by Hazel Parker
“What’s wrong?” he asked, watching her bend down to grab something that he wouldn’t have even noticed: the corner of a small piece of paper in a plastic bag sticking out from underneath her doormat. It was dirty and wet, of course, but when she opened the bag and unfolded the paper, they both gasped at the contents. Inside was a picture, blurry and printed out in black and white ink, of the two of them in Abby’s futon, kissing, that someone had taken from outside the window.
“Oh, my God,” Abby stammered, sounding like she was beginning to hyperventilate. “This is us. It’s us having sex.”
“Trevor was watching us,” Devon deduced, though it was hardly necessary to say aloud. He led her back inside with one hand on her shoulder. “Okay; it’s going to be fine, Abby. Listen, you call your boss and tell them you’re going to be late for work. Just say we were in a fender bender or something if you don’t want to get into the details. While you do that, I’ll call the police and get them over here so we can report this.” She looked at him with horrified eyes, which broke his heart. He wished suddenly that he could, like yesterday, take her mind off this and make her feel safe again. It was a frustrating reminder that no matter what he did, there was no controlling Trevor, and that Abby’s life was far from simple right now.
“That’s a good plan,” Abby managed to say, breathing in controlled, measured breaths to avoid panicking. He nodded, trying to rub gently at her arm but taking his hands away completely when she flinched.
“It’s strike two, right?” he said, trying to inspire a little optimism. “This will be over before you know it.” Abby didn’t look convinced, but she nodded anyway, turning away to call her work while Devon dialed the non-emergency police line, a number he was beginning to know by heart.
Almost as soon as he’d gotten off the phone with the police, Devon’s phone buzzed with a text from his sister.
“Hey, have u dropped Anna off at work yet? I don’t work til late tonight and I want to get lunch.”
He hastily tapped out a message explaining that no, that they’d been delayed by a small emergency and that while everything was fine, that he’d be taking her into work a little later than usual. Predictably, she called him immediately and started talking before he could even greet her.
“An emergency?” she fretted, cutting him off without letting him get a word in edgewise. “What kind of emergency? Are you okay? Do you need me to come get you?” He laughed lightly. Chandra could be such a worrier.
“We’re both fine,” he explained. “Trevor left a creepy picture on Abby’s doorstep, and we’re reporting it to the police. It’s not a big deal.” He could hear her grabbing her keys off the counter and started to panic—if she came over before they handed over the picture, she’d want to see it, and since this wasn’t an emergency, it could be a while before the cops arrived.
“I’ll be right over,” she promised. “Is Abby okay? Is she freaking out?” Devon spared a glance at Abby, who looked…well, not exactly calm, but not terrified, either. While normally, Chandra’s presence would be comforting to her, he knew that he had to keep her away.
“Abby’s fine,” he reassured. “She’s really handling it well. Totally calm.”
“Bullshit,” Chandra disbelieved. Fair. It wasn’t a good lie. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Without even giving him another chance to argue, Chandra hung up, and he sighed, turning to Abby.
“Okay, there’s a small problem,” he explained. “Chandra is on her way over.” It seemed to take Abby a moment to remember why that would be a problem, but when she connected the dots, her face paled.
“She can’t come over!” she argued shrilly. “If she sees that picture, she’s going to hate me!”
Devon laughed outright. “Hate you?” he asked incredulously. “She’s going to hate me. In her eyes, I’ll have taken advantage of you when you were in a vulnerable place.” For a moment, he steeled himself, wondering if Abby might accuse him of the same thing even just to have an exonerating excuse with Chandra, but luckily, she didn’t.
“Then she’s going to hate both of us,” she said firmly. “She knows I’m not so fragile I can’t make my own choices. God, what are we going to do? Do we hide the picture from her?”
“How would we possibly get away with that?” he asked. “She’ll ask to see it, and I can’t think of a single reason not to show it to her that would seem believable.”
“I don’t know; it’s police evidence? Highly classified?” Abby half-joked, a little part of her clearly hoping that it might work. No such luck.
“We’re boned,” he sighed. “Unless the police get here before she does, it’s not going to matter if the police keep Trevor away from you, because Chandra’s going to kill both of us first.”
Abby laughed. “At least we’ll know she’ll be caught.”
“My soul can rest easy,” Devon replied, making a mock sign of the cross that made Abby giggle.
“I guess we just have to wait to see who gets here first,” Abby resigned, sitting back against the futon mattress. Though she’d told him she’d bought it specifically because the bed folded into a discreet couch, neither of them had bothered to do so yet, and she didn’t seem to mind. He sat next to her, making sure to leave a comfortable, platonic distance between them, and turned on the television.
When they heard the knock at the door, Abby and Devon looked at one another as if trying to elect the other person to open it, but ultimately, both of them got up to answer. Abby took a deep breath and held it pensively as she looked through the peephole, then opened the door to reveal a police officer, the same one that had answered their call the first night Abby had seen Trevor.
