Logan opens his top dresser drawer, drops the towel, and tugs on a clean pair of boxers.
Great, now I’ve got to tell him how Rosa and I really met in the bathroom. If what she said was true, it’s likely he left this note. He’s gonna flip his lid when he finds out I kept that info from him, but the probability of these two instances being related are too high.
I squint, rub my tired eyes, and let out an exhausted exhale. “There was something that happened in Bozeman I didn’t tell you about.”
His back stiffens and he turns around. “What?”
“Remember how I said I met Rosa after the convention? Well, it was because she followed me into the bathroom at the event center while we were wrapping up. She said there was some guy watching me, and it gave her a bad vibe. She questioned if he could have been someone I knew; she described him, but he was too short for anybody at our shop. I asked if she could get a picture, but he was already gone when she went back out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I swear red flames flicker in his irises.He can’t be serious.
I throw up my hands. “The same reason you didn’t tell me about the note!”
He sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, rubbing his jaw like the news just sucker punched him.
“It crossed my mind that the two things were connected.” I stand. If I don’t get in the shower now, I might not have the energy soon. “But I talked myself out of it and figured it was just a weird guy. Men can be creepy.”
“You should have told me.”
“I know, but Rosa stayed with me to make sure I was safe. We went to a different bar across the street as a precaution, and nothing else happened after that, so I forgot about it. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. But now that there’s a note . . .”
“How did she describe him?”
I struggle to recall her words after dismissing the event in my head. “I think brown hair, average build,” I say, undressing and walking into the en suite bathroom. My voice echoes off the tile walls when I open the glass door and step into the shower. “I was thinking maybe she noticed Casper or something, but then she held up her hand to show how tall he was, and it was only like five-nine or five-ten.”
I turn the dial and the warm spray from the shower resolves some of the new tension in my shoulders.
Logan clears his throat and enters the steamy room, leaning against the countertop. “How old?”
“I don’t remember if she said.”
“You got her number, right? Can you ask?”
I nod and pop the lid open on the bottle of shampoo, squirting some into my hand. “Yeah . . . I’m going to send her a picture of Jason and ask if she recognizes him. The height matches.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“I just have a hard time believing he would go that far. We were only together a couple months. Not to mention, he was too lazy to buy a box of condoms, so following me out of state seems out of the question.”
“He also showed up at your job and started a fight. If you only dated a couple months, then maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
I roll my eyes, lathering the shampoo in my hair. I disagree, but I can’t prove he’s wrong either.You will never replace me.The message itself is pretty obvious, but why would Jason care? He’s the one who cheated. If anyone was getting replaced, it was me.
“What if the note was there before and we just didn’t see it?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“Maybe it really was somebody from the event, and they left the note early, but we only noticed it on the last day? Could that be possible?”
“Possible . . . But unlikely.”
I rack my brain for other options while rinsing my hair and adding conditioner.
The note was typed and printed, which means it was premeditated. We were only away from the van for maybe twenty minutes.
“This happened at the convention. It’s gotta be somebody in the industry. They have been messaging me for months, and we posted about it everywhere online.” Our shop advertised it, along with all our artists. The event itself plastered my name on their marketing materials and graphics. A few of those posts went viral, it was all over social media.
Unless . . .“Do you think the person who’s been sending me DMs actually left the note? Or did they use a messenger?” I ask while soaping up my skin that still has stencil ink smudged onit from over the weekend.If they were using someone else to deliver it, why not just use the messenger’s handwriting? Why the extra steps to type it up and print?
