Chapter 2 - The Emerald Dress and the Lost Phone
A few weeks before Claire’s forty-sixth birthday, we took a leisurely stroll through the historic boutique district downtown. As we passed the window of an exclusive clothing shop, Claire suddenly stopped in her tracks. Her eyes widened, fixed on a mannequin dressed in a breathtaking, floor-length emerald-green silk dress that caught the afternoon sunlight like liquid jade.
"Oh," she whispered, stepping closer to the glass. "That is stunning."
She stepped back, shook her head with a self-deprecating laugh, and patted my arm. "Come on, let’s keep walking. If I looked at the price tag, I’d probably faint. Maybe in another life, right?"
She walked on, chatting happily about something else, completely unaware that I had locked that moment away in my memory.
I knew how hard Claire worked as a senior financial analyst, how self-sufficient she always tried to be, and how she would never justify spending that kind of money on herself for a simple birthday. So, the very next morning, I hatched a secret plan. I skipped my daily takeout lunches, canceled an expensive weekend camping trip with my buddies, and picked up extra freelance design shifts after my normal work hours. I poured every spare dollar into a jar until, just three days before her birthday, I had scraped together enough cash to march into that boutique and buy the dress.
When her birthday arrived, I surprised her with a candlelit homemade dinner in her apartment, followed by a sleek black gift box tied with a silver ribbon.
When Claire untied the bow and pulled the emerald-green dress from its tissue paper, her breath hitched. Her eyes instantly welled up with thick, shining tears.
"Ethan... you didn't," she choked out, her hands trembling as she smoothed the luxurious silk fabric. "How on earth did you afford this? You remembered..."
"Of course I remembered," I beamed, feeling a swell of intense, boyish pride in my chest. "You loved it. And you deserve to wear something that makes you feel like a queen."
She launched herself into my arms, burying her face in my shoulder and kissing me fiercely. "You are incredible," she whispered against my neck. "Go wait in the living room for two minutes. I want to try it on right now and show you!"
She hurried down the short hallway toward her bedroom, closing the door behind her with a happy click.
Grinning ear to ear, feeling ridiculously pleased with myself, I pulled out my phone from my back pocket. I wanted to have the camera app open and ready to capture the exact moment she walked out in the dress. But as I shifted my weight on her deep, vintage velvet couch—the same old piece of furniture she had owned since before I was even born—my phone slipped right out of my hand.
It hit the cushion and slid deep down into the narrow, dark gap between the cushion and the heavy wooden armrest.
"Damn it," I muttered under my breath.
I wedged my hand deep into the crevice, feeling around for the cold metal of my phone. My fingers brushed past loose pocket change, a few stray paper clips, a dried eucalyptus leaf, and a thick accumulation of dust. I shoved my hand in deeper, stretching my fingers until they finally clamped around the edges of my phone.
As I yanked my hand free, clutching my phone in triumph, something else came snagged between my fingers—a thick, rectangular piece of stiff cardstock.
I pulled it out into the dim light of the living room, intending to toss it onto the coffee table. But a splash of faded color near the edge caught my eye.
I paused. I squinted down at the paper.
It was an old, borderless photograph, printed on vintage glossy paper that had begun to yellow around the edges.
I leaned closer, bringing the photo toward the window.
My chest tightened instantly, as if an invisible fist had squeezed my lungs dry.
Standing near the edge of the photograph, squinting into a bright summer sun on what looked like a neighborhood sidewalk, was a child.
Not a random child.
Me.
Me at around eight years old, wearing a faded striped t-shirt and holding a plastic red bucket, with a distinct faint scar cutting right through my left eyebrow—the exact scar I got falling off my bicycle when I was seven.
I stood frozen in the center of the quiet apartment, my heart pounding a frantic, deafening rhythm against my ribs. I stared at the image, my brain desperately searching for any innocent, rational explanation for why my girlfriend—a woman I had met randomly on Tinder six months ago—was secretly hoarding a childhood photograph of me from a decade and a half before we were ever born.
With shaking, ice-cold fingers, I slowly turned the photograph over.
There was handwriting on the back, scrawled in neat, elegant blue ink.
I forced my eyes to read the first few words, and the floor beneath my feet suddenly felt like it was dissolving into nothingness.
From down the hallway, Claire’s voice called out cheerfully through the closed bedroom door, rich with excitement:
May you like
"Ethan? Close your eyes! I'm coming out!"
I couldn't answer her. I couldn't even draw a breath. Because the words written on the back of that photograph shattered every single thing I thought I knew about our relationship, revealing the terrifying, twisted truth about why Claire had really matched with me on Tinder.