“Hello again,” he greeted, stepping into the apartment and allowing Abby to close the door behind him.
“Wish I could say it was nice to see you,” Abby said, shaking his hand. “We’ve had a little bit of an incident.”
He nodded and took out a small spiral notebook from his back pocket. “That’s what I hear,” he said. “Can you walk me through it?”
Abby reminded him of the entire story, filling in the details of the threat that had already been reported as the first strike before handing him the picture and telling him where she’d found it. He nodded as he listened, barely taking notes but seeming sympathetic.
“Alright,” he said when she’d finished speaking, “well, I’m going to call this in and see what we can do for you. I’ll do that from my car, so you two can wait here; I’ll be back.” As Abby was opening the door to let him out, he nearly ran into Chandra, who was about to knock on it. He muttered an apology and stepped around her as she entered the apartment and immediately began to flutter around Abby worriedly.
“Oh, Abby, honey, you look so shaken up,” she observed, though that was likely less about the incident and more about Chandra’s presence.
“I’m okay,” she reassured, “really. You didn’t have to come.”
Chandra scoffed. “Of course I did,” she said. “You’re my best friend. So what even happened? Devon said Trevor gave you some kind of picture?”
Abby nodded, giving Devon a nervous side-eye. “Yeah, he slipped it under the doormat,” she said. “It’s probably just to let me know he knows where I live? I’m not sure.”
“What was the picture of?” When Abby didn’t reply, Chandra’s eyes widened. “It wasn’t—was it, like, a dick pic? Did he give you a picture of his penis?”
“What? No!” Abby squawked. “It was just...a picture of me inside my apartment,” she said. A half-truth was better than a full lie, after all.
“That’s so creepy,” she sympathized, reaching out for Abby’s arm in a comforting gesture. The police officer knocked on the door once more before entering the apartment without anyone opening the door for him, this time with a somewhat disappointed look on his face.
“Okay, Miss Miller,” he began, running a hand over his balding head, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”
“What’s the good news?” Abby asked, so eager for the positive.
“Well, I talked to some of the guys who’ve dealt with stalker cases before, and they don’t think that this was supposed to be a threat or they can’t prove his intentions. It was probably meant to say that he’s watching you and that he still wants you, which I know, isn’t much better, but it isn’t a clear sign of hostility. It’s not uncommon for stalkers to send a lot of gifts in an attempt to try to win their victim back. It’s when the gifts stop that you should be worried.” If that was the good news, Devon almost didn’t want to hear the bad, because that was not reassuring.
“Then what’s the bad news?” Chandra pressed, gripping Abby’s hands to comfort her. The officer sighed.
“Since we can’t prove that this was sent by Trevor, we can’t count it as a strike. Unless you saw him taking the picture, which I’m guessing you didn’t, or putting it under your doormat, it would be a bigger hassle to try to get a judge to rule that it’s admissible than to put up some curtains and maybe think about getting a security camera. Most of the time, the stalker will want you to know that the present is from them: they’ll send flowers with a card, write poetry, draw pictures, whatever—and they’ll sign it. Without a signature, this could have been sent by anyone, so we can’t use it.”
Abby looked crushed. She buried her face in her hands, taking a calming breath before looking back up at the officer with tears of dejection in her eyes. It pained Devon to watch her go through this, and he wished nothing more than to be able to march right over to whichever apartment was Trevor’s and beat the shit out of him for putting Abby through such a nightmare.
“I understand,” Abby probably lied, reaching out to shake the officer’s hand once more. “Thank you, officer…”
“My name is Andy,” he replied. “We’ve seen enough of each other that I’m not gonna make you be so formal. I wish we could do more for you; I really do.”
Abby nodded. “I know,” she agreed. “Me too.”
Devon was silently cheering as Andy stood to leave. As much as it was disappointing to hear that there was nothing they could do about the picture, he was about to leave with it, ensuring that Chandra would never know that they’d slept together. They were seconds away from being home free; Andy’s hand on the door handle and turning it…
Then he stopped.
“I almost forgot,” he recalled, reaching into his pocket for the folded-up piece of paper, “you should keep this. We can’t keep it as evidence, but if you actually catch him taking pictures again, then we can submit both of these and probably get you both your strikes in the same day. Put it somewhere safe.” Abby reached out to take the picture from his hands, but Chandra was faster, snatching it up curiously before Abby’s fingers were even in contact with the corner.
“Thank you, Andy,” Abby managed to say even as her eyes widened in horror while Chandra unfolded the photo and there was nothing either of them could do to stop her. She looked at it for a moment; perplexed, emotionless. Then she turned it around to remind them just what they were looking at: Devon’s body on top of Abby’s in the bed, both of them topless, Abby’s breasts fully exposed and with an expression of ecstasy on her face.
