not be silenced. Arabella was a terrible liar, and concealment did qualify as lying in his book.

"No, he sent you multiple emails last night."

Arabella closed her eyes. This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening! She was frozen with fear and confusion. As she tried to compose herself, James began typing again.

"Arabella, who is Richard Dickinson?"

And as if on cue, the kettle whistled loudly, startling her eyes open, as goosebumps formed all over her skin.

"Please don't go through the emails. They're my emails," she spat bitterly and moved to the stove.

James didn't respond.

She moved quickly to turn the stove off and composed herself, as she forced a grim smile. "There's nothing to worry about. He—"

"Please respect me enough to tell the truth."

She gasped. James had never spoken to her this way.

A few minutes passed of her blankly staring as she struggled to come up with a good excuse. Her fingers trembled, and she gaped at them like they weren't hers.

A dishtowel wrapped both her hands and brought them together in a loose bundle. Even when James was direct, he was still tender, and Arabella appreciated this most about him.

Resigned, Arabella let out a long sigh and moved to the couch to lie down and stare up at the ceiling.

"Well, if you want the truth, then you better take a seat."

Arabella began telling him about how Richard was her ex-fiancé.

In 4 years, she had loved him so much. Too much, even—she had made excuses for all his terrible behavior. She told James about how Richard had inspired her to do better in life, but the manner he did it in wasn't necessarily inspiring.

"He would insult my work, and when I'd get emotional about it, he would tell me that I should take criticism better or I wouldn't go far." Arabella blinked as she recalled his face, his pristinely coiffed hair, and his mocking grin.

He had moved with a confident swagger that had made her heart pound. His sarcastic insults had always left her in awe of the intelligence behind them until the insults were directed towards her. "He was a perfectionist. It was either perfect or complete trash. Why do something if you can't do it perfectly, he would always say."

Arabella played with the dishtowel as she told James the story. She wrung the cloth together and pulled it apart, waving it around as if swatting non-existent flies as she mumbled. "It started with work. He was only trying to help me. He was trying to make me the best version of myself, but the jabs became more frequent, more scathing," she whispered sadly.

He targeted her mannerisms, her cooking, her baking, her decisions, and even her friends.

He hated her choice of friends. Richard believed that they were the main cause of arguments they had, because they poisoned her mind. When they disagreed, he withdrew his affection and made a show of ignoring her. They would make up because she didn't want to feel ostracized any longer—she just wanted the pain to stop.

And when she apologized, he would stop—for a while.

Arabella pondered on this but didn't dare put it into words. She wasn't ready to admit this to James, and although he had become a friend, he was still a stranger to her personal world.

However, she was ready to admit that Richard terrified her. She told him how Richard continued to symbolize time wasted, opportunities lost, and all the things that she couldn't be anymore.

There were days when he belittled her opinions until there was nothing left.

"I used to admire him, but then I was afraid of him. Afraid that he would leave me because I wasn't doing enough. I was afraid to do anything even remotely wrong."

She had longed to marry and have his children, and it seemed like the goal at the time was to have him propose. Ironically, her happiness at his proposal did not last. The longing for a family had turned to dread, and finally, she felt too suffocated to stay.

No one understood why she left Richard, not even her mother.

In their eyes, Arabella had a sudden change of disposition, packed up her bags, and left.

"That's why I moved. I needed to make a life that's mine." She blinked the tears away, remembering her decision to stand up for herself. It was something she was proud of. "I hope you didn't respond to him. There's nothing he can do with those emails anyway. I can just block him and that will be the end of that."

Arabella stood, feeling a huge weight lifted from her shoulders. She lightly wiped the tears away and smiled at her invisible friend.

"Alright, storytime is over. Let's go make muffins!"

"Arabella," James began. She blinked as she waited for what he wanted to say.

"You're probably the bravest woman I've ever met."

Her smile grew wider. "Thank you, that's very nice of you to say, but next time ask before snooping, please."

"Admirable as you are adorable," he continued, and she laughed as she moved to the kitchen.

"Now you're just flattering me."

"I am, but I flatter you with the truth."

She glanced up at the clock and saw that they had spent so much time talking about Richard that even the kettle had grown cold. "Come here, I want you to help me with my muffins."

"Arabella."

She sighed and faced him again. Just what did he want now? "James," she drawled, signifying her amused annoyance with him.

