Stealing Her Heart

Next to me, in the middle of the lobby, is an octagonal table stocked with slips of paper and pens attached with little chains. I’ve heard of deposit slips, but I’ve never actually filled one out. This is something my assistants do, not me. But when I see the paper and the pens, I get another idea. If I’m going to be spending another night in this Podunk town, I’m not going to pass up the chance of doing so with the lovely creature behind the counter.

So after scrawling down a cheesy picky-up line, I fold the paper over and wait my turn, which takes far longer than it should. Everyone here is chatty, so transactions that could be completed in two minutes stretch into five and six minutes. By the time I’m the next in line, I’ve been fiddling with the note so that it’s crinkled in the middle. A minute later and I’m finally face-to-face with the lovely creature whose nametag declares her to be Hailey.

“Welcome to Central First Bank. How can I help you today?” she asks, to which I simply slide the note over.

As she’s reading it, I say, “That’s only my first request, of course. I’ve got a number of others in mind if you’re up to the task.”

Now, when I turn on the charm, I’m used to one of three things happening: the girl reciprocates in a big way, usually because she realizes I’ve got money to burn; the girl lets out a tired sigh that tells me I’m at the end of a long list of guys who’ve recently hit on her; or, lastly, she pretends not to notice my obvious interest, choosing to rely on professionalism to get her through an exchange that she has no interest in.

Hailey is different.

Her movements are rigid, like she’s never had a guy ask her out before. My note was quite clear: Hand over your phone number and no one gets hurt. In the moment I came up with it, I thought it was pretty clever, but now I’m imagining how my dad’s marketing team back in the city would rip this ad copy to shreds. They’d probably pull an all-nighter and come up with something so brilliantly simple, yet so elegant, that it would make my original idea look like something drawn in crayon. Despite its corny qualities, I still can’t believe this teller is taking my note with such stoicism.

“So what will it be?” I ask as I lean over the counter a bit, catching a whiff of her perfume. I want to say it’s Chanel, but it smells sweeter. Cheaper. Even so, she’s wearing just enough to be classy but not too much to be off-putting. “Are you going to make me leave here empty-handed?”

She never looks me in the eyes, instead glancing over her shoulder at some commotion going on outside the frosted glass windows. It sounds like someone is being pulled over. As a second set of sirens adds onto the first, the sound becomes impossible to ignore. When the cops breach the front door, weapons drawn, the aim of their focus pulls in all other eyes like a black hole.

Me.

They’re looking at me.

Aiming their pistols at me. Motioning for me to lift my hands in the air. Which is exactly what I do, but not without letting out a nervous laugh and asking, “What seems to be the problem, officers?”

But these small-town cops are no more bubbling with humor than their big city counterparts. Instead of answering me, they surround me, and a large one who smells of bacon grease, pins me to the tile floor while wrestling my wrists into cuffs.

“You have the right to remain silent,” he recites my Miranda Rights in a drawled-out accent that adds another layer of ridiculousness to this whole situation. But not even I’m laughing when I’m dragged out the front door and placed in the back of a police cruiser.

Chapter 3

Hailey

His badge might label him as Officer Smithy, but he’s always been Shane to me. It’s hard not to look at him and remember the asshole he was in high school. Some things never change, including the way he slides up to me once the danger has been dealt with. He slips his hand over mine, sweat transferring from his palm, and rubs his thumb over my knuckles. When I pull away, it seems to annoy him, but it certainly doesn't slow him down.

“How are you holding up, honey?”

A shiver literally runs down my spine. Truth be told, I feel more at danger with him standing across from me than I did when the cutie who turned out to be a bank robber was standing in the same place. Shane may have added an extra fifty pounds to his midriff, giving him a soft dad look, but I still remember what he did back in junior year, even if I’ve been gas-lighted into believing it was nothing but a drunken nightmare.

“Just a little shaky,” I finally manage to get out. When I open my hand to flex my fingers and check how much I really am shaking, I notice the paper there. The note that started this whole mess. I don’t want to unfold it in front of Shane. He’d manage to take all the glory for himself. Probably even frame the note and hang it in his office back at the police station, rewriting the story he tells people until it concludes with him singlehandedly taking the bank robber down.

So, keeping my fist clenched around the note, I say, “I think I just need a trip to the ladies room.”

Shane nods at this and then slaps the counter. The sudden sound sends a shockwave up my spine. “I’m just going to start reviewing the security tapes. Join me after you finish. Maybe I can get your statement over lunch.”

I don’t answer, instead scurrying off to the bathroom where I seclude myself in a stall. Then I finally allow my fingers to relax so that I can protrude the note that started this whole mess. But as I unfold the deposit slip now damp from my sweaty palm, an absolutely horrid realization stops my heart for a whole second.

Below the first line I saw before, the one that says ‘Hand over’ is not the rest of the sentence my mind filled in earlier when I pressed the emergency button under the counter. Instead of demanding all of the money from my drawer, the man who is at this exact moment locked away in the back of Shane’s police cruiser was asking for something altogether different:

‘’Hand over your phone number’?

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I leap off the toilet seat and into action. I seem to see—if not my life—my very near future flash before my eyes as I dart

back into the lobby. Not only am I going to lose my job over this, but also the guy I falsely accused will press charges. Could he sue me? I don’t know, but if I were him, I wouldn’t let any of this slide. Whether he can do anything legally or not, I’m certainly never going to live this day down. In a small town like Branchville, rumors spread faster than news.

I wrap my hand around the arm of the very first police officer available. It’s a skinnier guy I’ve only seen in passing at the Goodwill, where he was always flipping through their collection of LP records, looking for a diamond in the rough. He looks over at me with urgency at first, but then lets out a breath when he sees I’m just holding up a note.