“What the fuck is this?” Chandra asked, deceptively calmly the first time. Abby reached out to grab the paper, but Chandra jerked it away so she couldn’t touch it. “What the fuck is it?”
“Chandra, listen,” Abby started, but that had never been a major skill of hers. Once something was in Chandra’s head, there was no changing her mind about it, and it wasn’t like they were going to be able to explain this away.
“You two slept together?” she demanded. Neither of them wanted to admit to it, but their silence was incriminating enough. “Devon, I specifically told you that you shouldn’t be getting involved with Abby right now. You knew how I feel about that.”
“I know, but you have to hear us out,” Devon tried to reason.
Surprisingly, Chandra clammed up and motioned for him to give his explanation, which he hadn’t even prepared considering he hadn’t thought he’d get this far.
“Well? I’m listening.”
“It was a heat of the moment thing,” Abby tried to help. “It’ll never happen again. Neither of us were thinking straight.”
Chandra scoffed. “Were you drunk?” she demanded, waiting for them to shake their heads. “High?” Another head shake. “Were you otherwise so incapacitated that you weren’t in control of your own bodies?”
“Well, it’s not exactly like that, but—I mean it’s not like we set out to have sex together. It just kind of…happened.”
“Sex doesn’t just happen!” Chandra fought. “You two both knew that it was a terrible idea, and you fucked, anyway. I can’t believe how stupid and immature you both are.”
Abby visibly prickled at that. “Hang on,” she tried to argue, but Chandra was already walking out of the apartment, shoving the paper back into Abby’s chest furiously.
“Call me when you grow up,” she demanded. “I’m done.” Abby winced at the slamming of the door, looking absolutely ashamed of herself, but Devon was a little more used to this, having grown up with her. Chandra had been mad at him countless times through their childhood, but this may very well have been hers and Abby’s first fight.
“Abby,” Devon tried to start, but Abby shook her head, turned away from him, and grabbed her coat from the rack.
“I’m late for work,” she dodged. “We should get going.” Devon followed her out of the apartment, locking the door behind them and starting up the truck.
The ride was mostly silent. Devon didn’t want to say something that would upset her more, especially since he was fifty percent of the interaction that had caused this whole mess. There was, of course, a chance that she was angry with him. She didn’t appear to be, but he wouldn’t blame her if she were. It was true: he had overstepped a boundary. He’d been the one that had kissed her last night, and even though he’d only gone through with it because she’d looked like she wanted it, too, he knew even at the time that it was inappropriate, but he’d done it anyway.
“Chandra is going to forgive you,” he decided to say. He couldn’t just let her go to work this sad, even if it meant that she’d be mad at him.
Abby laughed incredulously. “Right,” she said sarcastically. “Chandra is really easy-going; she’ll definitely just let it go.”
“I didn’t say that,” Devon countered. “She’ll exact her pound of flesh first.” Abby still didn’t look convinced. “Listen, I know my sister. She’s easy to piss off, and she doesn’t forgive easily, I’ll give you that. But you’re her best friend. She needs you. She loves you. There’s no way that one little night of passion is going to stand in the way of your friendship.”
Though she still didn’t appear to be wholly convinced, Abby didn’t argue this time.
“Besides,” he added, “like you said. It’ll never happen again.” When she nodded without even looking at him, Devon had to admit that it was a little disappointing. It’s not like he was expecting a different reaction, but a little struggle might have been nice, even if it were just to convince him that she didn’t completely regret being with him. Even if it was blowing up in his face, he didn’t regret it.
“You’re sure she’ll come around?” Abby asked in a slightly hopeful tone, which made Devon smile broadly.
“Definitely,” he replied. He pulled the truck into a spot by the doors and parked, wordlessly watching her gather her briefcase and get out the door. This time, she didn’t wave to him, but he still waited to pull away until she was safely inside the building. After all, if nothing else, he was still her makeshift bodyguard.
Chapter Nine: Abby
On her lunch break, Abby called Chandra with no hopes that she’d pick up the phone, and she’d been right about that assumption. She left a short voicemail that she figured Chandra would delete without listening, apologizing for what had happened and begging her bes
t friend to call her back. Though it was usually frowned upon to have personal cell phones out during the work day, Abby’s boss must have assumed that her tardiness was due to an ongoing emergency of some sort that might need updates, because he didn’t say a word no matter how many times he walked by her desk to find her giving her cell-phone the side-eye. Devon didn’t text her, either, which she assumed meant that Chandra was also ignoring him, though she wasn’t sure how much effort he was putting into contacting her. He wouldn’t have to work as hard for her forgiveness, after all: they were siblings. It would be much more difficult for Chandra to just cut her brother out of her life than to remove Abby, so if one of them had to go, she knew that she’d be the obvious choice.