Follow Me(71)

So I watched.

I watched even as cramps developed in my legs and my limbs grew cold. I would suffer through personal discomfort to protect her. I would do anything for her.

I squinted into her bedroom, realizing it had been a while since I had seen her move. She was resting on her back in the center of her messy bed, her body twisted in the tangled sheets. She looked beautiful, peaceful. But did she look too peaceful? And weren’t overdose risks not supposed to sleep on their backs? I leaned closer to the window, searching for confirmation that her chest was moving. It was impossible to tell.

My heart sang with the certainty that Audrey needed me, and I grabbed at the bars that covered the window, testing their resilience. They didn’t budge. I raced for the front door. Anyone with an internet connection knew that Audrey had had problems with that lock since she moved in, and there was a chance it might be open. A small chance, but one worth pursuing before I was forced to consider a more drastic course of action. Scarcely daring to hope, I pushed on the iron gate in front of her door. I expected it to remain firmly in place, but it swung open with a light creak.

Fate. I was fated to be there that night, fated to be the one to save her. I grasped her doorknob, certain that it would turn easily in my hand.

It did.

My blood tingled as I entered her darkened apartment. I paused to inhale the distinct smell of her home: the lingering aroma of her coconut shampoo, a citrus-scented candle, a slight twinge of dust. I looked toward her open bedroom door and remembered my mission. My heart climbed my throat, threatening to choke me.

I turned toward her bedroom, fearful of what I might find in there. If, God forbid, something had happened in the time it took me to get inside, I knew I would never recover from discovering her corpse, from seeing her skin waxen and her summer-fruit lips blue. I reminded myself that fate had steered me to her window, that it wouldn’t let me get this far and then snatch her from me, and stepped into her bedroom.

Audrey sat straight up in bed, her eyes flying open like a doll’s.

I froze, too startled to move.

“Hi,” she said pleasantly.

Heart pounding so hard it rattled my rib cage, I stared at her. Something was wrong. Her eyes were unfocused and lacked their usual sparkle. She was looking at me, but she wasn’t seeing me. She was either asleep or seriously out of it from the pills.

So I said the only thing I could think to say: “You’re dreaming.”

“Oh,” she said agreeably, before lying back down and closing her eyes.

I exhaled, pressing a fist to my mouth. Holy shit.

I remained rooted to the ground, afraid to move, to do anything that might awaken her. And so I just stood there and watched her sleep, her pale chest rising and falling, her heart-shaped lips open. It took everything I had not to cross the room and kiss those lips, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t some sort of weirdo.





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX





AUDREY


In my nearly thirty years, I’ve only ever thought I loved two men. The first was Charles Newton, whom I dated my senior year in high school. He was the captain of the soccer team, and had perfect chestnut waves and a sound system in his used Toyota that was loud enough to qualify as a public nuisance. We were making out on the couch in his basement, Fall Out Boy playing in the background, when he whispered wetly in my ear, “I love you.” Overcome by hormones and emo music, I said it back. Two weeks later, he broke up with me via text, and one week after that I was dating his best friend.

The other was Nick. I couldn’t remember who said it first or feeling that sort of all-consuming passion I assumed one felt when they were in love; I just thought that I must love him since we had dated for so long. It wasn’t until after we broke up that I realized the truth: I was never in love with Nick. I enjoyed his company, and we had incomparable sexual chemistry, but we were never truly in love.

There was a third man to whom I had said the three magic words. His name was John or Josh or possibly Jeremy, and I had met him at a party shortly after I moved to New York. My blood brimming with MDMA, I confessed my love to this stranger on a makeshift dance floor in someone’s Williamsburg apartment. He responded by licking my cheek. I did not consider him one of the great loves of my life.

Max, though. Max might be different. I didn’t love him, of course—I’d only known him for five weeks—but I thought I might be able to see myself falling in love with him someday. Possibly someday soon. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I had been staying with Max for two weeks, ever since I first heard the eerie voice on the Luna Listen app, and it just seemed right. His apartment felt more like a home than my own—which, sure, could be because I’d never bothered to fully unpack, but maybe it was also because Max made everything so cozy and welcoming. At my place, I had fallen into the habit of eating frozen Trader Joe’s meals while perched on my beanbag chair, drinking wine and streaming something mindless on my laptop. At Max’s, I sat at his kitchen island while he cooked dinner—real dinners, like that curry and this fantastic chickpea-and-Swiss-chard thing—and we chatted about our days. And, unlike Nick, he really listened when I told him how things were going, even asking thoughtful follow-up questions. Then he would pull me into his strong, soap-scented embrace, and we would snuggle together on the couch, listening to records or watching something together, until we couldn’t stand the closeness a second longer and would fall on each other like lust-driven animals.