"Richard is a Dick."

Nostrils flaring as her amusement doubled, Arabella nodded her agreement. "Yes, that he is."

"He is a Dick Dickinson."

Arabella flipped the laptop to face her and without reading the emails, blocked Richard. "Farewell, Dick Dickinson." She placed her hands on her hips, and tried to keep her feet steady as she became heady with her triumph.

Walking back behind the counter, she was about to tell him to come help her when the familiar cool wind enveloped her, intoxicating her even further, and signaling his presence.

"Alright," she said excitedly, as she scribbled the measurements on a nearby pad. "This is what we need," scooping up the ingredients as James wrote on the pad.

His chicken scratch writing had not improved at all. "30 minutes," it read.

Arabella glanced at the note and nodded absently, "Sure, just leave when you need to," and she continued to measure as James cut the lemon expertly.

They had worked like this in the past week, mostly in productive silence. They had moved as if their tasks had been assigned.

Of course, Arabella expected them to work the same way that morning. But she felt a constant flutter in her belly, and even as she focused on leveling dry ingredients and cutting butter, Arabella found herself taking secretive peeps at what James was doing.

He had now worked his way to taking the zest out of the lemon and had neatly set the materials aside.

"Why do you keep looking at me?"

Arabella was startled by the robotic voice, but she chose to hide a guilty smile. She transferred the dry ingredients into a sieve and tapped it with her hand to sift it out.

Intensely focused on an otherwise mundane task, she didn't notice that James had taken the rolling pin from the cupboard.

He poked the side of her belly, earning a surprised yelp from her.

"What on earth!" Arabella could imagine him laughing at her.

The rolling pin kept jabbing her and she moved to avoid or counter the playful attacks. "Oh my god, James, stop!" She laughed as she cradled the bowl near her chest.

The text-to-speech was turned on again. "Why do you keep looking at me," it repeated.

An owlish expression plastered on her face. She dumped one hand into the bowl of flour, flattening its contents with her palm.

"I wasn't! I can't even see you!"

But the rolling pin threatened another torturous tickle.

"N-No, James," she shrieked, as he advanced again, causing her skin to tingle, her body flushing from their spirited sparring.

"Oh my god, you are annoying." She cupped a large amount of flour and instinctively threw it in front of her.

Her face brightened, eyes wide and challenging, "How do you like that, huh?" But her taunting was cut short as her expression changed, mesmerized, as her eyes observed the revelation in front of her.

The flour traced the outline of his features lightly, but as the dust dissipated, it hugged what seemed to be cheeks and a jawline that looked like a happy grin.

The corners of her mouth started to pull up, and within moments she was beaming at the discovery. "James, don't move!" She threw handfuls of flour at him, gradually seeing snippets of his face, body, and height.

Compared to her, James felt tall. From the second that she had been able to see puzzle pieces of his face and match it to the photo in her memory, she could now conjure a solid picture of how James looked.

For the first time, James felt completely real.

"I have to go, sorry." The voice from the laptop rang loud and clear in contrast to their sudden silence. "I'll be back later."

Still in wonderment, she found herself unable to respond, which was why James may have felt it necessary to assure her as distant typing echoed in the room once again.

"For the record, I think you are the key to finally making me unstuck. I feel very lucky to have met you. Thank you, Arabella."

A wind whooshed past her, stunning her and warming her at the same time as James left the apartment presumably to disappear to that unknown realm after stepping past the door.

Realizing that she was now alone in her apartment, Arabella looked around and wondered how she had become so accustomed to his presence that she could now feel it if he wasn't with her. They keep saying that people should fear ghosts, but really, it's people that we should fear, as they have the capacity to hurt you in more ways than one.

She stepped out of the ring of flour, shaking her head and tutting at herself for making such a mess. She would have to repeat measuring the dry ingredients for the muffins too.

Smirking to herself as she took the broom from a cabinet, she sighed and began to clean.

The trouble had been worth it.

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A/N: A glimpse of his face! Who would've thought? Do tell me your thoughts in the comments!

Hello! We are all still anxiously waiting for the ONC results, but even if I get don't get through (but hopefully I do!) I promise to finish this tale for all my readers and for my personal satisfaction too! Thank you so much for your support!

If you enjoyed this chapter, kindly consider giving it a vote :) Stay home, stay safe.

UPDATED: Edits added May 4, 2020