Chapter 2 Things That Dont Add Up #2
Sierra is giving her advice about red flags.
She's doing this while conveniently forgetting that she once dated a guy for three months before discovering he still lived with his parents.
Not because he was saving money. Because he genuinely enjoyed having his mother do his laundry and cook his meals.
Hailey has been quiet for most of the conversation. She's eating her pasta and listening and nodding at the appropriate moments. She seems relaxed. Normal. Then she starts talking about a restaurant.
"Have you guys been to Marco's?" she asks. "The Italian place on the other side of town near the old mill?"
"I've heard of it," Sierra says. "It's supposed to be really nice."
"It is. I went a couple weeks ago. The pasta is handmade and the portions are actually big enough to take leftovers home. It's not one of those places where they give you three noodles on a plate the size of a hubcap."
Alana asks who she went with. Hailey says a friend from work. She doesn't offer a name. The conversation moves on. Sierra starts talking about a new coffee shop downtown that opened in the old dry cleaner's space. Alana says she went there and the coffee was average but the pastries were good.
I don't say anything. I'm nodding and smiling and participating in all the surface-level ways that people do when they're present in body but somewhere else entirely in their head.
Marco's.
I know that name.
It doesn't click immediately. It takes about an hour. I'm driving home from Alana's and I'm stopped at the intersection on Route 4 and it hits me suddenly enough that I almost miss the green light.
Two weeks ago. Maybe closer to three. I was doing laundry.
I picked up Blake's jeans from the floor where he'd dropped them, which is where Blake drops all of his clothes because the concept of a hamper remains mysterious to him.
I checked his pockets because Blake leaves things in his pockets.
Receipts and loose change and gum wrappers and occasionally cash he forgot about.
I pulled out a crumpled receipt. I smoothed it out and glanced at it before tossing it in the trash.
Marco's Italian Kitchen.
Two entrees. Two drinks. One dessert.
The total was sixty-eight dollars and some change.
I remember the number because I thought it was expensive for a random weeknight.
Blake told me he'd grabbed dinner with a couple guys from the crew that night.
I assumed they'd gone to the diner or gotten burgers.
Not a sit-down Italian restaurant with handmade pasta.
Two entrees. Two drinks.
Not three. Not four. Two.
Blake said he ate with coworkers. Plural. But the receipt showed two meals and two drinks. One meal for Blake and one meal for someone else.
And now Hailey is talking about Marco's. The same restaurant. Roughly the same timeframe.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. My brain is doing something I don't want it to do.
It's connecting things. Drawing lines between points that might not belong together.
And I want to stop it. I want to put the receipt in one box and Hailey's comment in another box and close both lids and never open them.
Hailey went to Marco's with a friend from work. Blake went to Marco's and paid for two dinners. Those could be completely separate events. Hailey has friends I don't know. Blake has coworkers he occasionally eats with. There is no reason to assume they were at the same table.
But the timing bothers me. And the two meals bother me. And the fact that Blake lied about being with Chase last Friday bothers me. And his phone going facedown two weeks ago still sits in the back of my mind.
When I get home Blake is asleep on the couch.
The TV is playing an infomercial for some kitchen gadget that supposedly does twelve things.
Blake's mouth is slightly open and one arm is hanging off the edge of the cushion.
His blond hair is messy against the pillow. He looks young. He looks peaceful.
He looks exactly the same as he's always looked and yet something about the picture has changed. I'm looking at the same person through different eyes now. There's a question behind everything. Behind every late night and every night out and every receipt and every time he turns his phone facedown.
I turn off the TV. I pull a blanket from the back of the couch and drape it over him. I go to the bedroom and get into bed alone and lie there in the dark.
I tell myself there are innocent explanations for all of it. Blake lied about Chase because of the gambling. The receipt was from a dinner with one coworker, not two. Hailey's restaurant story is a coincidence.
Any one of those explanations could be true.
If I were looking at each thing by itself I'd believe every single one.
But I'm not looking at them by themselves anymore.
I'm looking at a pattern. The working late without smelling like work.
The nice clothes for O'Shea's. A person who wasn't where Blake said he was.
A restaurant receipt that doesn't match the story attached to it.
A phone turned facedown before I could see the screen.
Individually these are nothing. Together they are a question I am terrified to ask.
The next day at the salon Cheryl catches me staring at the wall between clients. I don't realize I'm doing it until she says my name twice.
"Lara. Earth to Lara."
"Sorry. What?"
"Your two o'clock is here. She's been sitting in the waiting area for five minutes."
"Oh. Sorry. I'm coming."
I grab my comb and my clips and go greet my client with a smile that feels like it takes more effort than it should. I get through the appointment on autopilot. Cut. Style. Small talk. Smile. The client leaves happy and I clean my station and realize Cheryl is watching me from across the room.
"You okay?" she asks.
"I'm fine. Just didn't sleep well."
"That's what you said last Thursday."
"I've been sleeping badly for a while."
Cheryl organizes her color tubes and doesn't push it. But she gives me a look before she turns away that tells me she knows something is off and she's choosing to wait rather than dig.
That night I'm on the couch going through my phone while Blake is in the shower. I can hear the water running through the bathroom door. I'm scrolling through social media and doing the mindless thing everyone does when they don't want to sit with their own thoughts.
Then I open Hailey's profile.
I don't decide to do it. My thumb just goes there.
One second I'm looking at a stranger's vacation photos and the next I'm scrolling through Hailey's posts.
Her recent activity is normal. A picture of her coffee from last week.
A sunset from her apartment balcony. A group shot from two months ago at a barbecue Ronnie threw.
I'm in that photo. So is Blake. So is everyone else.
I zoom in. Blake is standing near the grill in the background. Hailey is a few feet away from him talking to Alana. They're not close. They're not looking at each other. There is absolutely nothing in this photograph that suggests anything.
I close the app and put my phone facedown on the couch cushion.
Then I pick it up again.
I open Hailey's profile and look at her posts from the last month.
I check the dates. I try to match them against nights Blake told me he was working late or going out with the guys.
This is insane. I know it's insane. I am sitting on my own couch while my fiancé takes a shower ten feet away and I am going through my friend's social media looking for evidence of something I can't even name.
There's nothing there. No damning photos. No suspicious check-ins. No posts from Marco's.
I close the app and lock my phone and tuck it under my leg.
Blake comes out of the shower with a towel around his waist. His hair is dripping and he's got that dumb grin he always has when he's warm and clean.
"What are you watching?" he asks.
"Nothing. Just scrolling."
"Anything interesting?"
"Nope. Same stuff as always."
He leans over and kisses my temple and I breathe in the smell of his body wash and his shampoo and the warmth of his skin. He goes to the bedroom to get dressed and I sit on the couch alone and stare at the blank TV screen.
I have never been this person. I have never checked someone's social media looking for proof of something I'm afraid to believe. I have never catalogued my fiancé's lies and tried to match them against someone else's timeline. I don't know who I am becoming but I don't like her.
What I want is for all of this to mean nothing.
I want Blake to be exactly who he says he is.
I want the receipt to belong to a random dinner with a coworker.
I want the lie about Chase to be about gambling and nothing more.
I want Hailey's restaurant comment to be a coincidence that my anxious brain is blowing out of proportion.
I want all of it to add up to nothing.
But it doesn't.
And the worst part is that somewhere underneath the fear and the denial and the desperate search for innocent explanations I already know what it adds up to. I just don't want to say it yet.