Behind Closed Hearts

Chapter - 1

The feeling that I'd heard the name somewhere before was still there but I still couldn't quite recall where. So I sat and thought long and hard about it. The answer was on the tip of my tongue, but try as I might, I couldn't quite put the pieces together to the puzzle that was Xander Parker and it irked me to no end.

He'd said that he'd gotten the number from one of my friends. He also knew what my name was. That meant that whoever had given him the number had also given him a bit of information about me. I quickly opened my contacts and went through the contact list, reading the names of all the contacts there out loud in hopes that if anyone of them had ever mentioned the guy's name, I'd be able to make the connection. And I was right. Something seemed to click in my mind, almost like a light bulb going off, when I came to Natalie's name. Now I felt almost embarrassed for not having recognized the name sooner.

The conversation I'd had with her a week ago came rushing back to me all at once. She'd told me how she'd met a guy named Xander Parker on instagram and had been talking on and off with him for the past month. She liked the guy a lot and was now in a relationship with him.

I'd been more than a little shocked when she'd told me about it. She'd never been the relationship kind of girl and the fact that she was in a relationship with a guy she'd met online not even a month ago had seemed next to impossible for me to believe. But she'd assured me that it was true, going as far as sending me his picture when I'd told her that I didn't believe her.

The guy had looked handsome in a boyish sort of way and I could see what my friend had liked about him. She'd always been a sucker for boyish good looks so it was no surprise she'd gone for someone like that and when she described how he behaved, there was no doubt as to why she'd chosen him. According to her, the guy had it all, a good sense of humour, a happy go lucky nature and a smile so radiant that it could charm the pants off of even a nun.

Natalie was a naive girl, she hadn't even met the guy but had gone ahead and accepted his proposal without a second thought, that too within a month of knowing the guy. I didn't know what was more absurd, the fact that she'd made a guy she'd met a month ago her boyfriend or that she'd started talking to a complete stranger without a second thought. He could've made a fake ID and actually be a serial killer for all she knew.

So being the good friend that I was, I'd had one of my friends who was a computer expert and my go to guy when it came getting any kind of information about absolutely anyone do a background check on Xander Parker. What he'd been able to dig up had been way more interesting than I'd anticipated.

To put it simply, the guy was a playboy.

Not essentially the kind that shagged everything in a skirt but the kind that liked jumping from one girl to another just for the heck of it, that too within a week's time. And I had warned my friend about it. She'd assured me that he wasn't like that anymore and I'd backed off. I was never one to judge people on the basis of what I'd heard from others. I trusted my own judgement more than what others had to say.

My phone chiming brought me out from my musings.

Xander Parker : You still there Scarlet ?

I took a moment to reply. He was only trying to befriend me, there wasn't anything wrong with that but why was he being so mysterious about it? Did he think that Natalie hadn't told me about him? Or did he think that I didn't know about him and Natalie being together? What exactly was he playing at here?

On a whim, I typed out my next message.

Me : Are you single?

Xander Parker : Yes, I'm single. Why do you ask?