picturesque.

ii.

That night I couldn't sleep a wink. My mind was tormenting me with questions I don't even know how to answer.

Was that Trevor? Trevor Stephens, the family-friendly guy everyone loves? I just can't comprehend. Him, doing murder out in the open? And who was that woman? Wait, could it be his girlfriend? Steph... that was her name, right? Although I'm pretty sure her full name was Stephanie...

Oh God, I tossed and turned in my bed, my feet getting tangled up in the sheets. Maybe I shouldn't have jinxed their date. But I did say that it had better gone well... do you still call that jinxing? Oh, I don't know.

I could have cried to sleep that night, but I didn't. I just prayed that whoever I saw just now wasn't Trevor, and that my eyes were just playing tricks on me, and that when I wake up, everything will be back to normal. No murder, no Trevor suspicions, nothing of that sort.

The next day, everything went well. Kind of. Except for one thing.

"Did you hear about the murder case near our office?" A bright-eyed Trevor came to me during the morning with another cup of Sprite in his hand. See, he is weird. Trevor is the only person I've ever known to drink Sprite in the morning, unlike me and other colleagues who chug down coffee as if they're Red Bull drinks. "It was pretty gruesome to watch."

"Yeah..." I answered absentmindedly, focusing on something else other than that topic. It was real after all, I thought. I didn't want to meet Trevor in the eye, but he forced me to. He went in front of me and we just kind of had this eye battle for a few minutes before he sat down on his seat next to me.

"What, case's got you rattled?" He asked, leaning slightly closer to my desk. He doesn't seem to have a sense of privacy, for some reason. "Yeah, I mean, it's not everyday our neighbourhood's on the paper. Gosh, I came back from a memorable first date to see this."

I didn't want to jump to conclusions first, but I was already thinking whether he did actually went to the date or not. Maybe the woman yesterday was...

Maybe I should try asking him...

"Hey, Trevor," I began, my throat dry from lack of saliva. Trevor only hummed, his thin pale hands arranging his paperwork into neat piles on his desk.

"Mind telling me how your date went yesterday night?"

I ended up asking that in hopes to cover up my initial objective, and can only hope he buys it. He turnt to look at me, an expression of disbelief plastered on his face.

"Why, Vince, I never knew you'd be interested in the topic of my love life until now!" He cried, a bit too loud as two female colleagues who were printing documents near our work desks swerved their heads to look at me in an assumingly jealous way.

"Uh, yeah, just tell me about it." I muttered softly as I pulled him closer by the collar.

"Okay, hmm..." Trevor hummed, his sharp gaze trailing somewhere. I was wondering why did he have to recall something that literally happened yesterday night, but he responded. "So Steph met me at my house, and we linked hands and walked all the way to the fancy café just down our workplace. You know, that Café Garnier? Gosh, Steph was wearing such a beautiful dress, I could've dropped dead! Okay, after that we went a a park to kind of have a stroll, and we wanted to stargaze, but there weren't any stars... But it was okay, we still danced a little under the moonlight and it was so romantic! Ahh, we danced all the way back to my house without a care in the world! She even stayed in my house for a night... but we haven't done it yet, okay? Vince? Vincent?"

I had already tuned out halfway through Trevor's rant and instead turned to eye at his half-drunk cup of Sprite. He was waving in front of my eyes, and when I looked up, he somehow had a weird look on his face, like he was anticipating something but it didn't happen. It was weird because I've never seen him do it before.