None of them recognize her.
When girls pretend to borrow his phone throughout high school and college and beyond, they all take the opportunity to invade his privacy. They check through his text messages, through his contacts, through ringtones, wallpapers, and his soul, because they rifle through all that is supposed to be private. They always snoop through the pictures when they can, laughing at the stupid ones, cooing over his dog, passing by the other unimportant shots, but all of them inevitably stop on a certain photo file.
"Who's she?" they demand in one way or another. The unspoken question lingers – is she your girlfriend – and sometimes, they stay to find out. There's no other explanation why he'd have such a thing, especially on his phone, if they weren't an item. Only couples did that sort of thing, right? But he doesn't think they're an item. Or, at least, he knows for sure that at that moment, they're not an item because the two of them are generally separated by an ocean, if not only half a landmass. And couples don't do that sort of thing.
The girls who nose around in his phone don't get any answers, mostly because he doesn't even have an answer for himself.
〚 ❀ ❀ ❀ 〛
He has a hard copy of this picture, neatly folded between various bills in his wallet, and it tends to fall out every so often, like when he's seeing if he has enough to go for a couple of drinks with the other guys, or paying for the groceries, or when he does that stupid thing that guys do, going through the contents of their wallets, taking everything out, and forgetting to put it all back in. But he doesn't forget – he can't forget her.
It falls out one day in the spring, right before finals, when they're all just sitting on the grass, and a girl (he forgets which one) is sitting, head pillowed on his stomach, and is lazily looking through the contents of his pockets. Her brown hair tangles in his belt loops, and she's got everything neatly beside her. Stubs from tickets. Coins. A paper clip. A couple of sticky notes with websites for job applications. His wallet. "So, what's in here?" she asks, blue eyes grinning up at him. They're similar eyes to ones that he knew from before, but not the same. They're never quite the same, and he knows it: nothing can replace the beauty of the original. Facsimiles fade in time due to replication, to imitation. Photocopies are infinitely less precious than the original. Still, like in the art world (he doesn't remember where he knows this from), the more copies of one thing there are, the more precious the original work becomes. So he sees those eyes on posters, in magazines, in other humans, but never quite the same.
Those eyes look up at him, silent and still. "Who is she?" the girl asks, and he can't bring himself to say anything.
"A friend."
(When the two of them part ways a week later, she doesn't mention anything about the picture. But he can still see it in her eyes, and hear it in her self-deprecating laugh. And he hates himself for it.)
〚 ❀ ❀ ❀ 〛
In time, he starts wearing a wedding band. It's so much easier than answering the questions.
〚 ❀ ❀ ❀ 〛
"So, you're married?"
They run into each other on a Monday in May when he's somewhere in France trying not to be conspicuously American, and she's apparently there for modeling or something. Whatever she does. The gist of the matter somehow made them end up at this little café for un petit repos. "No, not at all," he explains hastily. "It's just to keep, well, er—"
She grins knowingly, wolfishly. "Still as popular as ever with the ladies, I see."
That wouldn't be the half of it.
〚 ❀ ❀ ❀ 〛
He doesn't know how they manage to, but in the end they fall into step once more. He mysteriously loses the wedding band when the two of them start living together, but he doesn't lose the picture. It stays there, faithfully in his wallet, and sometimes (when he doesn't have more than a bill clip) in the pocket on the inside of his coat jacket. He fully forgets about it until she drops off his blazer at the dry cleaner's, and picks it up, leaves it on the bed.
There, in the pocket, is the picture, worn but with a note as well, in unfamiliar writing that matches the scrawl on the receipt.
Lucky sod.