The Glass Between Us

The apartment was too quiet for sleep. Wait, scratch that. It was the wrong kind of quiet. The kind where you can hear your own thoughts bouncing around like pinballs, each one lighting up another worry you'd forgotten about during the day.

Susan lay in bed staring at the ceiling. One-thirty in the goddamn morning. The radiator was doing that clicking thing again, tap-tap-tapping a language she didn't speak. The bathroom door was open just a crack because she hated sleeping with it fully closed (childhood thing, don't ask), and the mirror in there was catching the streetlight in this weird way that made it look like a portal to somewhere else.

FFS, she needed to stop reading fantasy novels before bed.

She'd run the entire insomnia playbook. Hot tea that was supposed to be calming just made her need to pee. Meditation app that kept buffering. No screens, then all the screens because screw it, maybe exhaustion would win. She'd counted backward from one thousand and got confused around 847 and had to start over twice.

Her mind wouldn't shut up. That was the real, impossible problem. It kept replaying this conversation from work where she'd said "you too" when someone wished her happy birthday even though it wasn't their birthday, and why did that still matter eight hours later? But it did. Everything mattered at one-thirty in the morning.

She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Cold water, maybe. Wake up enough to fall asleep properly. That made sense in the middle of the night logic that never held up in daylight.

The bathroom light was one of those awful fluorescents—the kind that makes you look like a corpse. She flipped it on anyway and let the water run because the sound was something real, something that wasn't just in her head.

She looked up at her reflection.

And then... the pinball machine stopped. This is where the story gets weird.

Her reflection wasn't doing what she was doing.

Susan blinked hard. The reflection stayed steady, looking at her with this expression she recognized but couldn't place. Like when you see a photo of yourself from years ago and think, who was that person? She looked confident. Not fake confident like when she pretended to know what she was doing at work, but actually, genuinely sure of herself.

She stepped back. The reflection didn't move.

Her heartbeat went from zero to a hundred in her chest.

"What the hell," she whispered.

The reflection tilted its head slightly, and there was something so sad in that small movement. Like it was disappointed but not surprised. Then it looked away, toward something outside the frame of the mirror, and she had this crushing feeling that it had somewhere better to be.

The water kept running. She'd forgotten about it completely. Her hands were shaking now, and she didn't know if it was fear or recognition or both.

Two in the morning. She was on the couch, wrapped in her mom's horribly crocheted blanket (love you, Mom, but those holes weren't intentional). Every stupid decision she'd ever made was doing a parade through her brain.

The fellowship she'd turned down because she was scared of moving to a new city. But also, honestly? She felt like an imposter. What if she got there and everyone realized she was faking it? Better to stay where she was, where at least she knew the shape of her limitations.

That job interview she'd canceled last minute. She'd told them she was sick, but really she'd looked at herself in her interview outfit and thought they're going to laugh at me. Not to my face, obviously. After. In the break room. "Can you believe she thought she was qualified for this?"

The friendships she'd let die. Not dramatically, just... stopped texting back. Stopped making plans. She had convinced herself they were just being polite when they invited her places. Who actually wanted her around? She was exhausting even to herself.

Ugh. She was pathetic. No, wait, that was mean. Her therapist would say she was being unkind to herself. But her therapist cost $200 an hour and still she was here, on a couch at two in the morning, having a breakdown about her choices.

She didn't mean to, but her eyes slid toward the bathroom.

The reflection was back.

This time it was doing things. Living. Thriving, actually. Brushing its hair like it enjoyed taking care of itself instead of just doing the minimum to look presentable. There was a wine glass in its hand at one point, mid-laugh at something someone off-screen had said. The reflection was wearing this dress she'd seen online once and almost bought but didn't because when would she ever go anywhere nice enough to wear it?

The reflection checked its phone and smiled this private little smile that made her chest hurt.

Someone loved that version of her. Someone was texting that version of her at two in the morning for good reasons, not emergency reasons.

"Stop," she said out loud. "Please."

But she couldn't look away. The reflection was doing all the things she'd imagined herself doing someday, when she was ready, when she was better, when she was more... something. More everything.

The life she could have had was happening without her, and she was watching it like a movie she couldn't afford a ticket to.

At 2:49, she stood in front of the mirror. This was insane. She knew it was insane. But insane was better than the crushing weight of being herself, so here she was.

The reflection looked at her directly this time. Its mouth moved.

She couldn't hear words, but she knew what it was asking: Why didn't you choose me?

"I didn't..." She stopped. Started again. "I thought I'd fail. I thought everyone was waiting for me to fail so they could say they knew it all along. I thought..."

Her voice was doing that wobbling thing that happened right before crying, but she pushed through.

