“She thinks I’m sending pictures of you to her,” Lydia says in a panicked tone. “She’s lost her mind.”
“Who else would be doing it?” Mel shouts and closes in on her. I reach out and pull Mel against me. I force myself to stop all thoughts of how incredible it feels to touch her. To feel the bare skin of her arm under my hands, to hear her voice. All of it reminds me what I shouldn’t have ever forgotten—that she’s worth it. Whatever it is, she’s worth it.
“I lost, okay?” Lydia shouts, now getting upset. “I lost him, and there’s no getting him back. I’m not spending my time stalking him and sending the proof of his activities to you!”
“You’re lying!”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I say firmly and drag Mel away from the door. She keeps her head ducked, letting her blonde hair create a curtain that she uses to hide her face from me. I turn and point at Lydia. “Go inside and shut the door until I knock.”
Lydia nods and retreats into her apartment while Mel struggles against me. Once we’re far enough away from Lydia’s apartment, I stop and try to turn Mel so she faces me, but she’s protests.
“Sshhh,” I murmur to her, lowering my mouth to her ear. It helps calm her, and she stops fighting me. I keep it up to try to bring her to a calm enough state where she can talk to me. When she’s less tense, I snake my arms around her and pull her into my chest. Fuck. She feels perfect in my arms. She’s soft and just the right height. I place a kiss to the top of her head and continue comforting her, hoping that soon she’ll tell me what’s going on. After a few minutes, her knees bend and she tries to sink to the floor. I try to prop her up, but she’s insistent. Bending slowly, I make sure I’m sitting on the carpet before I lower her into my lap. She tenses again for just a moment before falling against my chest. By the time I think she’s comfortable enough to speak, my ass hurts from the awkward position I’m sitting in.
“What’s going on, Lulu?”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispers.
“Did you really think she wouldn’t have contacted me?”
She shrugs her shoulders but doesn’t answer right away. Sucking in a deep breath, she says, “I wouldn’t have.”
“No?” I keep rubbing her back in small circles, hoping it makes her comfortable enough to be a little chattier than she is right now.
“Not if I’d done what she has.”
“And what has she done?”
“Last week I got a text from a blocked number. There was a picture of you with someone I don’t know.”
“Okay . . .” This doesn’t sound good. At all.
“The day after that, another one came in. This time it had a message with it. It said ‘Like what you see?’ And was signed with the letter L.”
“Can I see your phone?” I ask.
She takes several deep breaths and pulls her mobile out of her pocket. I take it and pull up her texts. There are at least ten message threads from numbers not programed into her phone, each indicating they contain a picture, none of them older than a week. Her explanation of what’s gotten her so upset isn’t even the tip of the iceberg of what I’m looking at. The oldest text is a picture of me with a woman whose name I don’t know that I ever got. We’re at Port of Call, and she’s dressed provocatively. I recognize this picture as one I got tagged in on Facebook a few months back. I had it removed once I saw it, in hopes that Mel wouldn’t see it. It was January, shortly after Lydia and I broke up, and I was indulging in the attention of women I’d been turning down the entire time I was with Lydia. It felt good, if even temporarily, to have women flock to me. In my mind, come May, I’d be with Mel, and that’d be it. If I had any wild oats, I was going to sow them.
The next image is less clear but more suggestive. It was taken across the bar, and there’s a brunette in my lap. We’re each taking a shot. Every picture was taken either at Port of Call or outside the firehouse, and each one shows me with a different woman. For the first few days, only one message came in each day, but then it looks like Mel responded to one of the messages, calling the sender out and threatening whom she thought was Lydia with bodily harm. After that, the sender’s number changes a few times, and each message thread has anywhere from two to five pictures of me. And in every single one I’m with a woman. A woman who isn’t Mel. Women who don’t matter and I don’t remember. The later photos are more explicit than the earlier ones. I’m not proud of any of this, and I never expected for Mel to see it. But above that, I’m freaked the fuck out because all the images except for the first one were taken across a crowded room or street, and the messages that come with them become increasingly more disturbing.
SEE WHAT UR MAN IS DOING.
THAT’S NOT U, IS IT?
ENJOY THE SHOW? I AM.