A Twisted Love Story(49)
Bianca doesn’t miss going out. For now, she is content to sit down at her computer and check in on her coworkers. Former coworkers. Whatever. She can’t log in to her own email; Siphon changed that password quick. Her files, her messages, they all belong to Abigail now.
But that was the only password that changed. She can still log in to all the others she had access to. Their passwords are the same.
She has been messing with Wes’s schedule for the past week, at least the part of it she can access. Changing his meetings, making him a little late—nothing too bad, just enough to make her laugh. Something to do while she continues to read his new emails.
Underneath her benzo-induced haze, she is angry at Wes. Not just because of Joey, either. If it wasn’t for Wes, she wouldn’t have been at the office late at night. And she wouldn’t have been attacked by Tanner.
Irrational anger? Yes. Real anger? Also yes.
She logs in to Wes’s email and starts downloading all his files. It makes her feel a little more alive, makes her mind a little sharper. Snooping is an activity that feels comforting, like wrapping up in a cozy blanket or wearing her favorite sweatshirt.
And she’s good at it. Karen confirmed it. There really is a connection between Joey and Wes, though it’s far worse than Bianca imagined.
While waiting for the download to finish, she picks up her phone and goes straight to the cloud. All her pictures are there, dating back to when she was in high school. Bianca scrolls back through them until she finds the photos of Joey Fisher.
She even has one from her sixteenth birthday, when Joey gave her a set of Russian dolls. The first gift from her first boyfriend.
41
Hey, it’s Farrah. Wanted to see if you’re up for having a drink sometime this week?
Wes is a little surprised to hear from Farrah, given that he has ignored her. No texts, no calls, no follow-up after he left her apartment. Any interest he had evaporated when he realized she was looking for a relationship. He isn’t. And he has no time to pretend otherwise.
He could answer Farrah’s text. Could reasonably get away with claiming he has been swamped at work and will contact her next week, and then never do it. But why bother? No matter what he does now, he’s going to end up being the bad guy, regardless of how it plays out. Either he ignores her today or he ignores her later.
Briefly, he considers telling her the semitruth. That he is involved with someone, sort of. It’s complicated. He could say that while Farrah is very nice and very attractive, he just doesn’t have the bandwidth to start something new right now.
As he mentally writes that text, he can see how bad it sounds. No way around it: He’ll be the bad guy. Might as well ignore her, the same way he’s been ignoring Ivy.
Except in Ivy’s case, she lives full-time in his head.
Wes has been checking her IG nonstop for days, watching for another post of that guy from Liver. Waiting to see if she is going out with him.
Milo.
Yes, he knows all about Milo now, has listened to several episodes of his podcast. Broken Men is the kind of thing guys create when they’re trying to attract women. The type who want to fix men.
Objectively speaking, he gets it. Specifically, he hates this guy. Hates his name.
Hates his beard.
* * *
—
Ivy stares at the text, not understanding it at all.
Why did you tag me?
No name, just a number, and she doesn’t recognize it. Ivy pauses her Chinese lesson and pulls up her IG account, checking over her recent posts. She looks at the phone number again and realizes it’s in her address book. No name. But now she knows.
Milo.
They had exchanged phone numbers, but she’d never bothered to type in his name. Yes, she had tagged him when she posted the picture of them sitting at the bar. Milo wasn’t hard to find, being a podcaster and all, though he did overstate the popularity of Broken Men. Hard to believe he can make a living off so few subscribers.
She doesn’t mention that in her reply.
Just giving you some extra publicity
Milo answers immediately: We only had a drink together.
Now she is confused again. He’s acting like she called him her boyfriend or something, which seems rather dramatic.
I’m aware of that, she says.
Look, it caused a problem. You should’ve asked.
Ivy makes a face at her phone. Why does she always have to meet the psychos. Tagging you in a post caused a problem?
Yes. With my fiancée.
Jesus Christ. He never—not once, not even in passing—mentioned a girlfriend, much less a fiancée.
If you had bothered to mention that, I never would’ve posted the picture.
The dots appear, then disappear. Good. Maybe that shut him up. The last thing she needs right now is another problem with another guy.
She returns to her Chinese lesson, pausing only to look up how to say lying pig.
Da? pia?nzi.
It’s the closest translation she can find, and it’s a good one to know. She repeats it ten times to make sure she remembers, because you never know when it’ll come in handy.
Nothing more comes from Milo. By the afternoon she isn’t thinking about him anymore. She is thinking about Wes and that girl from Liver. The cute one. Ivy hates that he doesn’t post on social media more often and that when he does it’s something stupid, like the view from wherever he’s hiking or a funny meme. He makes it so difficult for her to know what he’s doing. On purpose.