Shouldn’t Hildy have mentioned this to one of us? Maybe not if she thought we’d still be gone, but the fact that Hannah just popped out of our bedroom makes me think she should have…she fucking should have. I try to settle myself down in the time it takes to reach the living room, also still acutely aware that this woman creeping around my house doesn’t even seem to like me.
“So, any fun plans tonight?” I ask as the phrase, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, comes to mind.
“Yeah,” Hannah calls over her shoulder as she arrives at the front door, “meeting Hildy, Jay, and Bo at the Well.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you there.”
“Oh!” She spins around in surprise, “You’re going?”
Is she for real?
“Yeah.” I might as well be Patrick Swayze in Ghost, as much as Hannah is trying to pretend that I don’t exist.
She turns the knob and steps out onto the porch, “See you later then!” she calls over her shoulder, slamming the door.
I stare at the door in bewilderment for a few seconds before I’m interrupted by a familiar jingle. Following the sound, I look over at the basement stairs in time to see Waylon lumbering up the last two steps. He shuffles past me into the living room on his way to his dog bed next to the fireplace. I glance back at the bedroom in confusion.
What the…
Maybe she was looking for Waylon when I arrived…maybe. I still can’t shake the feeling that Hannah shouldn’t have been where she was when I walked in, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now. But I’m definitely telling Bowen about it when he gets home.
In the meantime, I try to distract myself by focusing on picking out an outfit for tonight. I decide high-waist flares are a safe choice, but I still need a shirt. When I throw open the closet door and step inside to flip on the light, I notice something white on the carpet. It looks like a folded piece of paper laying beneath Bowen’s winter coat and sherpa-lined flannel jacket.
Stooping down to pick it up, I realize it’s a 4 x 6 photo that’s folded in half. When I open it, my eyes round with amusement. Bowen is sitting at a desk—the same kind in every high school in America—leaning back in his chair. He’s wearing a white long-sleeve Adidas t-shirt and his dark eyes are averted, smiling at something out of frame. Hannah’s leaning forward over the desk behind him, her arm looped around his shoulders while she presses her cheek against his temple and smiles at the camera.
The photo is old, worn and creased from being loose and held too much. It looks like it belongs with the pictures I found in the basement. But what’s it doing up here in the middle of the closet? Maybe Hannah wasn’t in here looking for Waylon…
I let out an irritated breath and roll my eyes. Am I really that surprised? I secretly witnessed the fallout between Hannah and her boyfriend at the wedding after he essentially accused her of being in love with Bowen. Whatever’s going on with her, Hannah has some serious boundary issues that are now spilling out onto my closet floor.
It’s still sitting there a couple hours later after Bowen gets home and I’m finishing getting dressed for the evening.
He tugs his scuffed brown Redwing boot onto his right foot and lets it drop to the floor with a thud, “Damn,” he rests his elbows on his knees and looks up at me from the edge of the bed.
I stop in the bathroom doorway as I finish tying the knot of my light pink wrap top, “What?”
“If I’d known you were going to look like this, I’d have just kept you here for myself.”
I shoot him a playful look and adjust my jeans. He doesn’t look half bad, himself. Then again, he looks good even when he comes home covered in dirt clods and grass stains. I think it’s his dark hair and dark eyes. Even now, he’s not wearing anything special, just a pair of jeans and a black long-sleeve tee, but the sharp, clean contrast against his smooth skin gives him an air of timeless sophistication.
“We could just stay home,” I grin facetiously, making my way to my vanity across from the bed.
“I mean,” Bowen stands up and walks up behind me, looking at my reflection, “since you’re already dressed and all…” he leans over my shoulder and kisses me on the neck, then turns and disappears into the bathroom to splash water and product through his hair.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I reach back into the closet and pull out the folded photo, dropping it on the edge of the bathroom vanity.
Bowen picks it up and looks at it for a few moments, “Why do you have this really old picture of me?”
I cast him an amused look, “I found it on the closet floor.”
Bowen stares at me, perplexed, then he cracks a smile like he’s waiting for the punchline, “The closet? I didn’t even know this existed.” He flips the photo over again to examine both sides, then screws up his face, “I look like a prick.”
“I don’t know where it came from,” I snicker, “but I know who left it here.”
It’s subtle, but Bowen’s demeanor changes. The implication that someone other than he or I was in the bedroom closet puts him on alert.
“When I got home today, I came back to the bedroom and Hannah was here. She scared the hell out of me.” Bowen furrows his brow slightly as I continue, “She said Hildy and Jay were out of town, so she came by to feed Waylon. But she acted like he was in the bedroom when he was actually downstairs. She left pretty quickly after I ran into her. The whole thing was really weird.”
Bowen’s eyes wander across the bedroom in thought. Before, he acted like I was messing with him, but now, it looks like he’s trying to make sense of what happened.
“Yeah,” he finally says, “I don’t know what the fuck this is.” He tosses the photo back onto the bathroom counter with an exasperated sigh, “I’ll figure it out.”
Accepting his response for the time being, I return to my vanity and open the fourth drawer on the right. But when I look inside, I give pause.
“Bowen, have you seen my—” I stop myself, knowing he wouldn’t recognize anything in these drawers, so why am I asking?
I open and close each drawer, searching, but knowing the earrings I’m looking for won’t be there because I never put them anywhere else. Studs go in the second drawer down, hoops go in the third, and dangly ones go in the fourth. There are three pairs of dangly earrings, and now there are only two.
Bowen appears behind me, “Seen your what?”
I stare into the drawer, unable to make sense of it, “A pair of my earrings are gone.”
“Which ones?”
“The little gold hoops with the stars hanging off them.”
“Were they here after you moved in?”
“Yes, they were here,” I pause, “and now they’re not.”
