Falling In Again

Episode 6: Sleepover

My Angel,

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Do you know that I love you?

The frequency of the random letters taped to her door or deposited into her mailbox had Angelica taking a breath as she threw it into the trash. Should she have kept them for evidence, maybe but she was too damn tired to even think. She just wanted to relax and enjoy her night as Mia was staying the night at a friend’s house.

Roman had a project that he was working on and he couldn’t take their daughter this weekend and she thought it would be safe that her daughter was staying with her best friend. There was no harm in teenagers spending the night together. When the incident with the stranger danger date had happened, she became more interested in her daughter’s life outside of work and Roman seemed to be stepping up to the plate.

It had been three weeks since then and she didn’t want to be that parent but now she was keeping a closer eye on the applications that her daughter was utilizing on her phone and even checking her social media for creeps. It wasn’t so much that she inevitably didn’t trust her daughter, it was more that she didn’t trust the world that they were currently living in.

That gave her the idea to do the check on her daughter’s social media and found a picture of her and Roman about two weeks ago where she was making a face next to her dad in a selfie with a hashtag talking about man crushes. There was a decent amount of likes and Angelica was studying the picture far longer than she would care to admit with her ex.

He was smiling brightly and he had a ball cap on covering his dark head of hair as his dark eyes were crinkled with crow’s feet. He had the making of ethnic hot dad and he had to. They both had their daughter when they were still in highschool and they made themselves young parents without even realizing it.

He was a handsome, distinguished version of his old self and and she felt something stir in her as she thought about their past without even wanting to. Trying to shake the feelings she used to have for him, she scrolled down into the comments to make sure there weren’t any creeps commenting and she saw a lot of comments about her and then him.

Some who probably knew her, knew that that was her dad where as others were making licking, fire, and blushing emojis. She rolled her eyes as she laughed and continued to scroll through other posts making sure she wasn’t posting anything that would get her into trouble.

Mia wasn’t dumb, after some more interrogation she found out that the man who had lured her out had done so under the pretense that he was around her age when he was in fact double. She couldn’t report it to authorities because he had done nothing illegal other than being a certified creep.

Thinking of creeps, Angelica shed the thought out of her mind as she looked for some frozen pizza she could throw in the oven and call it a night as she caught up on t.v. shows that she may have missed. She went into her room to change as she preheated the oven and while it was preheating, she had undressed herself from her clothes and thought about having a quick shower to wash away the dirt of her work day. She was about to grab a change of clothes from her walk in closet when her phone had chimed and she went to take a look at it. It was from work asking a question that she quickly typed a reply to, forgetting about the change of clothes as she went into her restroom.

After putting her phone down, she went to bathe quickly before the oven would go off. About less than ten minutes later she was done and stepped out to grab her towel, forgetting that she had meant to bring her clothes in with her to change so she wrapped her towel around herself as she exited the steamy restroom.

Angelica was about to reach for the knob on the door to her closet when she stared at the dark creak in the door wondering if she had opened it earlier. She swore it was closed before she went into the shower but it was possible that she was losing her mind and she may have opened it a crack before getting side tracked by her phone.

She opened the door quickly, turning the switch on from the outside and found an empty closet and figured she was just exhausted and delusional. When the beeping of the oven went off, she had almost jumped out of her skin as the hair on the back of her neck was raised and knew she just had to get some rest if she was jumping at shadows.

As Angelica threw the frozen pizza into the oven, she plopped herself onto the couch, turning the television on at the same time. As soon as the tv flicked on, her doorbell rang and she wasn’t sure who it might have been. She wasn’t expecting anyone and it could have been too late for any form of the postal service dropping off packages.

She contemplated on whether or not she wanted to answer but there was the slight possibility it could have been Mia or an emergency, so she got back up and went to peek out of her peek hole. She felt her heartbeat doubled when it was someone she least expected.