By the time the sun went down behind the towers of Manhattan and threw gold across the East River, I had already decided I was finally going to tell the truth.

Right now, as I speak, I’m thousands of miles from where it all started—sitting in a cramped rented room off Queens Boulevard in New York City, my uniform hanging on the back of a cheap chair, the sirens of the NYPD echoing somewhere far below my window. But the story that keeps me up at night didn’t happen here, in this city of steel and lights.

It happened in a small American town most people will never find on a map. A place called Cedar Ridge, pressed between pine forests and forgotten highways somewhere in Washington State, where fog clings to the road and the sky feels close enough to touch.

My name is Fadil. I’m twenty-three years old. Back home, in Indonesia, people used to joke that I was “too handsome to be a cop”—tall, athletic, a clean face, the kind of smile that makes people lower their guard. When I was accepted into an international program and got assigned as a junior officer attached to a sheriff’s station in the U.S., my mother cried proud tears on a shaky video call from Jakarta.
“You jaga nama baik, ya,” she told me.
Guard our name. Make us proud.

I promised I would.

Cedar Ridge was my first real post in America. Not New York, not Los Angeles—just a quiet county town with one main street, a diner that always smelled like coffee and fried eggs, and a gas station whose neon sign buzzed all night. My quarters were a small government house at the end of a narrow road lined with pines. The place was simple: one bedroom, one small kitchen, a sagging couch, the smell of old carpet baked into the walls. But it was mine.

Out there, the nights were big. The kind of dark that swallowed sound. No city hum, no traffic, just the low chorus of crickets and the occasional distant rumble of a truck on Route 12.

I didn’t feel anything strange at first. The first week, my life was a routine checklist: morning runs along the foggy road, signing paperwork at the station, learning the radio codes, memorizing the area, calling my mother back home before she went to sleep and I went on night patrol. It was a clean kind of loneliness, the kind I thought I could handle.

Then came the night that split my life into “before” and “after.”

It was a little after nine p.m. I’d just gotten off a long shift—traffic stop, domestic call, paperwork that refused to end. I still had my uniform on, my badge heavy on my chest, when I heard it: a soft, careful knock at the front door.

Not frantic. Not loud.
Just… deliberate. Four taps. Pause. Four taps again.

I remember glancing at the clock above the television. 9:14 p.m. I muted the TV. The silence in that little house wrapped itself around me as I walked to the door.

“Cedar Ridge Sheriff’s Office,” I called automatically, hand resting on the handle, voice steady out of habit. “Who’s there?”

No answer. Only the steady sound of my own breathing.

I unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

He was standing right there on the cold concrete porch.

He looked about twenty-one. Maybe younger. Jeans, a faded hoodie, sneakers that looked clean but worn in. His hair was damp like he’d been walking in mist, and his face—

His face glowed.

Not in some supernatural way with beams of light shooting out, nothing like that. It was subtler, stranger. His skin had that soft, almost luminous look, as if light inside the house was catching the edges of his cheekbones and reflecting back. His eyes were clear, too clear, the warm kind of brown that doesn’t belong in a night this dark.

“Hey,” he said, with a small, tentative smile. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you.”

For a second, I forgot how to breathe.

I’d seen all types of faces—drunk, angry, scared, broken. But this boy’s face made the air in my lungs go thin. Not just because he was…beautiful. It was something else, something I still can’t explain. Like I’d seen him somewhere before and couldn’t remember when.

“My name’s Ari,” he added, as if we had all the time in the world.

His voice was light, a little hoarse, like he’d been laughing all day and hadn’t quite recovered. He shifted his weight, hands tucked into the front pocket of his hoodie.

I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but my brain lagged behind my tongue.

“I—uh,” I finally managed, sounding less like a trained officer and more like a teenager on his first day of school, “I’m Officer Fadil.”

“I know,” he said softly, that small smile turning into something slightly amused. “Everybody in town knows the new cop at the end of the road.”

Before I could ask his last name, his address, or what exactly he needed from me at nine at night, Ari took a tiny step backward.

“I just wanted to say hi,” he said. “My place is at the end of the street. If you ever need anything…you can knock.”

Then he turned, gave a quick little wave over his shoulder, and walked away.

He didn’t come inside. He didn’t ramble or linger or try to peek past my shoulder. No awkward small talk. No request. In less than twenty seconds, he was gone.

I stood there with my hand still on the doorknob, the cold from outside creeping into my bones, trying to understand why my heart was beating too fast for such a simple interaction.

When I looked down the road, the street was empty. The path that led past the other houses and dead-ended at the tree line seemed darker than usual, the porch lights of my neighbors dim and distant.

I listened for his footsteps. For the sound of gravel crunching under shoes.

