It was open on the desk. Face up. I went to close it — genuinely, that was the whole intention, just flip it shut and move on. My eyes caught a line. Then another. And "closing it" quietly turned into reading four full pages before some part of me clicked back on and I stopped.
The first glance was an accident. Pages two, three, and four were not. I know the difference and I'm not going to pretend I don't.
We've lived together three years since then. Never mentioned it, obviously. What would I even say? But I've carried this whole time the weight of knowing things about her she chose to write in a private book and never say out loud. Her fears, some stuff about her family, a version of her that only exists on those pages.
I look at her sometimes across the apartment and feel it — this small, uninvited intimacy I stole and can't give back. She thinks I know her the normal way, the way roommates do. I know her four pages deeper than that, and she has no idea, and I have to live with being the only one aware of the imbalance.