Chapter 6
Boundaries
Boundaries rarely disappear all at once.
They blur.
At first you still know where one life ends and another begins.
After that — you simply move between them, as if it were normal.
I lived with Eva.
I met Tamara.
And somewhere in the background, like a badly tuned radio, Antra began to reappear.
Not directly.
Indirectly.
At first — small things.
“Do you know her?” an acquaintance asked me once, casually.
“Know who?”
“That small one… with the short hair. She was seen here in questionable company.”
I shrugged.
In small towns rumours are born faster than facts.
But sometimes rumours are simply warnings in another form.
Then I started seeing her.
Not arranged meetings.
Not calls.
Just… presence.
Near a shop.
Near a bar I no longer visited.
Once even — at the end of a street, late at night.
She stood too close to a stranger’s car.
Spoke too little.
Smoked too calmly.
It was not coincidence.
It was demonstration.
She noticed me and smiled.
Not warmly.
Knowingly.
“You look tired,” she said when we “accidentally” met near the station.
“Life,” I replied.
“Life is always like that when a person lies to himself,” she said and walked away.
No farewell.
No need to explain anything.
She always spoke as if the conversation had already happened elsewhere.
In another room.
Without me.
I did not know exactly what people said about her.
And perhaps that was the worst part.
Someone mentioned substances.
Another — men who paid for silence.
Someone else — that she “knew the right people.”
No one knew anything for certain.
But everyone knew something.
And Antra used that.
She never confirmed.
She never denied.
She listened.
And looked at people as if they were not personalities,
but opportunities.
Psychologists would call that gaze instrumental —
a look in which the other person does not exist as a subject,
but as a resource.
A door.
A weak point.
“You still think you’re in control?” she asked me once.
“I don’t control you,” I replied.
“Exactly,” she smiled. “You control nothing.”
And in that moment I understood she knew more than she said.
Perhaps about me.
Perhaps about Eva.
Perhaps about Tamāra.
Perhaps about things that had not yet happened.
Antra was a person who never asked for anything.
She only created situations in which others offered by themselves.
And such people are dangerous not through force,
but through patience.
Meanwhile, Tamara grew restless.
She felt she was not alone.
And she did not love competition.
“You’re not telling me something,” she said, sitting in my car, arms crossed.
“Everyone has something they don’t say,” I replied.
“No,” she shook her head. “Not like that. You have a woman. And another.”
I remained silent.
“I’m not stupid,” she continued. “And I’m not standing in line.”
Her voice was sharp.
But her eyes held fear.
Not for me.
For herself.
For the possibility that she had chosen wrong again.
Eva, at that time, had become dangerously calm.
She did not follow me.
Did not ask.
Did not investigate.
She observed.
“You’ve changed,” she simply said one evening as we sat in the kitchen.
“Everyone changes,” I answered.
“No,” she looked at me. “You’re hiding.”
And that was worse than accusation.
Because Eva knew me too well.
And I began to realise that this time silence would not be enough.
And then — as if everything needed to become even more complicated —
late one night I opened my profile on that old social network.
I don’t know why.
Habit.
Boredom.
Instinct.
And there was a message.
From someone I had seen hundreds of times in discussions.
A profile that had always been somewhere nearby, but never on my side.
“Hello. You’re here again.”
So simple.
Without emotion.
Without question.
And yet — with the feeling that I had been noticed precisely at the moment when everything else was beginning to collapse.
I looked at the clock.
Almost midnight.
Outside — silence.
The house breathed calmly.
And for the first time in a long while, I felt that someone was entering my life not because I pulled them in, but because they had simply been there all along.
In silence.
In the background.
Waiting.
And I did not yet know that this message would not be salvation,
but a starting point.
New chapters every Wednesday and Sunday.
© 2026 Vito Vilks