"I was scared of wanting things. Real things. The big things that matter. Because what if I tried and it wasn't enough? What if I was exactly as mediocre as I suspected? At least this way, I could tell myself I never really tried. That's better than trying and failing, right?"

Wrong. She knew it was wrong even as she said it.

The reflection's expression softened into something that wasn't quite pity but wasn't quite forgiveness either. Understanding, maybe. The kind that comes from knowing someone so well that their failures don't surprise you anymore.

Its mouth moved again: You didn't lose me. You walked away.

Susan wanted to argue. To say it wasn't that simple, that life was complicated, that she'd had reasons. But at 2:49 in the morning, in front of a mirror that was showing her everything she'd given up, the excuses crumbled.

"I can't stop wanting you," she whispered. "That life. I can't stop wanting it."

The reflection considered this. Then, impossibly, it smiled. Just a little. Just enough.

At exactly 3:03 (she noticed because she always woke up at 3:03 when she had nightmares, some weird internal alarm clock of anxiety), the mirror fogged over.

Not from her breath. The fog was coming from the other side.

When it cleared, the reflection was closer, pressing its palm against the glass. Behind it, she could see glimpses of that other life. An apartment with plants that were actually alive. A desk with a manuscript on it, her name at the top like she wasn't afraid of being seen. Friends around a dinner table, the kind of easy laughter that comes from knowing you're loved. Someone's arm around her waist, casual, comfortable, real.

The reflection mouthed one word: Switch?

Her hand moved toward the glass without her deciding to move it. Like her body knew what her mind was still debating.

But just before her fingers touched the surface, she stopped.

"I want that life," she said. "But... not like this. Not by magic or whatever this is. That's just another kind of running away, isn't it?"

The reflection pulled its hand back slowly. It nodded once.

Then it mouthed: Begin.

A crack appeared in the mirror, thin as a hair, running from top to bottom. Not shattering it, just... marking it. A line between before and after.

The reflection faded. The bathroom was just a bathroom again. Ugly fluorescent light, water still running (her water bill was going to be ridiculous), and her own regular face looking back at her, tired and puffy and real.

But different. Something was different.

By the time the sun came up (sort of, it was cloudy, because of course it was), Susan was at her kitchen table with a beautiful leather bound notebook she found in a desk drawer. She remembered paying a small fortune for it years ago but had been saving for a time when she became worthy of writing in something so gorgeous. She convinced herself that buying something so expensive would somehow attract the life she wanted. (If you buy it, it will come). The pen felt weird in her hand. When did she stop writing things down? When did everything become typing?

Susan wrote at the top of the page: This is where I begin again.

Then she sat there for five minutes, pen hovering, because beginning is the hardest part. Finally, she just started writing, messy, crossing things out:

1. Apply for that job. The one I bookmarked three weeks ago and keep looking at. Even if they reject me. Especially if they reject me. At least I'll know.

2. Text Sarah. Tell her I miss her. Don't overthink it. She either misses me too or she doesn't, but I'll never know if I don't ask.

3. Stop apologizing for wanting things. I'm allowed to want things. Everyone else seems to know this. Time I learned it too.

Her hands were shaking as she picked up her phone. 5:47 AM was too early to text someone, wasn't it? But Sarah worked the early shift at the hospital. She'd be up.

Hey. I know it's random and early and we haven't talked in forever and that's mostly my fault. But I miss you. Can we get coffee sometime? Or wine? Or both?

She hit send before she could delete it five times and rewrite it into nothing.

Then she opened her laptop. The job posting was still bookmarked. Marketing Director. She wasn't qualified. Or was she? She had most of what they were asking for. Not all, but most. That was enough to try, wasn't it?

Susan spent an hour on the application. Her cover letter was probably too honest. She'd written about wanting to do work that mattered, about being ready for a challenge, about choosing courage over comfort. They'd probably think she was having a mid-life crisis.

She was 32. Did that count as mid-life?

She hit submit.

Then she immediately wanted to throw up.

But also... something else. Like she'd been holding her breath for years and finally exhaled. Everything felt sharper. More real. More possible.

She walked to the bathroom. Her reflection looked exhausted but present. Like she was actually living in her body instead of just dragging it around.

She touched the crack in the mirror. It was really there. This thing that had happened, whatever it was, was real.

"I'm trying," she said to her reflection.

Her reflection didn't do anything magical. It just looked back at her, tired and scared and trying.

That was enough. For now, that was enough.

Sarah texted back at 7:15: OH MY GOD YES. I've missed you so much. Wine. Definitely wine. Tonight?

The job would probably reject her. Or maybe they wouldn't. Either way, she'd know she tried.

The mirror stayed cracked, a reminder that something had shifted. That she'd chosen to shift it.

She made coffee. Looked out the window at the cloudy morning. Felt afraid. Felt alive.

Both. She could be both.

That was the beginning.