Nothing.

Just the hum of the porch light and the whisper of wind through the pines.

I shut the door slowly, the way people do when they’re trying not to admit they’re unsettled.

That was the first time I met Ari.

He didn’t stay a stranger.

He started coming by at least three nights a week after that.

Always in the evening. Always with that same gentle knock—four taps, a pause, four taps again. Sometimes it was just to ask how my shift had gone, sometimes to tell me about a movie he’d watched on his phone, sometimes to complain that the diner coffee in town was “a crime in itself.”

He never stayed long. Five minutes. Ten, at most. Just enough time to fill the room with his presence and then leave me staring at the door like a fool.

Every time he came, I would offer, “Do you want me to walk you back?”

Every time, he’d shake his head with an easy grin.

“Nah, it’s fine.”

“It’s late,” I’d insist. “I don’t mind. It’s literally one road.”

He’d laugh, that quiet, airy laugh that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Officer, you already walk the whole town every day. Don’t make it a habit to escort me too or people will talk.”

I’d roll my eyes, pretending I didn’t care, but under the teasing, there was something else—a tug in my chest whenever he turned me down.

“You sure?” I’d push, out of duty and something more.

“Yeah.” He’d wave me off. “Seriously. It’s more work for you. I’m good.”

He always left the same way: one step away from the door, a backward glance, that half-smile.

Then he’d be gone.

And every single time, when I stepped onto the porch to watch him go, the street would be empty, the night still. No rhythm of retreating footsteps. No fading silhouette. Just silence, sitting heavy on the narrow road.

At first I told myself I was tired. Long shifts, new environment, jet lag from switching between time zones to call my mother on video. I was overthinking. It was a small town. Sound carried weird in the trees. Maybe he was just…light on his feet. Maybe he cut across the yards instead of walking down the road.

Still, the more I watched that empty street after he “left,” the more something cold settled at the edge of my thoughts.

The funny thing was, whenever Ari was actually there—sitting on the arm of my couch, leaning in the kitchen doorway, shoulders relaxed, face tilted slightly toward me—I didn’t feel afraid.

I felt…split.

My chest would go cold and warm at the same time. A strange, floating kind of calm, like stepping into a lake where the sun is hot but the water is ice. My heart didn’t race like it did in a chase. It changed rhythm: a softer, irregular beat, not from adrenaline, but from something quieter, deeper, more dangerous.

I told myself it was nothing.

I told myself I was just lonely.

I told myself a lot of things.

When you grow up in a culture that expects you to fit into a neat little box—good son, good Muslim, good officer—it’s easy to shove anything complicated into a dark corner of your mind and lock the door. Feelings you don’t recognize. Thoughts you don’t want to name.

Whenever Ari looked at me too long, that locked door rattled.

One night, about three weeks after our first meeting, he showed up looking more serious than usual.

It was late. Rain had been falling all afternoon, steady and persistent, turning the dirt along the road into dark mud. The air smelled like wet earth and cold leaves. I was halfway through reheating leftover noodles when the knock came—four taps, pause, four taps.

I wiped my hands on a kitchen towel and went to the door.

Ari stood there, hoodie damp, hair pushed back, droplets of rain on his eyelashes. For the first time, there was no smile on his face.

“Hey,” I said cautiously. “You okay?”

He exhaled slowly and stepped inside when I moved aside. For once, he didn’t linger near the door. He walked straight to the small table by the window and pulled out a chair.

“Can I sit?” he asked.

“You never ask,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood. “You usually just hover like a ghost.”

He looked up sharply, something unreadable flickering over his expression. Then he laughed it off, but the sound was hollow.

“A ghost, huh?” he echoed. “That’s one way to put it.”

I frowned and sat across from him. The lamplight drew shadows along his jawline, and the glow of his skin seemed even more pronounced against the gloom outside.

For a few seconds, we said nothing.

Then Ari spoke, barely above a whisper.

“I always wanted to be a cop,” he said. “Like you.”

I leaned back, caught off guard. “You did?”

“Yeah.” He twirled the edge of a paper napkin between his fingers. “Thought it sounded like the perfect job. Protect people. Help them. Do something that matters. Wear the badge and know you earned it.”

He looked down at the napkin, ripped the corner off, and rolled it into a tiny ball.

“But my parents hated the idea,” he added. “They don’t…trust the police. Not here. Not anywhere, I think.”

Pain edged his voice in a way I couldn’t ignore.

“Why?” I asked softly.

He smiled, but it was the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “A cop once ruined our family,” he said simply.

The room felt heavier all at once, the air thicker. Outside, the rain tapped harder on the glass.

I opened my mouth, searching for something that wasn’t a cliché.

