Follow Me

by Kathleen Barber

  I sagged with disappointment to see her lounging quietly in her bed. She hadn’t seen the flowers. But still I kept watching, her heart-shaped face beckoning to me like a siren. Slowly the electricity in my veins fizzled and dissipated, leaving me calm, content.

  And then I saw her shake a pill from an orange prescription bottle and wash it down with that glass of wine she’d been refilling all night. Instantly, I was on alert. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see the label on the bottle or the shape of the pill, but I knew Audrey took both Xanax and Ambien, neither of which should be mixed with alcohol. She’d just recklessly put herself in mortal danger, and she needed someone to watch over her, someone to stand sentry. I was her only option. I would be her savior. I had to be.

  So I watched.

  I watched even as cramps developed in my legs and my limbs grew cold. I would suffer through personal discomfort to protect her. I would do anything for her.

  I squinted into her bedroom, realizing it had been a while since I had seen her move. She was resting on her back in the center of her messy bed, her body twisted in the tangled sheets. She looked beautiful, peaceful. But did she look too peaceful? And weren’t overdose risks not supposed to sleep on their backs? I leaned closer to the window, searching for confirmation that her chest was moving. It was impossible to tell.

  My heart sang with the certainty that Audrey needed me, and I grabbed at the bars that covered the window, testing their resilience. They didn’t budge. I raced for the front door. Anyone with an internet connection knew that Audrey had had problems with that lock since she moved in, and there was a chance it might be open. A small chance, but one worth pursuing before I was forced to consider a more drastic course of action. Scarcely daring to hope, I pushed on the iron gate in front of her door. I expected it to remain firmly in place, but it swung open with a light creak.

  Fate. I was fated to be there that night, fated to be the one to save her. I grasped her doorknob, certain that it would turn easily in my hand.

  It did.

  My blood tingled as I entered her darkened apartment. I paused to inhale the distinct smell of her home: the lingering aroma of her coconut shampoo, a citrus-scented candle, a slight twinge of dust. I looked toward her open bedroom door and remembered my mission. My heart climbed my throat, threatening to choke me.

  I turned toward her bedroom, fearful of what I might find in there. If, God forbid, something had happened in the time it took me to get inside, I knew I would never recover from discovering her corpse, from seeing her skin waxen and her summer-fruit lips blue. I reminded myself that fate had steered me to her window, that it wouldn’t let me get this far and then snatch her from me, and stepped into her bedroom.

  Audrey sat straight up in bed, her eyes flying open like a doll’s.

  I froze, too startled to move.

  “Hi,” she said pleasantly.

  Heart pounding so hard it rattled my rib cage, I stared at her. Something was wrong. Her eyes were unfocused and lacked their usual sparkle. She was looking at me, but she wasn’t seeing me. She was either asleep or seriously out of it from the pills.

  So I said the only thing I could think to say: “You’re dreaming.”

  “Oh,” she said agreeably, before lying back down and closing her eyes.

  I exhaled, pressing a fist to my mouth. Holy shit.

  I remained rooted to the floor, afraid to move, to do anything that might awaken her. And so I just stood there and watched her sleep, her pale chest rising and falling, her heart-shaped lips open. It took everything I had not to cross the room and kiss those lips, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t some sort of weirdo.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  AUDREY

  In my nearly thirty years, I’ve only ever thought I loved two men. The first was Charles Newton, whom I dated my senior year in high school. He was the captain of the soccer team, and had perfect chestnut waves and a sound system in his used Toyota that was loud enough to qualify as a public nuisance. We were making out on the couch in his basement, Fall Out Boy playing in the background, when he whispered wetly in my ear, “I love you.” Overcome by hormones and emo music, I said it back. Two weeks later, he broke up with me via text, and one week after that I was dating his best friend.

