The Bin

She came over today. And god, she is gorgeous. Cute and sexy and thick and hot, all at the same time, all in the same body, which should be illegal or at the very least require some kind of warning label. Standing in my apartment she just looks like something my brain invented specifically to ruin me.

We spent some time together. Good time. Fine time. Normal human time.

Then I picked up her phone.

Casually. Very casually. Definitely not on purpose. I told myself it was just to change the song, or check the time, or something equally convincing. I lied to myself with such confidence that it almost worked.

Everything was clean. Messages: nothing. Call log: wiped. I went through it all with the quiet, methodical focus of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing and absolutely refuses to admit it. Chats, deleted. Contacts, unremarkable. I felt almost relieved, almost disgusted with myself for checking.

Then I opened Google Photos.

Nothing. Clean. I scrolled back months. Fine.

Then I opened the Bin.

I don’t know why I opened the Bin. I had found nothing. I should have put the phone down and lived in my lies for another few days. But some part of my brain, the part that apparently hates me, just tapped the Bin icon.

One photo. Just one. From one of her exes.

She had nuked everything but missed just this one. Sitting there in the thirty-day graveyard of deleted files, a photograph that confirmed everything I already knew and had been very successfully pretending not to know.

I put the phone down. I didn’t say anything. She was sitting right there on my bed and I just put the phone face-down on the mattress and looked at the wall for a second.

She asked me if I was okay. I said yeah.

I am spectacular at this.