“Not all cops are bad, Ari,” I said finally. “Some of us really do want to protect people. We’re not all the same.”

“I know,” he replied calmly. “I know you’re not like that.”

Our eyes met across the table. For a moment I forgot where we were. It was just me and him and the hum of the old fridge in the corner.

“But…” he added, so quietly I almost missed it, “it’s already too late.”

Too late.

The words lodged somewhere behind my ribs and stayed there. They echoed in my head later that night when I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Too late for what? Too late to fix his family? Too late for him to become a cop? Too late for something else I hadn’t realized was even on the line?

I could have asked.

I didn’t.

Every time Ari was there, logic dimmed like lights going down in a theater. The world narrowed to his voice, his hands, the way his eyes softened when he listened.

I told myself I should care more about the strange details.

The way he always seemed to know how I felt before I said anything.
“You look exhausted,” he’d note, on nights when I didn’t even realize my shoulders were sagging.
“Rough call?” he’d ask when I’d just gotten back from a scene.
He knew when I was angry, when I was sad, when I missed home. He knew things I didn’t remember telling him.

He never once touched me. Not even a friendly nudge on the shoulder. But sometimes, when he moved closer to read something over my arm or leaned in to look at my phone, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up, as if my body understood something my mind refused to see.

I fought with myself in those weeks.

I told myself I was normal.

Normal meant I couldn’t be drawn to another man. Not that way. Not with that dizzy mixture of fear and excitement. Not with that stupid, instinctive smile that kept pulling at my mouth whenever he showed up. I’d spent my whole life following rules, and none of them had prepared me for this kind of confusion.

But feelings don’t ask for permission.

By the time the night that changed everything came, I was already lost.

It was a Thursday. I remember that because earlier at the station, my partner joked that Thursdays in Cedar Ridge were the quietest nights of the week. “Even the criminals are tired,” he’d said, feet up on his desk, coffee going cold. “You could probably sleep through your shift and no one would notice.”

He was wrong.

By evening, a thin drizzle had settled over the town, the kind that feels less like rain and more like the sky sighing. The air was colder than usual, sharp enough to sting when I stepped outside. My shift had been slow but heavy—paperwork, old case files, a call from a woman who just wanted someone to listen to her talk about her missing cat.

I drove home with my radio muted, headlights carving a path through the mist. The government houses lined up along the road seemed smaller in the damp, their roofs beaded with wet. When I parked in front of my place, the only sound was the engine ticking as it cooled.

I was halfway out of my uniform shirt, standing in the living room, when the knock came.

Four taps. Pause. Four taps again.

I knew it was him before I reached the door.

My heart jumped into my throat. My hands went cold. I swallowed once, pulled the shirt back on, not even bothering with the buttons, and opened the door.

Ari stood on the porch, hoodie soaked through, rain dripping from his hair onto his cheeks. His eyes looked tired, the skin beneath them shadowed, but his face still had that strange, quiet glow.

“Hey,” I said, softer than I meant to. “You’re soaked.”

He smiled faintly. “It’s just rain.”

“Come inside.” I stepped back quickly. “You’ll get sick.”

He walked in, slower than usual, shoulders drooping. I shut the door behind him and heard the rain intensify outside, drumming harder on the roof.

“Rough night?” I asked, my back resting against the door for a second too long.

He hesitated, then nodded. “I’m just…tired.”

The word hung in the air.

I watched him drift toward the couch, drop down onto it like the cushions were suddenly the only thing keeping him from collapsing completely.

Without thinking, I moved closer.

“What happened?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing new. Just—” he paused, searching for the right words. “You ever feel like you’re trying to wake up from a dream, but you’re not sure which part is the dream?”

I thought of the distance between me and home. The city lights of Jakarta. My mother’s face on a screen. The badge pinned to my chest. This tiny house in the middle of an American forest, and the boy glowing in my living room like a secret.

“Lately?” I said with a tight laugh. “Every day.”

He smiled at that, but the smile was weaker than usual.

Silence pressed in on us. The rain outside softened, turned into a light tapping again, like fingers on glass.

My chest hurt, like there was something stuck there that needed to be let out.

I don’t know what pushed me over the edge in that moment. Maybe it was the way his shoulders curled inward. Maybe it was the way his eyes, for once, looked as fragile as I felt. Maybe I was just tired of lying to myself.

Whatever it was, I heard the words leave my mouth before I could stop them.

“Ari,” I said quietly, “I like you.”

He looked up, sharp, eyes wide.

I didn’t back down.