  The other was Nick. I couldn’t remember who said it first or feeling that sort of all-consuming passion I assumed one felt when they were in love; I just thought that I must love him since we had dated for so long. It wasn’t until after we broke up that I realized the truth: I was never in love with Nick. I enjoyed his company, and we had incomparable sexual chemistry, but we were never truly in love.

  There was a third man to whom I had said the three magic words. His name was John or Josh or possibly Jeremy, and I had met him at a party shortly after I moved to New York. My blood brimming with MDMA, I confessed my love to this stranger on a makeshift dance floor in someone’s Williamsburg apartment. He responded by licking my cheek. I did not consider him one of the great loves of my life.

  Max, though. Max might be different. I didn’t love him, of course—I’d only known him for five weeks—but I thought I might be able to see myself falling in love with him someday. Possibly someday soon. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I had been staying with Max for two weeks, ever since I first heard the eerie voice on the Luna Listen app, and it just seemed right. His apartment felt more like a home than my own—which, sure, could be because I’d never bothered to fully unpack, but maybe it was also because Max made everything so cozy and welcoming. At my place, I had fallen into the habit of eating frozen Trader Joe’s meals while perched on my beanbag chair, drinking wine and streaming something mindless on my laptop. At Max’s, I sat at his kitchen island while he cooked dinner—real dinners, like that curry and this fantastic chickpea-and-Swiss-chard thing—and we chatted about our days. And, unlike Nick, he really listened when I told him how things were going, even asking thoughtful follow-up questions. Then he would pull me into his strong, soap-scented embrace, and we would snuggle together on the couch, listening to records or watching something together, until we couldn’t stand the closeness a second longer and would fall on each other like lust-driven animals.

  Cat kept asking me to stay with her instead, kept saying I was moving too fast with Max. “I’m worried,” she’d told me over the phone. “Someone’s going to get hurt.” But what did Cat know? She had been obsessed with the same man for the last seven years and had kissed him exactly once. By that yardstick, sure, Max and I were moving fast, but that was hardly a reasonable standard.

  * * *

  BUT AS MUCH as I loved living at Max’s, our relaxed routine was proving detrimental to my personal brand. I slipped in posting content, even neglecting my Instagram Stories. My loyal followers began sending me direct messages expressing their concern, asking if everything was okay. I assured them it was, but I couldn’t continue like this much longer—not if I wanted to maintain the social media presence I had worked so hard to cultivate.

  Max nodded agreeably when I told him I was going to take care of some personal things after work, but his eyes had widened when he realized I intended to go back to the basement apartment.

  “Audrey, are you crazy? That’s not safe.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I’ve been back a bunch of times for clothes and stuff.”

  “With me at your side,” he countered.

  “I don’t need a white knight,” I said gently. “Listen, Max, I’ll lock the doors, and I won’t stay after dark. I’m talking an hour, two, tops.”

  “That’s an hour or two too long. Please, baby, work here. I promise I won’t bother you.”

  “I can’t work here,” I told him, running a finger along his soft lips. “Too many distractions.”

  He kissed my fingertip and then took my hand. “Then go to a coffee shop. Don’t go back to that apartment.”

  “I can’t live my life in fear,” I told him. “Anyway, everything will be fine. You
’ll see.”

  He sighed heavily. “I want it noted for the record that I don’t like this at all. Be careful, okay? And don’t answer the door for anyone.”

  * * *

  MAX’S ADMONISHMENT CAME back to me when the buzzer rang thirty minutes after I’d arrived home.

  It has to be Ryan, I thought darkly as I approached the door. He’s noticed that I’m back and decided it was time to harass me for fun.

  I cracked open the door, ready to tell my least favorite neighbor where he could shove it, and instead found Nick, grinning wolfishly at me with his golden hair in disarray.

  “Let me in, Rapunzel,” he said, rattling the gate.

  “Rapunzel lived in a tower, not a basement.”

  “Semantics,” he said, swaying slightly. “Come on, babe. Let me in.”

