Follow Me(21)

“Miss?” the hostess pressed.

“I’m just—” I began, backing away.

“Cat!” Audrey shouted suddenly, half standing and waving me over.

I felt impossibly unhip as I walked over to their table, suddenly very aware of the coffee stain on my faded Brooks Brothers shirt and the fact that my eyes were red and bleary from reviewing documents all day. I reached up to pat my hair into place and found a pen stuck behind my ear. Blushing furiously, I shoved it into my bag.

“Hi,” I said, forcing brightness as I approached the table. “Sorry, I got stuck at work, and—”

“Here,” Audrey said, grabbing a martini glass filled with pink liquid from the table and pushing it into my hand. “Catch up.”

“Thanks,” I said uncertainly, checking the rim for lipstick marks.

“Everyone, this is my friend Cat,” Audrey announced to the table. “Cat and I have been friends for, like, a million years. Cat, this is Lawrence, who works with me at the museum. And here’s Keisha and Georgia, who are travel bloggers visiting from London. We connected over Instagram this afternoon.”

“I love London,” I said politely.

One of them—I hadn’t figured out which one was Keisha and which one was Georgia—took that as her cue to begin telling me about the best places to shop in London. I nodded along, hoping she couldn’t tell I barely recognized any of the brand names she was dropping, and was glad when the conversation moved on to the bloggers’ American itinerary. When the conversation then shifted to posting schedules and Google analytics, I felt my mind drifting to the pile of work in my shoulder bag. I was plotting my exit when Lawrence leaned toward me, eyes twinkling behind his glasses, and asked, “Has Audrey told you about the president of her fan club?”

I shot Audrey a glance. “You have a fan club?”

“It’s a joke,” she said with a forced-sounding laugh.

“There’s this gallery closed for installation, right?” Lawrence said. “And on Audrey’s first day, she found this rando in there. She kicked him out and gained a major fan in the process. Dude’s been back every single day since. He just lurks around the halls, hoping for a glimpse of her. The rest of us have made spotting him into a game.”

I raised my eyebrows in alarm. “Has anyone alerted security?”

“It’s okay, Cat,” Audrey said. “He’s not dangerous. Just a little weird.”

“You don’t know that.”

The table fell silent. Lawrence exchanged a look with one of the bloggers, a look that clearly implied I was no fun. Fine. Maybe I was no fun, but I also wasn’t going to stand by while my best friend fell victim to some stalker just because everyone thought it was a game. Women were murdered by seemingly harmless “admirers” all the time because they were conditioned to not make a fuss.

“Promise me you’ll talk to security,” I insisted, ignoring Lawrence’s rolling eyes.

Audrey patted my hand gently and effectively changed the subject by asking the bloggers when they planned to travel to New York. Twenty minutes later, Lawrence called it a night, giving Audrey a lingering kiss on the cheek, and Keisha and Georgia took off just after him. I was reaching for my bag, assuming Audrey would be ready to leave, too, but she flagged down the waiter and ordered us another round.

“Thanks for coming, Cat.”

I released my bag. “Well, it’s not every day your friend gets national recognition. Congratulations.”

“It’s more than that, though,” she said, swirling the dregs of her drink. “I really couldn’t stand the thought of being in that apartment alone another night, and I don’t want to have Nick over again. It’ll just inflate his ego, and you know it’s big enough as it is.”

“Wait a second. You’ve had Nick over? Nick Nick?”

Audrey tossed her hair over her shoulder and flashed me a devilish smirk. “That’s the one. He lives here, you know.”

“So do half a million other people,” I said with a frown. I had never understood Audrey’s attraction to Nick. He was good-looking, sure, but he was no more interesting or engaging than any other beer-bonging, pot-smoking former frat boy. Audrey could have done so much better.

“Relax, Cat,” Audrey said as the waiter placed fresh drinks in front of us. She seized hers and lifted it. “Anyway, let’s not talk about Nick and my lack of love life. Let’s talk about yours instead.”

“There’s not much to say about my lack of love life.”

“Oh no?” she asked with a smirk. “What about Connor?”

My cheeks burned. “What do you mean?”

“I knew it!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Cat, you have the worst poker face! I saw the way you were looking at him at trivia. Your eyes were practically heart-shaped. So what’s the story?”

The story was that I had been helplessly enamored of Connor since first semester of law school. I’d just concluded an argument in torts class when this tall, handsome man in the back of the room raised his hand and began, “But to play devil’s advocate . . .” I met his warm, hazel eyes across the room and all reason left me. I stopped listening to his counterargument as in my head I planned out the next few decades of our lives.