“I…don’t know why,” I went on, my voice shaking, the words tumbling out faster now that the dam had cracked. “I don’t know when it started. I just know I wait for your knock every night. I know my heart does something weird whenever you’re here. And I know I’ve been trying to pretend it’s nothing because it doesn’t make sense and it shouldn’t be happening, but—”

I swallowed.

“But it is. I like you.”

The room went very, very still.

The rain outside faded to a whisper. The clock on the wall ticked too loudly. Somewhere under the floor, the old pipes groaned.

Ari didn’t say anything.

He just stared at me, like he was trying to memorize my face.

Seconds stretched, then snapped. I felt my courage shrivel, embarrassment heating my skin.

“Forget it,” I muttered, looking away. “You don’t have to say anything. I just—”

“I wanted this,” he interrupted softly.

My head snapped back toward him.

He was watching me with an expression I’d never seen before. Not amusement. Not teasing. Not sadness.

It was something like relief.

“I wanted to feel that,” he continued. “To hear it. To know it was real.”

My knees felt weak. “So you—?”

He nodded once. “I like you too, Officer.”

A nervous laugh slipped out of me, half joy, half disbelief. “You can just say my name, you know. It’s not illegal.”

“Fine,” he said, and the ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I like you too, Fadil.”

My heart slammed against my ribs with such force I thought it would break right through.

For a few moments, everything was bright and terrifying and perfect. No rules, no questions, just the dizzy, weightless rush of being seen and wanted by the one person I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Then Ari’s gaze dropped to his hands, and the warmth in my chest froze.

“But I can’t stay long,” he whispered.

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“One day,” he said, “I’m going to have to go. And when I do…you won’t be able to find me. No matter how hard you look.”

Fear and anger rose in me together, a hot, confused surge.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Your house is at the end of the road. If you disappear, I’ll knock until the paint peels off your door.”

His eyes lifted slowly, meeting mine with a gentleness that hurt more than any accusation.

“You won’t find me,” he said again, voice breaking just slightly. “Even if you search until you’re exhausted.”

There was something haunted in his words, something old and tired. It felt like the moment before a confession or the edge of a cliff.

I should have asked what he meant.

Instead, I did what I’d been doing all along.

I pushed the unease down and let the warmth win.

We didn’t kiss. We didn’t touch. We just sat there in that cramped living room, the air between us crowded with unsaid things, our new confession resting like a fragile glass ornament on the table.

Outside, the rain finally stopped.

The next three months were the strangest of my life.

We never gave our connection a name, but it colored everything. I started living on a rhythm that wasn’t mine: shift schedules and Ari’s visits. Some nights he came early. Some nights he came late. Occasionally, he didn’t come at all, and I’d pace the living room, restless and annoyed with myself for missing him so much.

We’d talk about nothing and everything—his favorite songs, my training stories, the differences between American and Indonesian police procedures, the way the stars looked different here than they did back home. His laughter filled the house, turned the bare walls into something almost like a home. He made fun of the way I lined up my shoes by the door. I teased him about his terrible coffee choices.

But underneath the lightness, the oddities multiplied.

Sometimes, he’d show up when my door was locked and deadbolted. I’d hear the knock, open up, and there he’d be, as if the latch meant nothing. I’d tell myself I must have forgotten to lock it. I’d check it twice the next day and still forget by nightfall.

Sometimes, he’d say something that made my skin prickle.

“Rough dream last night?” he’d ask, before I mentioned the nightmare that had dragged me awake at three in the morning.

“You miss your mom more today,” he’d note, without me saying a word.

He knew when I was angry about a case. He knew when I was thinking about quitting, about running back home to Jakarta and pretending this entire assignment had never happened. He knew when guilt gnawed at me for what I felt for him, and when my faith felt too small for the life I was living.

“What are you, a mind reader?” I’d joke weakly.

He’d shrug. “You’re easier to read than you think.”

On more than one night, he’d say, “Thanks for making me feel alive again,” in this strange, distant tone.

I’d frown. “Again?”

He’d just smile, that sad, knowing little smile. “You’ll understand someday.”

I never pushed. I was afraid of the answer.

Three months. Three months of shared silences and almost-touches, of standing too close in the doorway and pretending it was accidental. Three months of my world shrinking to a house at the end of a road, a boy with glowing skin, and the sound of four soft knocks on wood.

Then, like a thin sheet of glass finally giving way under pressure, the illusion shattered.

It happened on a bright afternoon, not at night.

I was walking back from the station in uniform, the autumn air crisp enough to burn my lungs. A neighbor from two houses down, an older man with a baseball cap and a belly that strained his flannel shirt, waved me over from his front yard.

“Officer!” he called. “Got a minute?”

I walked up, adjusting my duty belt, squinting against the low sun.

“Yes, sir?” I said politely.

