Page 19 of Hate You More

“Whatever.” I mute the TV sound. We’re little more than a week out from our public offering, so I’m looking for causation. Some kind of news responsible for the rise. Could be renewed investor confidence, but whatever’s driving the share price, I should already know about it. I flip my phone on loudspeaker and put it on the back of the sectional, arms folded across my chest as I read the ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen. “What are the analysts saying?”

“Go back to your laptop and open up Instagram.”

“What the fuck for?”

“Just do it,” she says with a sigh. “I know you have an account, even if the last thing you posted was a picture of a hot dog seven years ago.”

“It was a good dog.”

“Open the damn thing.”

“Fine. Done.”

“Search for the Fifth Ave Files account.”

“The fuck is the fifth have files?”

“Ave. As in avenue, dummy. It’s a gossip account.”

My lip curls, but eager to get to the real business of share sleuthing, I do as Hannah says. The account looks like gossip central with more than a million followers. There have been more than five posts made over the last eighteen hours, only one of which plucks at my attention, thanks to the black Mercedes in the background.

“Is that . . .” Like an octogenarian reading a Metamucil label, I lean closer to my screen. “The fuck?”

“That’s what I said.” I hear the delight in Hannah’s tone. It’s restrained, but so is the woman herself. Mostly. “The fuck.”

I slump back in my chair. Then forward again as I open the Mercedes post and scroll through three static images of a man and a woman getting progressively closer. Then coming together in a blurry clinch. The time stamp says it was posted twelve hours ago, and the caption reads:

Troy Templeton + the elusive Clara Forbes spotted in Tribeca.

Could this be old money and new coming together?

“This isn’t what it looks like,” I say. Because what it looks like is two people on the verge of fucking.

“Want to know what I said to myself, once I’d gotten over the hurt of my best friend keeping secrets?”

“Not particularly.”

“I said that Clara Forbes must have it bad to have snuck into our offices dressed as a French maid.”

“Where does it say—” My mouth twists. “Right. Did anyone else see her there?”

“I’m sure lots of people did. But I’d be surprised if any of them knew who she was. I mean, I wouldn’t have known to pay more than a passing interest if I hadn’t seen your attitude shift. Then watch you bundle her out of the place like a toddler asked to share his favorite teddy bear.”

Hannah’s powers of deduction leave something to be desired. Then again, maybe I only have myself, my anger, to blame. Clara did say I risked drawing attention.

Another demerit for scenario three.

I thought I was okay, that I was acting like myself. Not like some past lover eager to get reacquainted. Even if that kind of happened anyway. I stare at the post, remembering how her lips parted slightly before I felt their softness. I rub my fist over the low-grade ache in my chest; how familiar it all feels.

“Of course, I’d like to know why she was there”—hell, wouldn’t we both—“but more than that, I’m hurt because all I can think is my best friend mustn’t like me anymore.”

I’m not listening to this bullshit. “The spike can’t be related to an Instagram post, for Chrissakes.”

“Well, that’s what I thought. Until I realized the post caught the attention of a journalist who then carried the gist of the story over to the dark side of the internet.”

“The dark web?”

Hannah gives a frustrated huff. “I’m talking about the platform that’s name used to sound like the noise a flock of birds make.”