Page 206 of Heart So Hollow

I stare at the bag and then peer at Colson out of the corner of my eye. He looks so normal. He’s acting so normal, bringing me unsolicited lunch—which I shouldn’t accept, by the way—and making himself at home in my office as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. But he was in my house yesterday, painting the wall and stabbing knives through photos at some point before I saw him at the park and he…

I swivel around in my chair, “Someone broke into my house.”

Colson arches his brow, “Did you call the cops?”

I glare back at him, “Do you want me to call the cops?”

He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms with amusement, “You think it was me?”

I’ve had enough of his infuriating non-responses, “Of course it was you,” I retort, “you know how to unlock doors and windows. You’ve done it before. People here ask you to do it all the time when they lock their goddamn keys in their cars! Who else would’ve done it? I had to go to Wal-Mart because they were the only place still open just so I had clean underwear!”

Colson gazes back at me with a glint in his gemstone eyes, “Tradesies...” he murmurs.

I stare at him, astounded that he’s finally admitted something—anything—to me.

“You can’t do this,” I whisper, panic building in the pit of my stomach, “You can’t do this, Colson. You can’t just come into my house and steal my underwear and—” I stop short, I haven’t even broached the topic of the painted wall, the knives, and…

I’m still not to the point where I can outright accuse him of tampering with my birth control pills. For some reason, I still can’t decide whether someone else actually did it or if I’m a victim of my own decaying consciousness.

I grab my phone off the desk, pull up the creepy text from this morning, and thrust it into Colson’s lap, “What are these?” I demand, “Tell me. Now.”

Colson picks up my phone and starts scrolling through the texts. His face cycles through a mixture of blank stares, faint smiles, and rounded eyes, none of which I know how to interpret. After about a minute, he leans over and slides my phone back onto my desk.

“Those are really interesting,” he murmurs with indifference.

I squint at him with indignation, “That’s it? Interesting? You sent them! Explain that last photo. Who took it?”

“What did your boy think of them?” his voice oozes with condescension.

The way he says, your boy, or some other pejorative term every time he refers to Bowen grinds on my nerves, like I’m pretending to have a whole relationship with someone else just to annoy him. All the same, I don’t tell him that Bowen doesn’t know about the texts.

“He knows it was you in the house and he’s planning on shooting you if he catches you. So, stop it!”

Colson’s eyes glimmer with excitement, “Ooh,” he shivers sarcastically, “who doesn’t love a little bloodlust?”

I clench my jaw and narrow my eyes, “Maybe I should let Bowen shoot you.”

“Would that make you upset?” he asks.

“Would what make me upset?”

“If your boy tried to kill me?”

I knit my brow, caught off-guard by his question, “I mean…yeah…I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Colson leans forward again, his eyes boring into me, “I didn’t ask about anyone, I asked about me. Are you worried about something happening to me, or are you worried about something happening to him? Because either one is fine with me.”

I stare at him, appalled. Is this a game now? A competition?

“You’re nuts. You’re fucking nuts.”

“So, you’ve said. But you seem to like it since you only point it out after I’ve made you see God,” Colson gives a lackadaisical glance out the window, “so, why does Bowen think it was me in your house?”

The way he says Bowen’s name is unnerving. It’s a different tone than jealousy or spite. There’s a deeper, more sinister meaning to it, but I don’t know what it is.

I take a deep breath, “Because he knows what happened back in college.”

“Does he?” Colson’s tone hitches with a hint of intrigue, “Any other reason?”

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