He scratched his chin, looking uncomfortable. “Look, this might be nothing. Maybe I’m just seeing things. But…you okay?”

The question threw me. “Yes,” I replied slowly. “Why?”

He shifted his weight. “You’ve been…uh…talking to yourself a lot lately.”

I froze.

“Excuse me?” I asked, trying to laugh it off.

He didn’t smile. “Sometimes late at night, I take the trash out, or I walk the dog. I see you standing in your yard, or sitting on your porch, talking. Laughing. Pausing like you’re listening.” He glanced at my face, worried. “But there’s nobody there.”

My stomach dropped.

“I’m not talking to myself,” I said stiffly. “I’m talking to my neighbor. The kid who lives at the end of the road. Ari. You’ve seen him, right?”

The man’s expression changed. The color drained from his face.

“Ari?” he repeated slowly. “Son, are you messing with me?”

“No,” I said. “Short guy, early twenties, hoodie, dark hair. Said he lives in the last house.”

The neighbor stared at the ground for a moment. When he looked up, something like pity had settled in his eyes.

“The house at the end of the road is empty,” he said quietly. “Been empty for a year now. Since the accident.”

Ice spread through my chest.

“What accident?” I heard myself ask, though my throat felt too tight.

The man took off his cap, ran a hand through his thinning hair.

“Terrible thing,” he murmured. “Their boy was about twenty-one. Good kid. Wanted to do something in law enforcement, I think. Got hit out on Route 12. Drunk driver.” He hesitated. “Driver was a cop, off duty. Whole case got…messy. Family never felt like they got justice. Moved away after the funeral. Nobody’s touched that house since.”

My tongue felt heavy.

“What was his name?” I forced out.

The neighbor’s eyes softened. “Ari,” he said. “Kid’s name was Ari.”

The world tilted.

For a moment, the sounds of the neighborhood—distant lawnmower, barking dog, a car door slamming—faded into a dull roar.

Ari.

Hit by a cop.

House empty for a year.

My mind refused to stitch the facts together. It jumped between them, stumbling, reaching for any other explanation.

“That can’t be right,” I said hoarsely. “I talk to him almost every night.”

The neighbor stepped closer, voice dropping. “Whatever you’re going through, son, you don’t have to go through it alone,” he said. “But I swear to you, nobody’s been in that house for months.”

I must have said something. I must have nodded, thanked him, made some excuse. I don’t remember. All I remember is walking away, the ground unsteady under my boots.

I didn’t go home right away.

I walked past my place, heart pounding in my ears, all the way to the end of the road.

The house there sat quiet and small between two towering pines, its windows dark, the front steps dusted with leaves. Up close, it was obvious nobody had lived there in a long time. The paint on the porch railing was peeling. The flower bed by the door was overrun with weeds. A cobweb fluttered in the corner of the front window frame.

My hand shook as I tried the front door.

It was unlocked.

The smell hit me first when I stepped inside: stale air, dust, old wood, a faint hint of something damp. The kind of smell that clings to places the living have abandoned.

The living.

The word made my skin crawl.

Sunlight filtered through sheer curtains, turning the dust motes into slow-moving galaxies. The furniture was still there—a sagging couch, a coffee table, a bookshelf with a few leftover paperbacks. But everything was covered in a thin film of neglect. The place felt…paused. Frozen mid-breath.

I walked through the small living room like I was trespassing in a dream.

“Ari?” I called once, my voice sounding strange in the empty house.

No answer.

In the far corner, there was a narrow table with a single framed photograph on it.

Something in me knew what I would see before I reached it.

I picked up the frame with shaking hands.

The glass was cool against my fingertips.

The picture inside showed a young man in a simple button-down shirt, standing in front of what looked like a school building. He was smiling, soft and easy, his face glowing with that same subtle light I knew too well. His eyes were bright, hopeful, alive.

It was Ari.

Exactly the way I’d seen him for three months.

But this version of him was trapped under glass and dust, in a house that smelled like absence.

My vision blurred. I set the frame back down slowly, afraid I’d drop it.

“So,” I whispered into the quiet, “who have I been talking to?”

The house didn’t answer.

My heart hammered, a desperate, panicked beat. The rational part of my brain scrambled for explanations—stress, hallucinations, some elaborate prank, a coincidence of faces.

But the memory of his hands on my table, his voice in my doorway, his eyes locking onto mine in that rain-slicked night refused to be rationalized away.

I stumbled out of the house, lungs burning as if I’d been running.

The sky outside had turned overcast again, gray clouds gathering over the tree line. The road back to my place felt longer than usual. My boots thudded on the gravel, but my legs felt not quite connected to the rest of me.

