Follow Me(59)

Just say something, I told myself, and took a deep breath before following Connor inside the coffee shop. It was crowded, and it took me a moment to spot him. When I did, I caught my breath. He was seated at a two-top in the back, across from a petite woman. I couldn’t see her expression, but the way Connor was looking intently at her and leaning forward made the nature of their meeting obvious.

Connor is on a date.

Unbidden, the dream slipped back into my consciousness, flooding my mind’s eye with dream-memories of Connor’s warm body pressed against mine, his breath in my ear, his voice, low and soft, saying my name. Tears stung my eyes, and I whirled around, racing out of the coffee shop. If he saw me spying on him on a date, I would never live down the humiliation.

Just outside the door, the tears began to fall in earnest. Swiping futilely at them, I hid inside a nearby bus shelter and called Audrey.

A date, I thought as the phone rang. He was on a date. How long has he been dating? How am I ever going to fix this?

I tapped my foot anxiously as I waited for Audrey to answer. She would know what to do. She had more experience with dating than I had; she would know how to advise me. Refreshed tears blurred my vision as her voice mail picked up and I lowered my phone in defeat.

That’s right. She’s out with Max.

I frowned bitterly. This was partially Max’s fault. When he walked out of my past that night at the Hirshhorn, I had been so worried about what he might tell Connor or Audrey that I’d dropped my eye from the prize. The almost-date Audrey had arranged had been ruined in part because I’d let Max Metcalf get under my skin. And he was out with Audrey right at that moment, getting exactly what he wanted. It wasn’t fair.





CHAPTER FORTY





AUDREY


Roses are red, violets are blue, some flowers are headless, you could be too.

The unsettling rhyme had been looping through my brain for days. Even though I’d gone all twenty-first-century Nancy Drew on the comment’s author and was 99 percent certain he was a bored Nebraskan teenager making a bad joke about Rosalind, I couldn’t completely banish the uneasiness the vague threat had inspired. Even now, sitting in the passenger seat of Max’s silver Prius, singing along to a Beatles station on satellite radio as we cruised downtown on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the unpleasant little ditty popped in my head.

I rubbed my arms to banish the sudden gooseflesh and chastised myself, Stop being ridiculous. No one is going to cut off your head.

But I couldn’t shake the unease that clung to me like a cobweb. So that edgelord wannabe poet hadn’t left me those headless roses, but someone had. Someone had gone to the trouble of buying a giant bouquet, cutting off each flower’s bloom, and then leaving the thorn-studded stems on my doorstep. It was clearly a message of some kind, but I had no idea what that message was or who it was from.

“Is everything all right?” Max asked, bringing me back to the present.

I banished all thoughts of those awful stems from my mind and stretched my gloss-covered lips into a smile. “Absolutely. Just wondering where we’re going.”

He adjusted his Ray-Ban aviators and smiled mischievously. “If I told you, that would ruin the surprise.”

? ? ?

WE DROVE INTO Virginia over the Fourteenth Street Bridge and out past the airport before looping back toward the city and eventually pulling into a crowded parking lot.

“Where are we?” I asked as I climbed out of the car. I couldn’t see much of anything other than an expanse of grass hidden by some trees, a strip of water, and a row of porta potties. Near us, a rowdy pack of teenagers were chasing each other and waving a Frisbee in the air. Beyond them, I saw mostly sneaker-wearing couples pushing toddlers in strollers and people dressed in padded shorts and helmets walking bicycles. I looked down at my chambray sundress and platform sandals and sincerely hoped Max wasn’t expecting me to engage in some sort of physical activity.

“So many questions,” he teased, unloading a pair of reusable Trader Joe’s tote bags from the trunk.

“I don’t like secrets,” I said, grabbing the edge of one of the bags and peering inside. I spotted a cutting board and baguette and looked up triumphantly. “Aha! It’s a picnic.”

“You were the kind of kid who searched for her Christmas presents, weren’t you?” he guessed with a laugh. “But, yes, you caught me. It’s a picnic. Now that the weather is finally cooling down, I thought it would be nice to spend some time outside.”

I took one of the bags from him and together we began walking toward the grass. “I haven’t been on a picnic in ages. When I first moved to New York, I used to try to convince my roommates to picnic in Central Park with me. I’d get all this stuff from Zabar’s, but they weren’t really into eating, so—”

The rest of my words were drowned out by a sudden roar from above. I snapped my head up and saw an enormous airplane careening toward the ground in front of us. I froze, veins crackling with terror, unable to look away from the impending disaster.

“Oh my God,” I croaked out, clutching Max’s arm. “It’s—”

Before I could finish my panicked sentence, the plane landed gracefully on what I now recognized as a runway leading toward the airport. Fingertips still digging into Max’s bicep, I turned to him in shock.