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.
Late in the afternoon, when her brain is tired and she can’t learn any more new words, she gets a DM from a woman named Clarissa.
Look, I’m not trying to be a stalker, but that guy in your post is my fiancée. Can I ask what happened between you two?
How Ivy got pulled into this drama just by posting a photo is beyond her.
But if it were her, and she had reached out to someone for information about Wes, she would hope the woman would answer. If she was polite. So far, Clarissa hasn’t done anything offensive.
Clarissa is quite active on IG. She has posted a lot of pictures of herself and Milo. Including the engagement ring.
We met at Liver, spent an hour or so talking and having a drink. He asked if we could exchange numbers, and I agreed. He didn’t mention having a fiancée. He never called me, and I never called him.
Clarissa’s response is instantaneous: Thank you.
With that, Ivy is done for the day. She logs out of her computer, puts her earbuds back in the case, and gathers her things. On the way to her car, she receives yet another DM from Clarissa.
Do you mind if I ask why you posted the picture? I’m just curious, since you barely know each other?
Because she wanted to make Wes jealous. That was it. Nothing deeper than that. And it’s not something she is willing to tell Clarissa.
I thought his podcast sounded interesting, so I was just spreading the word about him.
It sounds lame, but it’s all Ivy has. Now she is really done, because this relationship is not her problem. The only upside of this day is that she hasn’t heard from Karen.
42
Karen’s entire body aches as she crawls out of bed. Up early again, though not to search for the voyeur. Every extra minute is focused on Wes.
As much as she wants to sleep a little longer, thinking about her son makes her get up. She imagines what Jack would be like if he had grown up with his father in his life. How different he would be now.
And the likelihood that he would have also ended up in an abusive relationship. The statistics on that are astounding.
She thinks about all the children going through the same thing, stuck in abusive households, growing up watching their parents fight. Maybe they try to defend one parent against the other, or maybe they hide in the corner. No good options for a child stuck in that cycle.
Another reason risking her career is worth it. Another reason to get out of bed.
If Karen’s car wasn’t in such bad shape, she would drive to Sacramento. But she isn’t sure it will make it. Back to the bus. This adds an additional thirty minutes to the trip, so it’s almost lunchtime when she arrives at 327 Bluebell Court.