When I reached my own front door, I didn’t turn on the TV, didn’t take off my boots, didn’t make coffee. I just sank into the chair by the small window and stared at my hands.

Hands that had opened the door for him. Hands that had gestured as we talked. Hands that had never actually touched him.

Fear crawled up the back of my neck.

I did the only thing I knew how to do when the world stopped making sense.

I prayed.

I hadn’t prayed properly in days. I’d been too busy, too tired, too distracted. Guilt pricked at me as I rolled my small prayer mat out on the carpet, facing a direction that felt impossibly far from home.

I sat there, knees on thin cloth, and let the familiar words spill from my lips. Every verse I knew. Every plea I remembered. Arabic phrases mixed with whispers in Bahasa and English. I asked for clarity. For protection. For forgiveness—for the things I’d felt, for the things I hadn’t done, for wanting someone who maybe wasn’t even alive.

My chest hurt. My throat burned. But with every repetition, with every whispered “Amin,” something in me eased just a little, like a fist slowly unclenching.

When I finished, I stayed there in silence for a long time.

The house didn’t feel as empty as it had a few hours earlier.

There was no obvious sound, no voice from the walls, no shimmering figure in the corner. Just a faint warmth spreading through my chest, gentle and steady, like someone had placed a hand over my heart from the inside.

For the first time since I’d left the neighbor’s yard, I breathed without feeling like the air might cut me.

That night, I expected to hear the familiar knock.

I waited for it.

Eight p.m.
Nine p.m.
Midnight.

Four taps, pause, four taps.

The house stayed silent.

For the first time in three months, Ari didn’t come.

I barely slept. Every creak of the floorboards, every gust of wind against the walls made me sit up, heart racing, listening for his knock. It never came.

The next day at the station, my partner asked if I was sick. I said no. My reflection in the bathroom mirror told a different truth: dark circles under my eyes, jaw clenched, shoulders stiff.

“Rough night?” the sheriff asked, passing by my desk.

“Yeah,” I said, because it was easier than explaining.

The second night, he didn’t come either.

On the third night, just when I started to wonder if maybe I’d imagined everything—if the last three months were nothing more than some elaborate breakdown my mind had cooked up to fill the lonely spaces—he came back.

But not through the door.

Through my dreams.

It felt more real than any waking moment I’d had that week.

I was standing in my own living room, but everything was softer. The edges of the furniture blurred slightly, like an old photograph. The light was warm, golden, even though I knew it was nighttime. Outside the window, the pines swayed slowly, their silhouettes painted against a sky I couldn’t see clearly.

Ari was there, in the middle of the room, wearing the same hoodie, the same jeans. But there was something different about him now. The glow I’d always noticed was stronger, more defined, like a halo under his skin. His eyes looked clearer, too, as if someone had wiped away a film of sadness.

He smiled when he saw me. A real smile this time. Bright. Free.

“Hey,” he said.

My throat closed. “Where have you been?”

“Busy,” he replied lightly. “Traveling, I guess.”

I took a step toward him and felt the floor under my feet. It wasn’t like a regular dream, where your movements feel slow and sticky. Everything here felt…normal. Real.

“Is this a dream?” I asked.

He tilted his head. “Does it matter?”

It did. It didn’t. I didn’t know.

“What’s happening to you?” My voice trembled. “Who are you, Ari? Really?”

He looked at me with so much affection it made my chest ache.

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said, ignoring my question. “For praying for me.”

I blinked. “You…felt that?”

He nodded. “Every word. It felt like…light. Like someone opened a window in a room that had been closed for too long.”

His voice was different now—calmer, steadier. There was peace in it, a softness that hadn’t been there before.

“I was scared,” I admitted. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did exactly what you needed to do,” he said. “And what I needed you to do.”

I took another step toward him. I could see individual strands of hair on his head, the small scar near his chin, the way his hoodie wrinkled at his elbows. If this was a dream, it was the most detailed one I’d ever had.

“Are you…?” I swallowed. “Are you dead, Ari?”

The word felt heavy, rude, thrown like a stone.

He didn’t flinch.

“I’ve been gone for a long time,” he said gently. “Long before you ever came to Cedar Ridge.”

Pain punched through me.

“So all this time,” I whispered, “I’ve been…falling for a ghost?”

The word hung in the air between us.

Ari’s eyes softened.

“I don’t like that word,” he said. “Makes me sound like a bad horror movie. I was just…stuck. Holding on to a place, to a story that hadn’t finished for me yet.”

“And I was part of that story?” I asked.

“You were the last chapter,” he replied.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “That’s not funny.”

He smiled sadly. “It’s not supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be true.”

I shook my head. “What happened to you, Ari?”

He hesitated. The golden light around him dimmed just a little.

