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“There, wait—” Marley began. “Careful.”
As she spoke, several loose photos tumbled out from a dog-eared page toward the middle of the book.
Now it was my turn to crane my neck, leaning closer as Harper gathered the scattered photos.
“Were those all pictures ofguys?” I asked, not even trying to hide the surprise in my voice.
Of the five of us, it was no shock that Annie had dated the most, but they had all been casual flings—at least as far as I had known.
Even when one of us would ask for details, she would just give us a coy smile and say that she had fun.
She hadn’t even given us names.
And yet, here were actual pictures of guys—different guys, hot guys, all smiling and attentive and clearly very into Annie.
“There’s more,” Kendall said, nodding toward the journal.
But Harper was already on it, turning pages and using her finger to skim down the lines until she found something that made her eyes bulge out and her mouth fall open.
“Oh, wow,” Harper said. “I had no idea…”
“I know, right?” Marley shook her head. “I wouldn’t have believed it if it wasn’t there in her own handwriting. Withpictures, even.”
I could feel my brow furrow as I looked at their faces, my own confusion mirroring theirs. But they shouldn’t bethatsurprised, right? Surely, even with distinct lack of details, they had known Annie dated from time to time.
At thirty-one, I’m sure none of us assumed she had still been saving herself for marriage.
I felt like I had to say something, even though I still wasn’t quite over my uneasiness at looking through her journal in the first place.
“I mean, I know she didn’t share a lot of details with us,” I began. “But we all knew Annie wasn’t a nun, right? It’s no surprise that she didn’t tell us about every date she went on. Or at least itshouldn’tbe a surprise…”
The other three women shot me a confused look that was remarkably similar across their very different faces.
“No, honey,” Marley said, realization dawning. “You don’t understand. We all knew she was dating. That part isn’t shocking at all.”
“Yeah, men loved Annie,” Harper said, then glanced down at the writing on the pages in front of her again, as if to double-check what her eyes had just seen. “And Annie loved men. Five men, apparently.”
“Oh…” I said. Then my eyes went wide. “Oh.” Once the realization hit me, I couldn’t stop the questions from tumbling out. “Do you mean she was dating these guys at the same time? Do you think they knew? About each other, I mean?”
“They knew,” Harper said, then thumbed through the journal. “According to this page, and this one, and this one, they knewverywell.”
My friends were all still looking at me expectantly, but I didn’t feel as shocked as they must have thought I would be. I mean, sure, Iwasa little surprised that she had been dating five guys at the same time, but they were all grown adults. And kudos to her for being up-front with the guys about it.
Still, the way Harper was wiggling her eyebrows at me suggested there was something else that I wasn’t getting, some other clue that I hadn’t latched onto yet.
“O-kay,” I said, drawing the word out as I studied her expression. “That’s good, though, right? I mean, I don’t know how she found the time to go on that many dates in a week, but at least she told them all what the deal was… right?”
“Oh, she told them,” Marley said, snickering. “In classic Annie fashion.”
Okay, now I really was confused. “I… I guess I don’t get it, then,” I said. “I don’t know what that means—in classic Annie fashion?”
“They were her harem,” Kendall said, quietly. She gestured toward the journal. “That’s what they’re talking about. That’s what Annie called the guys—her harem.”
“Her… harem?” I said, the word conjuring up images in my head that were almost comical. Scantily clad men fawning over Annie like she was some kind of princess or goddess, attending to her every need, her every desire. “Oh, shit,” I said, feeling my eyes bulge every bit as big as Harper’s had been just a moment before. “I think I need some more wine.”
“Now you get it,” Harper said. “They didn’t all just know about each other. They were all in it together. They were all—”
“Her harem,” I finished, still incredulous.
