19 Someone That Didn't Exist

Bryce accepted Jenna's explanation about social media easily enough. "That makes sense. You can never be too careful. I guess it's a good thing I'm not on social media then. You aren't anti pictures in general, are you?"

Not at all. She had been a bit of a shutterbug back home and her Instagram account was plenty active. She missed being able to freely and unashamedly take and post pictures.

Since coming here she hadn't taken a single one of herself aside from the photo for her fake driver's license with her new hair. She felt like that shouldn't count since it was part of her cover and nothing more.

"No. Be sure to send whatever pictures you take to me though so I can have them too," Jenna requested.

Her phone's home screen was a generic wildlife photo but her lock screen she had taken personally of the ducklings she fed at one of her volunteer opportunities. They were adorable!

It wasn't the same as the phone that the FBI had locked up with the rest of her real documentation though. Her camera roll was full of photos of family and friends. The home screen was a picture of Adam holding each of his giggling children upside down by an ankle while Erica looked at them like they were nuts. The lock screen was one of her and Jonas wearing these ridiculous hats they found in a tourist shop pulling weird faces.

Jenna missed having pictures of people she cared about. She wasn't exactly sure how she felt about Bryce since he was a rather confusing person but at the very least she considered him a friend. Having pictures with friends again would be wonderful.

"We should use mine as the backdrop since it looks better," she declared. "Do you have a selfie stick?"

Bryce snorted. "No, why would I?"

"Ah, they're so convenient even if they look ridiculous! Don't knock it til you try it."

Jenna's selfie stick was at home in her old room at her mom's house since she hadn't bothered to move out while going to college. Along with almost everything else she owned. Her electronics and legal documents were currently being guarded by the FBI.

With such a big family, it was impossible to get everyone into the picture without using it unless they had a stranger on hand to take it for them. Selfie sticks had been invented for a reason even if they were a bit obnoxious looking.

She had to do a bit of maneuvering to get both of their faces and the sandcastle in the shot but the picture turned out nicely. After that she suggested they get individual shots in front of their own sandcastles.

Bryce gestured to his kind of awkwardly while smiling, apparently unused to taking pictures like this, while Jenna struck a dramatic pose in front of hers that made him laugh. "Beautiful, Tessa! I think I'm going to make this my new lock screen."

She rolled her eyes but wasn't actually judging him for it. She had been planning on making the one of the two of them her home screen and keeping the ducklings as her lock screen anyway.

He sent her all three pictures and she felt strangely satisfied adding them to her camera roll that literally only had duckling pictures in it. It almost felt like she had a social life again even if it was limited to one person.

"So what else are we doing today?" Jenna asked.

"I owe you lunch for losing at bingo then I thought we could go back to my place and watch a movie or something before you have to do homework. When you finish we can play video games for the rest of the day," Bryce suggested. "Is that alright?"

That sounded amazing to her. She hadn't played any video games at all since coming here because her Nintendo Switch had been confiscated due to some sort of trackable code inside it.

She beamed at him. "That sounds great! I will need to get my backpack and laptop first though. Can we swing back by my apartment after lunch?"

"Sure thing."

They ended up going to a Mexican place for lunch where Jenna ate way too many of the complementary chips but had fun talking to Bryce about her ducklings (once he saw her phone's lock screen he had asked about them) and the other things she did when volunteering in between bites. He was a really good listener and asked questions in all the right places to keep the conversation flowing.

Belatedly, she realized she had sort of hogged it but when she went to apologize he shook his head. "I like listening to you talk. You have a lot more to say than I do anyway so we sort of balance each other out."

She hadn't thought of it that way. She knew she was a chatterbox though; her brothers had teased her about it more than once over the years.

Jenna was a bit embarrassed for some reason so she didn't say anything else on the drive back from her place after getting what she needed. She was more than a little surprised when she saw that he lived in a townhouse in a gated community.

Bryce noticed her staring and explained with a small smile on his face. "I had to sell my grandma's house after she died because I couldn't keep up with her mortgage but there was some money left over and I was able to use it for a down payment. It isn't much; two bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms but it does have a garage and a small yard so that's something. I've been debating about getting a dog but it would be alone most of the day so I haven't gone through with it."

"Do you even have anything in the extra bedroom?" she asked in disbelief. She couldn't imagine having this much space for one person.

Her childhood home had four. Adam shared with Colton and the other three shared the biggest bedroom until Adam moved out and Evan took his place. Jenna got her own room as the only girl. It could be pretty cramped at times but they had two living rooms so that helped.

"It's completely empty," he confessed. "I didn't have anything to put in there since all of the boxes of memorabilia I kept from my grandma are in the garage. I figured I would find something to fill it with eventually."

"There's nothing wrong with that, I was just amazed by how much space you have for yourself. My whole apartment is maybe a third of the size," Jenna was sure to clarify.

Bryce parked in the garage and told her where the bathroom and snacks were in case she needed anything and to make herself at home. She ended up setting up shop at the kitchen table and spreading out her textbooks and notes as necessary after they watched a Studio Ghibli film.

He stretched out on the whole couch to read a mystery novel and seemed perfectly content. She couldn't deny that she was too. She was used to having people around constantly so being alone for most of this year had been terrible.

Jenna hated the silence. She needed background noise so she always turned on instrumental music while working on homework.

She had been sure to bring her headphones with her so she wouldn't disturb Bryce while she worked because she hadn't been sure what he was planning on doing beforehand. He had told her he liked to read but she had never seen him do it until now. He probably wouldn't appreciate unnecessary noise while concentrating.

His space was a lot homier than hers, despite the cheap decorations Killian let her get and the fact that it was sparsely decorated. The difference was that he had a few scattered pictures of him with his grandma hanging up.

Her mom's house hardly had a spare inch of wall between the kitschy decorations and what seemed like millions of family photos. It could be a bit overwhelming if you weren't used to it but she missed it fiercely. A lifetime of memories was on those walls.

Memories Jenna wasn't allowed to talk about right now using any sort of identifying details. She felt like she had done a fairly good job of sticking to the guidelines for talking about her past all things considering but couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if she could tell Bryce the truth about how she grew up.

An honest person by nature, she hated lying to him. She hated lying to everyone out here but especially him because he seemed to really like her.

Bryce liked someone that didn't exist. Part Tessa O'Brien and part Jenna Mitchell. Neither of them completely since one was nothing but a carefully concocted cover story. Bits of Jenna would always bleed through.

Would he still treat her this well if he knew she had been lying to him? Or if he had met the real her? The girl that was considered so obnoxiously masculine and athletic that she wasn't even a girl in the eyes of men couldn't possibly inspire this level of devotion.

She didn't have the most feminine features. A lot of people said she looked more like Peter's twin than Jonas's considering they both had rather androgynous freckled faces and the same eye and hair colors.

Jonas resented those comments. His hair was medium brown and he had hazel eyes so they didn't seem related until people saw them interact together. Then it was completely obvious they were twins.

Jenna sighed. There was no point thinking about all of this. She had homework to do.