“Car accident,” he said finally. “On Route 12. Late at night. Wrong place, wrong time. You already know most of it.”

“Was it really a cop?” I asked, my voice small. “The driver?”

A shadow crossed his face. For a moment, he looked less bright, more like the boy who’d told me his family didn’t trust the police.

“It wasn’t you,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

He looked down, then back up, and for the first time, I saw something like resolve in his eyes.

“I forgive him,” he said quietly. “The one who hit me. I forgave him a while ago.”

“That doesn’t mean he deserves it,” I muttered, anger flaring on his behalf.

“Maybe he doesn’t,” Ari replied. “But I needed to let go. Holding on to anger kept me here. Kept me stuck in a place that wasn’t mine anymore. I didn’t want that to be my whole story.”

He stepped closer. I could almost feel warmth radiating from him now, brushing against my skin, raising goosebumps along my arms.

“You’re a cop,” he said. “A good one. Don’t throw away your badge because of what happened to me. Don’t hate your job because of my past.”

Tears stung my eyes.

“I don’t know how to be the same after this,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to go on like nothing happened.”

“You’re not supposed to be the same,” he said simply. “You’re supposed to be better. Softer. Stronger. More careful with the people who trust you. More stubborn about the truth. That’s what this was for.”

“What what was for?” I asked, half choked. “You hanging around my house for three months?”

He smiled, and it was like watching the sun rise.

“Three months with you was my last gift,” he said. “A chance to feel something good again. To laugh. To be seen. To hear my name in someone else’s mouth and not feel pain. You gave me that, Fadil.”

My vision blurred completely now. I blinked hard, but the tears spilled over, hot tracks down my cheeks.

“That’s not fair,” I said. “You can’t just walk into my life, make me feel all of this, and then say it was just a gift for you.”

“I didn’t say it was just for me,” he countered gently. “You got something out of it too.”

“Like what?” I demanded. “Nightmares? Confusion? Falling in love with someone who isn’t even—”

“Real?” he finished for me, one eyebrow lifting.

I faltered.

He held my gaze.

“This was real,” he said firmly. “Maybe not in the way you wanted. Maybe not in the way that fits in a file or a report. But the way you cared? The way you changed? The way your heart learned it could feel something you never allowed it to feel before?” He shook his head. “That’s real.”

A tremor ran through me. “I don’t know what to call what I feel for you, Ari.”

He took a small step closer.

“I do,” he said.

His glow brightened, then gentled again, like a candle flame flickering in a steady breeze.

“I like you,” he said softly. “From the beginning. From the first time I watched you stand in that doorway, tired and still trying to be polite. I liked you when you smiled like you didn’t quite believe you deserved to be here. I liked you when you defended the idea of good cops even though the bad ones had done so much damage.”

He swallowed, and for the first time in the dream, his voice shook.

“I like you,” he repeated. “More than I thought I was allowed to. More than someone like me should like someone like you.”

He smiled through the shimmer in his eyes.

“I love you a little,” he admitted. “Maybe more than a little.”

The room swam.

My knees nearly buckled.

I wanted to reach out, to hold him, to cling to the shirt I’d never actually touched. I took a step forward, hand half-raised.

He shook his head gently.

“You can’t,” he said. “Not like that.”

I froze mid-reach.

“Why not?” I whispered.

“Because I’m already leaving,” he replied.

Light was blooming around him now, brighter, softer, taking the edges of his body with it. His hoodie seemed to fade into the glow, his hair catching the radiance like a halo.

“No,” I said, panic rising. “No, not yet. You just came back. Don’t—”

“I didn’t come back,” he interrupted, voice calm. “I came to say goodbye.”

My heart clenched.

“I’m not ready,” I said.

“You don’t have to be,” he replied. “You just have to keep going.”

The light around him spread, filling the room, washing over the walls, the furniture, my hands. I could barely see his features now, just the outline of his face, the curve of his smile.

“I have one request,” he said, his voice echoing slightly now, as if it were coming from a distance and from right beside me at the same time.

“Anything,” I said, the word breaking.

“Don’t stop praying for me,” Ari whispered. “Not because I’m lost anymore. I’m not. But because it keeps us connected in a way that doesn’t hurt either of us.”

“I will,” I vowed. “Every night. I swear.”

The glow intensified, then began to thin, like fog burning away in sunlight.

“Live, Fadil,” he said. “Do your job. Be stubborn about justice. Be gentle with the people nobody believes. Don’t let what happened to me make you bitter. Let it make you kind.”

His voice lowered, so soft I almost missed the last words.

“And if you ever feel alone,” he added, “remember that, for three months, I was there. Really there. And I meant every second of it.”