  I sighed and unlocked the gate. “You can come in but you can’t stay. I have work to do, and besides, I have a firm policy of not entertaining drunks.”

  “I’m not drunk,” Nick protested as he sauntered into my apartment.

  “Like hell you’re not,” I said, shutting my laptop and preventively moving it out of his reach. “I can smell the tequila coming out of your pores.”

  He lifted an arm to his nose and sniffed. I laughed despite myself.

  “You’re ridiculous. It’s a Wednesday evening and you’re thirty years old. What have you gotten into?”

  “Going-away party for a colleague. Former colleague, I guess. We went to happy hour.”

  “And then you thought of me. How nice.”

  “I always think of you.”

  “Oh, Nicky,” I said with a laugh. “You’re so cute when you lie.”

  “I’m not lying,” he said, looking indignant. “I do think of you. More than you think of me, obviously. You haven’t answered any of my texts recently.”

  “I’ve been busy,” I said vaguely.

  “That boyfriend of yours, right?” he demanded, leaning toward me.

  Something dangerous flashed in the blue of his eyes, and I suddenly remembered one Halloween night years ago. We had gone to a bar together but had drifted apart: I went to dance with my friends, he went to drink himself stupid with his. I was singing along to a Katy Perry song when Nick suddenly grabbed me by the arm and whirled me around, red-faced and shouting something about my kissing another guy. It only took me a few minutes to realize he’d seen some other woman dressed as a mermaid locking lips with someone, but in those few minutes I had been genuinely afraid of him. I never figured out if he’d taken something or if he had just been excessively drunk or if he really did have a dark streak that he usually kept hidden beneath all that charm, but it was the only time Nick had ever looked at me like that.

  Until tonight.

  “Come off it, Nick,” I said, pushing him away.

  “I don’t get you, Audrey,” he said, shaking his head. “I always thought we had something special.”

  “We do. We have a really special friendship, and—”

  “I love you.”

  I blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “I love you,” he repeated, reaching a clumsy hand for me.

  “Nick, no,” I said gently, intercepting his reach. “You don’t mean that.”

  His handsome face contorted and he snatched his hand out of my grasp. “Who are you to tell me what I mean? Seriously, Audrey, who the fuck are you?”

  “Come on, Nicky,” I said lightly. “You think after all these years that I don’t know you better than you know yourself?”

  “Fuck you,” he said, his voice growing loud. “You always want to control everything, including how everyone else behaves. News flash: you can’t fucking curate other people. You can’t just play with us like we’re fucking dolls.”

  I sucked in my breath. “Nick, you’re drunk.”

  “That doesn’t change shit. And you know the worst part? I still love you even though you’re a manipulative, image-obsessed bitch. I tried to forget you, okay? I dated other women, and then you moved here and fucked me up all over again. Fuck you. I love you. Fuck you.”

  “I think you should leave now,” I said, trying to keep my voice from wavering.

  “You don’t want to hear it tonight, that’s fine. But, Audrey—”

  “No,” I said. “Nick, it’s not like that. Okay? I enjoy spending time with you, but I don’t love you like that. And I’m not going to.”

  “You loved me once,” he insisted, shaking his head. “You’ll love me again.”

  “Nick, please. Do me a favor. Go home and sleep it off, and we’ll pretend this never happened.”

  Nick’s expression turned hard and he sneered, “Sure. Whatever Audrey Miller wants, Audrey Miller gets, right?”

  “Nick—”

  But he was already slamming my front door.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  AUDREY

  Manipulative bitch.

  I couldn’t stop obsessing over Nick’s insults. In all the years I’d known him, through all our ups and downs and stupid fights, he had never spoken to me so harshly, not even that Halloween. I wanted to believe that he was just drunk and lashing out, but what if there was more to it? What if that was how Nick really felt about me, deep down?

  What if there was a bit of truth to it?

