The first tape was dated seven years ago. She slid it into the vintage player he kept under the TV. Static hissed, then resolved into a grainy image of a living room she didn’t recognize. A young woman with auburn hair sat on a floral couch, reading a book. She looked up, smiled at the camera—at Marcus, behind it.
Inside wasn't money, or drugs, or another woman’s earring. It was a row of old VHS tapes, the plastic shells yellowed with age. Each one had a label, written in Marcus’s neat, architect’s handwriting.
“That you never, ever try to leave,” she said. Her voice was steady, but her eyes were wet. Girlfriend Tapes
Lena stared at her reflection in the dark TV screen. She heard the front door open. Marcus was home early. She heard him humming—that little tune he hummed while making pasta. The clink of his keys in the bowl. The soft pad of his footsteps.
It started, as most bad ideas do, with a locked drawer in a shared apartment. The first tape was dated seven years ago
Not a number. Not a name. Just that.
“Find one?” he asked.
One night, after three glasses of wine and a half-formed suspicion she couldn’t name, Lena guessed the code. 0912. Her birthday.
The tape flickered, jumped. Then the same living room, but different. The auburn-haired woman was crying. Her lip was split. The camera trembled. A young woman with auburn hair sat on
Lena had just moved in with her boyfriend, Marcus. He was sweet, a little too quiet, but sweet. The kind of guy who left sticky notes on the coffee maker. “Good morning, starling.” The drawer was in his desk, the one he called his “junk drawer.” But it had a small, new-looking combination lock.