Page 3 of The Home Grown
And it’s frustrating as hell. This is why I hate the dating scene. It’s full of hope and wonder and desperation and?—
I throw my phone like it’s burnt me when Kathryn slips back into the room, but, lucky for me, I don’t think she notices. She’s busy wrestling with an overfilled ‘Bag for Life’, repurposed as document storage.
“Mam said this is a bag of random bits,” she says, dumping it on the bed. “Looks like old phone bills and stuff.”
She roots through the bag as I gather another pile of papers from my box and discard them.
“Yep. Old bills and … oh, this is yours.”
She hands me a red plastic document wallet and I peek at the top sheet of paper—a travel insurance plan from a trip I took to Germany when I was eighteen.
What started off as a girls’ holiday somewhere hot and sandy ended up with us booking a trip to northern Germany, all because my friend Jessica was sort-of seeing a guy who was spending his summer at a youth hockey camp or something.
It feels like a lifetime ago. A version of myself I can barely remember.
“Anything exciting?” Kathryn asks.
“Uh, no—just junk.”
Kathryn resumes her rummaging, and I flick through the contents of the wallet.
Aside from the travel insurance documents, the wallet is full of odd bits of paper—tourism leaflets, hotel bar receipts. Nothing worth keeping. I’m close to chucking it all in the bin when something half-folded catches my eye, crammed between two other sheets.
I pull it free and peel open the paper, skimming over the text—trying to figure out what it is.
It looks familiar but also doesn’t … all at the same time.
Despite its age, the paper is crisp and clean; the ink legible, albeit slightly faded. I take a second to process what I’m looking at—and another second to realise why it looks so familiar.
Then it hits me. My breath catches in my throat, involuntary and loud enough for Kathryn to hear.
“What?” she says.
I blink several times, my eyes scanning the document.
“El?”
My stomach tightens.
“I—nothing,” I say, stuffing the paper away.
Kathryn glances up. “Is everything okay?”
My heart thuds, panic moving through my veins.
“It’s, uh—” I swallow. “It’s an old parking ticket I didn’t pay,” I lie. “I’m going to Google it, see if there’s anything I need to worry about.”
“Greg can help with any legal stuff,” she says.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, my voice a shaky mess, because I’m sure this is not something I want to run past Kathryn’s fiancé.
I grab my phone along with the document wallet and disappear into the bathroom, clicking the door shut behind me before sliding the lock into place. Then I check the door, pulling the handle to make sure I’m safely locked in. Alone. Uninterruptible.
I root through the pages again, scrambling for the paper almost clumsily.
Deep breath.
Deep breath.
