Follow Me(75)

And then I let myself go.

There was something cathartic in trashing her apartment. All the emotion I had been feeling coalesced into one swirling vortex of destruction. I lost track of time and myself as I flung clothing around the room, ripped her sheets from her bed, smashed palettes of makeup.

Afterward, I stood in the middle of her living room, dizzy, panting, looking at the devastation with wonder. Had I really done all that? There was no way she could misunderstand the depth of my emotion now. Satisfied, I staggered out the front door, not bothering to shut it behind me.





CHAPTER FORTY-NINE





AUDREY


After everything that had happened, I was in no hurry to live alone again. I could find another apartment, but how could I be certain that this maniac wouldn’t follow me there? I felt safe at Max’s, high above the street, protected by a doorman, and wrapped tightly in Max’s comforting arms. There, I could almost forget all the unsettling occurrences that had plagued me since I moved to the city.

Almost, but not quite.

Naked in Max’s bed, streaming Ted and the Honey’s new acoustic album and ranking our favorite songs, I was outwardly laughing and smiling, but my mind was still stuck on the other night. Even as I argued the pros of “This One’s for You,” I could see my destroyed apartment: my clothing strewn about, wineglasses smashed on the floor, my pricy Harry Josh hair dryer cracked. Involuntarily, I shivered.

“Come on, baby, the lyrics aren’t that good,” Max said gently, kissing my shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”

“My apartment,” I admitted. “I’m still really freaked out.”

“That’s understandable. I can’t imagine how it must have felt to see your place torn apart like that. There was so much anger there. Have you thought any more about who might be that upset with you?”

“Only Cat,” I said, half laughing.

“You don’t think—” Max said haltingly.

“No! Of course not. I’m only teasing. Well, I’m not teasing about Cat being mad. She wouldn’t admit it, but I think she was pissed that I brought you to that party the other week. And then I know she was upset I didn’t go to trivia with her last night. But there’s no way Cat would do something like that. I mean, can you imagine her making that kind of mess? She’s so pathologically neat she would have stroked out on the spot.”

“Right,” Max said thoughtfully.

“Hey,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I’m famished. Let’s have lunch. Is there any more of that curry?”

“No, sorry. But I could run out and pick up some Thai food.”

“Don’t go,” I said, twining my arms around his neck. “We’ll starve and die together. It’ll be romantic.”

“You’re an odd woman.” He laughed, kissing me and slipping out of bed. He stepped into pants and pulled a shirt over his toned chest, then pointed at me. “Don’t you move a muscle. I’ll be back with pad thai before you know it.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I promised.

? ? ?

JUST AS I heard the front door shut behind him, the album we had been streaming finished its last song and started over again. I rolled over and reached for his laptop on his bedside table. I was scrolling through Spotify, considering the options—Max had such great taste in music, and I wanted to impress him with the perfect playlist when he came back—when something in the upper right-hand corner of his desktop caught my eye.

A folder titled “Audrey.”

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. What could he be keeping in a folder with my name on it? Maybe something for my birthday next month? Maybe those tips on Thai travel he’d promised me? Normally I wouldn’t open someone’s personal file—or, at least, I would feel slightly guilty about doing so—but this one had my name on it. He was practically begging me to open it. I double-clicked the folder.

My smile faltered.

There were hundreds if not thousands of photographs in that folder. As far as I could tell from the thumbnails, they were all faraway shots of a woman. I enlarged the first and saw myself walking down Fourteenth Street, sipping an iced latte while wearing a light blue dress and round sunglasses. I frowned. Something felt wrong. Maybe it was the way I wasn’t looking at the camera. I didn’t remember Max taking a candid of me while I was walking.

Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat as I recognized the dress I was wearing. It was the blue flowered Madewell dress that I had accidentally spilled red wine on in mid-July, nearly a full month before I met Max. I loved that dress but I hadn’t been able to get out the stain, and I’d had to throw it away.

Why did Max have a photo of me wearing it?

I opened the next photo, and it was another shot of me in the same outfit, seemingly taken mere seconds later. The next photo was more of the same. I kept clicking open photos until I realized there were at least fifty of me in that same outfit, walking down the same street, sipping the same drink.

What the fuck?

I opened another photo at random and saw me, clad in black lululemon and with my hair in a sweaty ponytail, digging in my bag, as if searching for my keys. The viewpoint was from across the street, as though the photographer had been watching me from afar.

Not ‘the photographer,’ I corrected myself. Max.