His outline faded, edges dissolving into light.

Then, right before he vanished completely, I heard him one last time, almost too soft to catch.

“I love you,” he whispered.

The world snapped back.

I woke up in my bed with my heart racing, my pillow damp under my cheek.

My chest hurt, but it wasn’t from panic this time. It was something else—raw, hollow, but strangely calm, like a wound that had finally been cleaned.

The room was dark. The only sound was the soft whir of the heater near the window.

No glow. No figure. No four-tap knock.

I sat up slowly, wiped my face with both hands, and looked toward the door.

For the first time in three months, I didn’t expect it to open.

Days turned into weeks.

Ari didn’t come back.

Not in my dreams. Not in the doorway. Not in the reflection of the TV screen. The house belonged to me again and only me.

But every night, before I went to bed, I rolled out my mat on the worn carpet. I faced a direction that pointed both home and somewhere beyond it, and I spoke his name quietly in my prayers.

“Ya Allah,” I would whisper, “if he was real, if any of that was real, keep him in peace. If he wasn’t, then thank You for whatever that strange mercy was that changed me anyway.”

Each time I did, that same gentle warmth would settle in my chest. Not as strong as before. Not overwhelming. Just enough to remind me I wasn’t talking to emptiness.

Back at the station, I was different. I listened more patiently to people who came in with stories that sounded crazy at first. The woman who swore she heard her late husband’s voice in the hallway after midnight. The teenager who insisted someone was following him, even when we couldn’t find any evidence yet. The man who was sure his missing daughter hadn’t just run away.

I didn’t roll my eyes anymore. I didn’t dismiss them as quickly as some of my colleagues did.

I remembered how it felt to stand in front of a neighbor’s house, clutching a photo of a dead boy I’d had dinner with the night before, and feel the ground tilt under me.

I remembered being on the other side of skepticism.

I became more careful on the road. I cut my speed by a few miles per hour, even when the highway was empty at night. I checked my mirrors twice, three times. I refused to drive if I felt even a little too tired. When I pulled over drunk drivers heading home from the bar, I saw more than a traffic violation. I saw a split second on Route 12 that had changed a family’s life forever and tethered a soul to a lonely road.

I started writing more reports than necessary. Documenting everything. Making sure nothing “messy” quietly disappeared. The sheriff teased me once about being “too thorough.” I just shrugged and kept typing.

After my assignment in Cedar Ridge ended, I was sent to New York for the next phase of the exchange program. Manhattan was loud and bright and chaotic, the complete opposite of that quiet road between the pines. Sirens replaced crickets. Streetlights replaced stars.

But some nights, even here in Queens, with the subway rumbling beneath my building and the glow of Times Square spilling into the sky somewhere across the river, I’ll lie awake and think of that little house at the end of an American road, and the boy who knocked on my door like he’d always belonged there.

Sometimes I catch myself looking at empty doorways a second too long. Sometimes a soft pattern of knocks in a neighboring apartment will make my heart jump before my brain catches up.

He’s gone.

But the space he carved out in my life is still there.

It will always be there.

People assume the biggest loves of your life are the ones that last the longest—the ones that fit into wedding albums and shared mortgages and family holiday photos. But I’ve learned that sometimes, the person who changes you most isn’t the one who walks beside you until you’re old.

Sometimes it’s the one who appears without warning, stays only three months, and then walks away into a light you can’t follow.

Sometimes it’s the boy at the end of a road in rural Washington, whose name you still whisper in your prayers in a cramped apartment in New York City.

This was my three-month love story.

A love that came quietly. A love that left quietly.

A love that first taught me that the borders I drew around my own heart were too small. That kindness is more powerful than fear. That forgiveness can free the living and the dead.

I don’t know how you’ll categorize what happened to me. A haunting. A hallucination. A miracle. A coping mechanism. Maybe it was all of those things. Maybe it was none.

All I know is that, for three months in a small town in the United States, a young cop named Fadil met a boy named Ari who had already left this world. And for reasons I still don’t fully understand, we were given a little time together.

Just enough time for him to feel alive again.

Just enough time for me to learn how to live differently.

Now, when I put on my badge and step into the streets of New York, I carry him with me—not as a ghost that haunts me, but as a quiet presence that reminds me who I want to be.

Every siren, every call, every decision, there’s a small voice at the back of my mind.

Be careful. Be kind. Don’t waste the second chance I gave you.

And every night, when the city finally slows, and the glow of the skyline paints my ceiling, I roll out my mat and whisper his name again.

Ari.

Not as a plea this time.

As a promise.

A promise that I will live in a way that would make him say, in whatever distant place he is now:

Bangga sama kamu.
I’m proud of you.