Follow Me(77)

“No, not nudes. Photos of me just . . . doing stuff. Drinking coffee, walking, coming home from exercising.” She drew a ragged breath and when she spoke her voice was a squeak. “I think . . . I think Max has been watching me.”

“Audrey, everyone has been watching you,” I said. “You post photos of yourself online all day long. So Max saved some of them to his computer. I don’t understand what’s so upsetting about that.”

Her eyes widened, their blue-green color brilliant underneath the sheen of tears. “Are you even listening to me? These aren’t photos I’ve posted. These are photos I’ve never seen of myself, photos that are like . . . I don’t know, like paparazzi photos or something.”

I felt a bubble of inappropriate laughter rise in my throat. Of course Audrey assumed she had paparazzi, like she was some sort of celebrity. I could see she was distressed, but phrases like that made it so hard for me to take her seriously.

“Breathe,” I instructed, taking her hands. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. What did Max say?”

“He doesn’t know I saw them. He went out to pick up lunch and left music running on his computer. I went to change the album and . . . I saw them. Just sitting there on his desktop in a folder labeled ‘Audrey.’ I mean, what the hell, Cat, it’s almost like he wanted me to see them.” She paused and pressed a hand against her mouth. “I freaked out. I mean, wouldn’t you? I picked up and left, and I haven’t answered any of his calls or texts. I can’t. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what any of this means, other than that he’s the one who’s been stalking me.”

“Audrey, no,” I told her gently. “You know that’s not true. This is Max. Come on, you just have to talk to him. I know you said you’ve never seen them, but you post so many photos, how could you ever keep track?”

“I didn’t post these pictures,” Audrey said stubbornly.

I doubted she could be so certain, but saw no point in continuing to argue with her.

“Okay,” I said placatingly. “You didn’t post them. You still have to talk to him. This is your boyfriend, Audrey. Do you really believe he’s the one who’s been stalking you?”

“No. Jesus, Cat, he’s so nice. I can no more imagine him tearing apart my apartment than I can you doing it.”

“There you go. Haven’t you always said that you trust your gut?”

She tapped her manicured fingers together in thought. “You’ve known Max longer than I have, Cat. Can you imagine him doing something like this?”

A person never forgets camp.

“No,” I said firmly, curling my bare nails into my palms. “Just talk to him. There has to be a reasonable explanation for this.”

? ? ?

“TELL ME THERE’S a reasonable explanation for this,” I hissed on the phone to Max. He had started calling me almost as soon as Audrey had, but I waited to return his call until Audrey had retreated to the bathroom with a glass of wine and a jar of my best bath salts.

“I’ve been calling—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “Audrey’s here, and she told me what happened.”

“Then you know more than I do,” he said, his voice distraught. “What’s going on?”

“She found your little photo collection.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Max? Did you hear me?” I drew a breath and closed my eyes. “Please tell me this is all a misunderstanding. Please tell me you didn’t take those photos.”

“I didn’t take those photos,” he said quietly.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because liars always assume everyone else is lying,” he suggested, a nasty undercurrent to his voice.

“What?” I gasped.

He didn’t respond, just said emphatically, “Cat, I didn’t take those photos. Does Audrey think I did?”

“She thinks that you took them, and, more than that, she thinks you’ve been stalking her. She thinks you’re the one who’s been terrorizing her.”

“Oh God,” he murmured. “That’s not true. Let me talk to her.”

“I don’t think she wants to talk to you.”

“Please, Cat,” he said desperately. “I have to talk to her. Please.”

I sighed. “I’ll tell her you want to talk to her, but I’m not promising anything.”

“Please, Cat,” he said again. Then his voice hardened as he added, “It’s what’s best for us. For all of us.”





CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE





AUDREY


I sat at an otherwise empty communal table at Columbia Brews, my hands cupping an almond milk latte I was too nervous to drink. I kept my eyes on the door, and my stomach jumped every time a blond man walked in. I almost got up and left four separate times, unable to believe I’d let Cat talk me into meeting with Max. She was so certain those photos were innocent. What do you have to lose by talking to him? she’d asked. Just talk to him, and you’ll know whether he’s telling the truth or not.

I knew Cat was referencing my sixth sense for judging character. I was rarely wrong. Sophomore year in high school, for example, my friends all said I was crazy when I turned down an invitation to senior prom with Bobby Kendall, indisputably the best-looking and most sought-after boy in our whole school, simply because I had a “bad feeling”—but then Bobby Kendall drove him and his date into a tree after a postprom party. And then there was the time I told Izzy I was getting a bad vibe from the cute guy she’d met on the Q train; she soon discovered his apartment was filled with taxidermied rats.