The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Magnetized Man

Omar hadn’t hit her. He would never hit her. But it looked bad.

Ever since Chantelle had started watching those self-help vloggers, she’d started distancing herself, as if their tips were meant to help her with him. The more she checked out, the more often he checked in.

“Are you pissed about something?” he’d ask whenever they hung out. 

“No,” she’d say, squirming in his arms, “I’m just learning more about me.”

“Okay,” he’d say slowly, “what are you learning?”

“It’s not about you, okay?” 

They’d go in circles like this with Omar confused and Chantelle pulling her hair in and out of the same ponytail before announcing that she needed some air. Whenever he asked to walk with her, she’d pull at a loose thread on her shirt until he turned on Netflix and let her go. 

So by the time he was driving over to her place on that fucked up day in January, he was eager to see her. It had been over two weeks. 

The building was one of those old, brown complexes that were plopped all over Scarborough as if a developer had taken a few dumps in between building shinier shit downtown.  Two of the three elevators were out of service, leaving only one rickety metal box to serve 30 floors. The lobby smelled like cigarette smoke, takeout, and Febreze, and the odour only amplified Omar’s irritation. When the elevator finally arrived, Omar squeezed between a woman pushing a stroller and corralling a small boy who kept jumping up and down on the spot. They were joined by an elderly man whose hamper full of groceries kept preventing the door from closing shut.

“Mommy, I wanna push the button. I wanna push the button!”

“Okay. Press 13,” she said. “No! Not –” She pinched her nose and squeezed her eyes shut as her son hit every button from 3 to 12. 

“Sorry,” she said, looking around at Omar and the old man. 

“It’s cool,” Omar said. The old man was less diplomatic.

“You should behave,” he growled at the kid. “Otherwise…” He raised his hand threateningly before putting it back down at his side and turning to look at the numbers blinking on the monitor above them. The kid stared up at him in confusion, and his mother put a hand on his small shoulder, pulling him towards her. 

When he got off the elevator, the smell of curry mixed with weed poured into his nostrils, and the unease that had been spreading through his body grew thicker in his veins. Was this a bad idea? Chantelle technically hadn’t replied to his message saying he could stop by, but she also hadn’t said he couldn’t. And she was always telling him to take more initiative anyway. 

When he got to 1509, he knocked twice and looked down at his phone. She hadn’t answered his message and being ignored irritated him. He almost would’ve preferred her to lie and say she was busy. He could hear the TV booming behind the door, and he hoped that her sister, Marissa, wasn’t home. The two of them shared the apartment, and Omar hated when Marissa’s uppity ass was around. 

The music stopped and the door opened, but the deadbolt was still in place. 

“Hi,” Chantelle said quietly. She was in a bright blue Adidas tracksuit and pink bunny slippers with her hair pulled back in a bun.

Somehow, her looking small and cute from behind the chain of the deadbolt pissed him off even more, and he tried to hide his anger with a joke. 

“What am I? The neighbourhood pervert or something?” he said, pointing at the chain with a laugh. She cringed. “Unlock the door.”

“No, I don’t — “ Chantelle took a deep breath while reaching for the chain. “Why do you have to say things like that?”

“What do you mean? We joke like that all the time…”

“I know…” she said trailing off, “but you could be a bit gentler. Like sometimes, I don’t know…”

“Sometimes, what?” he said. “Anyway, let me in. I have to use the bathroom.” Chantelle bit her lip and hesitated before continuing to fumble with the lock, but before she could finish another person pushed her aside and took her place. Marissa.

Marissa had never liked Omar. She’d been warm to him when they first met, but after the three of them spent a full afternoon together, she’d cooled. Chantelle finally admitted, after he kept bitching about Marissa’s attitude, that Marissa thought he tried too hard and “didn’t like his energy” whatever the fuck that meant. Every attempt to get to know her better just made things worse. 

“She wants to be alone,” Marissa said. “It’s time for you to go.” 

He felt a knot in his chest. Only later would he learn how to unravel it in his mind and pull out the frayed threads of confusion, humiliation, and rejection, and call them by their names, but right now it was just a throbbing, threatening knot that grew tighter by the second. The contraction was producing panic and that panic turned into rage. This was none of Marissa’s business. And her righteous tone pissed him off. 

He looked incredulously at Chantelle. “Are you joking?”

Chantelle stood behind Marissa, wringing her hands and staring back and forth from her sister to Omar. “It’s not a big deal, Marissa. He can come in for a bit…”

“No!” Marissa said, her eyes fixed on Omar. “This is what you’re working on, remember? What the therapist said. You have to enforce your boundaries!”

“‘Enforce your boundaries’?” Omar repeated. “Since when are you seeing a therapist? For me? About me? Are you joking? What the hell have I ever done to you?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Chantelle said, starting to cry. “It’s not about you…I’m just…I’m just working on myself.”

“Why are you crying?” Omar said. “I do everything you ask. I took out those loans for your shit and now what…you’re going to some shrink to talk about how I’m a piece of shit or something.”

“No, I never said that,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “You always do this. It’s not about you.”

“‘It’s not about you,’” he mimicked. “Really? Then who the fuck is it about?” 

He could hear himself starting to shout, but it was as if some ghostly version of himself had floated up and above his physical body and was pulling on invisible strings. The audacity of her. He’d never once said no to her. He’d gone out of his way to make her happy, even if it meant compromising his own sleep or his money to let her keep living her “happy-go-lucky” life, and what? Now she was just gonna toss him aside? She’d found someone who could do better? No. He wanted to reach into that stupid apartment with her stupid stuffed animals – who had stuffed animals at twenty-five anyway? – and burn them all. That would give her something real to cry about. Chantelle had never had to work for shit. She needed to learn a lesson. She needed to think about other people for once in her life. 

But despite how pissed he was, he never would have touched the stuffed animals. He hated to see her cry. And he never would have hit her. Ever. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt her. Cause when Marissa said with a definitive tone, “Okay that’s enough,” he moved by instinct to prevent her from shutting the door and making things worse. And at 6’3, with more force than he’d intended, he pushed a little too hard, just at the same moment Chantelle stepped forward to say something to him. 

Bam! 

Right in the face. 

Split her lip apparently. 

She later texted him to say she’d needed stitches before blocking his number. 

It hadn’t even occurred to him that they’d accuse him of anything, so his self-preservation never kicked in. 

You weren’t supposed to need self-preservation around the people you loved, right? 

Besides, he could hear her crying from behind the door while Marissa shrieked curses at him through the door. He couldn’t leave. So he’d continued banging on the door, asking to see if she was okay, and it wasn’t until the police showed up and arrested him for assault that he knew he was well and truly fucked.