  I was still thinking about it the next night as I returned to the apartment. Max had disapproved, insisting that I could work at his place, but I’d needed the quiet and the space. I hadn’t told Max about the incident with Nick—I mean, how would I even begin to explain my complicated relationship with my ex-boyfriend to my new boyfriend?—and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to give him cause to wonder whether I really was a “manipulative bitch.”

  I was almost to the building when I suddenly remembered Cat wanted me to join her for trivia. I’d meant to do so, I really had. It didn’t take some sort of mentalist to realize Cat was pissed that I’d brought Max to the engagement party the other week, and so I’d promised myself I would make more time for her. Which I would, but not that night. I absolutely needed to get some work done, and besides, I had zero interest in spending another evening with Cat’s terminally boring friends.

  Sorry, Kitty-Cat, I started typing as I neared home. I’ve got a bunch of work to do tonight. I don’t think I’m going to make it. Sorry!!!

  Immediately, dots appeared to indicate Cat was typing. They disappeared and then reappeared before finally disappearing once more. No response came. Whatever Cat had planned on saying, she’d decided against it. I felt a smidgen of guilt but brushed it off. If anyone would understand bailing on social engagements to work, Cat would.

  Just as I came to the front of my building, I heard a familiar scratching sound coming from the alley. I snapped my head in that direction, fully expecting to see that damn cat sauntering out … but also terrified of coming face-to-face with my stalker, whoever he might be. As I stood frozen, I realized that it was more than scratching—it was footsteps, too. Someone was undeniably moving through the alley. I held my breath as the alley gate swung open, and then Ryan came skulking out. His perpetually greasy hair was hidden beneath a bleach-stained baseball cap, and there was something dark smudged across the front of his loose V-neck T-shirt.

  He stopped when he saw me staring at him and curled his lips into a predatory grin. “Hello, neighbor.”

  “What are you doing in that alley?” I demanded.

  “Walking,” he drawled as he continued past me to the stairs. “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m barely here anymore,” I said. “So you can stop wasting your time.”

  He paused partway up the stairs and turned to me, sucking on his teeth.

  “And I loved those flowers,” I continued, hoping to catch him off guard. “Cutting off the heads was a really nice touch.”

  He barked in laughter. “What are you on?”

  “Just leave me alone,” I muttered.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said, still laughing as he let himself into his unit.r />
  I shuddered and continued walking up the path. I reached out to unlock the iron gate outside my door and found that it was standing open.

  My stomach crashed to the ground.

  “Ryan!” I shouted angrily, but his door was closed.

  I looked back at my apartment and noticed that the front door was ajar as well. Fear tickled the back of my brain. I wanted to believe it was just Ryan burglarizing my unit again, but why would he have been sauntering through the alley, empty-handed? I swallowed my rising panic and backed away from the building, not stopping until I was on the other side of the street. I stepped behind a massive tree and called 911. I was tired of feeling unsafe.

  * * *

  AFTER THE DISPATCHER assured me help was on the way, I called Max. My fingers gripped the phone tightly as I waited for him to answer, already anticipating his soft, calm voice telling me that he would be there soon, that everything was going to be all right.

  Hi, you’ve reached Max Metcalf. I’m not available right now. Please leave a message.

  I pulled my phone away from my ear and stared at it in disbelief. Max had never not answered when I called. Once he’d even answered while on the treadmill. Where was he now, when I really needed him?

  Where are you? I texted him.

  As soon as I saw the texting dots appear, I dialed his number again.

  “There you are,” I said when he finally answered.

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  In a rush, I said, “Someone is in my apartment. Or they were, I don’t know.”

  “What?” he asked, suddenly animated. “Audrey, are you okay?”

  “I’m okay, just rattled. I was walking up the path when I saw my creepy neighbor coming out of the alley, and then after he left I noticed my gate and front door were open. I don’t know if Ryan was in there or it was someone else, but I don’t care. I’m so, so over this shit. I’m never, ever coming back to this godforsaken apartment again.”