My boyfriend's ex had been painting his hands for eleven months, and I found out from a red heart emoji at midnight.

I didn't know any of that yet. Not the paintings, not the eleven months, not the ex. All I knew was the comment: a single red heart under his latest post. The photo was from Saturday, Connor in that navy henley I bought him, laughing at something Devon said. I'd taken the picture. I remembered because the light was good and I'd thought, absently, that he looked like a campaign ad. The kind of boyfriend people aspire to.

I tapped the heart.

The account was private. Margaux Thorne. 847 followers, 212 following. The profile picture showed a woman's hand holding a brush, wrist flecked with cerulean paint. No face. The bio read: BFA Studio Art. I make what I can't say.

I should have closed the app.

Instead, I went to her public highlights. Three of them. "Work." "Process." "Sold." The paintings were large, oil on canvas, all close studies of the same subject. Hands. Male hands. Long fingers curled around a coffee cup. A wrist resting on a book spine. A palm pressed flat against glass, fingers spread.

I knew those hands.

I knew them because they'd been on my waist twenty minutes ago. Because they had a scar on the left ring finger from a kitchen accident junior year. Because they gestured when he argued a point in mock trial and went still when he was lying.

I closed the app. Put my phone on the nightstand. Stared at the ceiling for ten seconds. Opened it again.

"Hey." Connor's voice from the bathroom, muffled by his toothbrush. "You coming to bed?"

"Yeah. One sec."

I opened the app one more time. Counted the paintings. Seven. All hands. All his.

She'd been painting my boyfriend's hands. Repeatedly. With the kind of attention that requires sitting across from someone for hours, studying the way light falls on their knuckles, memorizing the architecture of their fingers.

I put the phone face down.

"Babe?" He appeared in the doorway, toothbrush tucked in his cheek, hair messy from the shower. He looked like every good decision I'd ever made. "You okay? You look weird."

"I'm fine. Who's Margaux Thorne?"

He didn't pause. That was the thing I'd replay later. He didn't pause at all.

"Old friend. From freshman year art elective. She's nice, kind of intense." He spit into the sink, ran water. "Why?"

"She left a heart on your post."

"She leaves hearts on everyone's posts. That's just Margaux."

He said her name like it was ordinary. Like it tasted the same as any other word. I filed that away. In the counseling center where I work, we call it baseline behavior. You establish how someone normally says a name before you can detect when they're saying it differently.

His baseline sounded practiced.

"Come to bed," he said, and he smiled, and the smile was perfect, and I went.

Under the covers, he pulled me against his chest. His arm wrapped around my waist, thumb drawing circles on my hip. I pressed my face into his neck. Soap and sleep and the sharp green of his aftershave.

"Love you," he said into my hair.

"Love you too."

I stared at the ceiling.

At the counseling center, I sit behind the front desk and watch students walk in. Most of them say they're fine. I can tell within three minutes whether that's true. It's in the hands. People who are actually fine let their hands rest. People who are performing fine grip things. Bag straps. Water bottles. The skin of their own forearms.

I was gripping the edge of the sheet.

I made myself let go. Smoothed the fabric. Breathed.

He was asleep in four minutes. I counted.

I opened Instagram one more time, under the blanket, screen brightness turned all the way down. Found Margaux's account again. Went through every painting in her highlights. Studied the brushwork, the angles, the intimacy of the close framing.

Seven paintings of a man's hands. Oil on canvas. The kind that takes weeks per piece.

She wasn't painting a memory. That level of detail requires a model. Someone sitting still, holding position, while she worked.

I closed the app.

He shifted beside me, pulled me closer. His breath warm and even on my neck, his hand still on my hip, his phone on the nightstand with the screen dark.

I was happy. I was sure of it.

Notes app. 12:03 AM. Title: "nothing"

- red heart emoji. 1 comment. no words. - 847 followers. private account. - 7 paintings. all hands. all his. - he didn't pause when I said her name - he said "old friend" and "that's just Margaux" - "that's just Margaux" implies a frequency. he's explained her before. to someone.

I am reading too much into this. I am a psychology major who sees patterns in everything. This is confirmation bias. This is my mother's voice in my head saying "watch for signs."

There are no signs. There is a girl who paints hands and a boy who sleeps soundly.

Delete this note.

I didn't delete the note.