"Lesson number one in stalking your ex-girlfriend? Don't get caught."

Jeremy the Stoner passed the joint to me and held up a finger to indicate that he had something to say just as soon as he was able to exhale. I took a long drag and watched Jeremy let the smoke out after a moment, the thick acrid smoke hanging in the air before it drifted high enough to be caught in the crosswinds above the alley.

"You serious man?"

"I don't mean that kind of stalking," I said, knowing exactly how it sounded. "Not the murdery rapey kind, or even the Edward from Twilight kind of stalking. I just kind of check up on her from time to time."

"Huh-huh. And you make sure not to get caught," Jeremy said with a raised eyebrow and I could see the doubt in his face.

I thought about it for a second and felt deeply ashamed. "You're right: I'm totally Edward right now."

We were hanging out in the alley behind Jaime's apartment, so this confession was a hell of a lot more relevant than you probably realized. Jaime lived over on the Danforth in one of the third-storey walk-up apartments that existed over the storefronts along the street. You know the ones: you can usually only access them via a lonely door at the front of the building that nobody ever really sees among the storefronts which populate the street level floors of the building. This door invariably leads to a long flight of stairs that takes you up and up and was hell to move furniture up and down. The thing about some of these apartments was that they were also accessible from the back-alley if you didn't mind climbing up a fire escape to the rooftop of the first-floor restaurant. In the case of the Greek restaurant on the first floor of Jaime's place, the entire rooftop was accessible from said fire-escape and led directly to Jaime's weird little back-patio deal. In warmer weather, she tended to use the rooftop as an extended balcony and even had a propane grill and some plastic chairs set up close to the wooden stairs that led to her kitchen. It was kind of cool, especially with the vents, pipes and air-conditioning units that stuck up from the roof.

If I got there at just the right time, I could even see Jaime through the kitchen window without her realizing that I was outside in the darkness sitting next to the mural-covered wall that the previous tenant had painted.

Apparently, Jeremy had discovered my spot and had decided that it was the perfect spot to smoke a joint. Judging from his cook's whites, he worked in the Greek restaurant downstairs.

"So how long have you been checking in on her, man?"

"Since we've been broken up. She got a restraining order against me and everything, so this is as close as I get."

"Restraining order?" Jeremy asked and I nodded.

Did you forget about the restraining order? Did you think it was some cute little detail that I just glossed over? Do you think it actually had any effect on keeping me away from her? If so, then you obviously don't know the depths to which the humongously rejected will sink.

"She had a cop friend deliver it about a month after we'd broken up. Calvin or some shithead name like that. He was really fucking gung-ho about it too. Probably wanted to get into her pants—"

"You know how some guys are, man," Jeremy nodded in agreement.

"—So you already know he wasn't exactly gentle about the delivery. Dude beat the shit out of me and almost broke my arm."

"And you still came back?"

"Man, fuck that guy! It wasn't like I'd actually hit her or anything so that whole thing came right out of nowhere, you know?"

"Damn dude," Jeremy said and I sat there for a long moment, feeling that familiar impotent anger and grief welling up again. I was surprised to find that depth of emotion still there after all of this time, coupled with a sense of hopelessness that had been dogging me all night.

"I'm not checking up on her to obsess over her or see who she's fucking so I can go and make their lives miserable. It's never been about that for me. It started out with me just wanting some answers, to hear from her how she felt. Maybe I even wanted a chance just to say sorry that I fucked things up the way I did. Now it's all about just making sure that she's okay. That's not so bad is it?"

Jeremy shrugged, clearly stoned out of his skull by this point. He started to say something and lost the thread, then seemed to catch it again and waggled his finger at me.

"So what are you doing here tonight then?"

"I'm having the shittiest night I've had in a long time and I guess I just needed to see her face, you know?"

Jeremy nodded. He totally got it. Stoned or not, he got it.

"What happened with you guys?"

That one surprised me, since so few people besides Claude and Louise had even bothered to ask. All of the rest of our shared friends had simply made assumptions, bad ones, and then with the rumour of the restraining order, they had picked sides (pretty much everybody chose her side but can you blame them?) and chosen their alliances (her side again). Everybody knows you had to have been a real psycho if your ex had to get a restraining order against you.

The truth was a lot more complicated and frustrating.

"I fucked up the relationship," I admitted and stared at the empty kitchen window as if I could will Jaime into existence. I continued after a moment. "The thing is, that I knew I was fucking up and I still continued to actively fuck it up. It was like I couldn't help myself, you know? Thing is I'd always been so damn proud of the fact that I'd never once hit Jaime, so I couldn't be that much of a fuckup, right? I never crossed that line so I was able to convince myself that I wasn't being as much of a shit as I was really being. When she decided that she didn't want to be with me anymore and she just walked right the fuck out, I was left with a lot of questions and a whole lot of a lack of closure. So of course I showed up uninvited. I mean, she wasn't taking my calls, had deleted me off of facebook and social media, so I knew it was over. That says it all right there man. When even Facebook denies that you were ever a couple and all of the photos she shared with you are gone, that hurts more than you think it should. So when I showed up, of course we got into it..." I trailed off, remembering just how bad, how embarrassing it had gotten. I cringed at the memory of some of the things I had said, none of them good.

There was movement in the kitchen and I looked up, expecting to see Jaime, but it was just her roommate, Stella (?) pouring herself a glass of tap water and then drinking said water as if they didn't have a perfectly good Brita Water Jug ($49 from Costco and I still missed it dammit) sitting in the fridge. Still no Jaime.

"It just got messy from that point on and then came the restraining order and that was that," I finished lamely. "I'm not to contact her via electronic or telephonic means and I have to stay at least one hundred metres away from her at all times. And if I don't respect the order, I will be arrested and beaten for resisting arrest. And possibly sodomized with a nightstick, according to Officer McPunch-A-Lot."

"Fucking cops man," Jeremy shook his head.

"I fucked up man. Love of my life and I fucked up so bad."

"Just because she's the love of your life, doesn't mean you're the love of hers," Jeremy said, and stood up, checking his pockets for his belongings. I ignored the surge of anger and even patted myself on the back for not kicking him off the edge of the roof. Sure it was only one storey and he would have been okay, but it would have been just a really mean thing to do. He vanished down the fire escape and I was left alone in my misery, feeling sorry for myself—

Pssst!

I looked back to the fire escape and Jeremy was poking his head over the top.

"Don't be Edward. That stalkery thing is just fucking creepy man, especially for a vampire who's that old, so you know man, just don't be that guy."

"You're saying I should go talk to her?"

"Not at all dude. I'm saying maybe you should get the fuck off the roof and stop stalking your ex before you do something fucking stupid. I can't smoke up here if it's a crime scene, you know?"

******** AUTHOR'S NOTE **********

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