"Say no more." Chastity jumped on me and tore into the duct tape with the strength of an adrenaline-filled mama bear lifting a Ford F150 off her child.
Twenty minutes later, we were standing outside One57 just in time for my biweekly viewing of my stalker. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I just needed to see him. Seeing him staring at me would make me feel so much better.
"Is that him?" asked Chastity, pointing to some schlup in normal slacks with an average haircut.
"Does that look like the lovechild of Zac and Chris?"
"No."
"Then it's not him. Believe me, you'll know him when you see him."But you better keep your hands off him. Oh God...was it a mistake bringing her here?A horrible thought took hold of me. What if he stared at Chastity instead of me? I pulled out my phone and adjusted my hair in my mirror app. I still looked like a sweaty mess.Crap.
Suddenly I didn't want him to come at all. I looked longingly at the alleyway with the dumpster. I didn’t want to dumpster dive twice in one week.Please don't come,I wished.
And…he didn't.
We waited a few minutes past 8, but neither he nor his Rolls Royce or little butler man made an appearance. I was relieved that he didn’t get to see me in my messy state. But I couldn’t seem to make myself move. It was 8 o’clock. He was supposed to be stalking me right now. Where was he?
Was he upset that he caught me with binoculars the other day? Or just the fact that I hadn’t been on my viewing bench? Had hemet someone new? Was he lurking in my apartment right this second waiting to finish the deed?
"I should have known you were lying just to get out of that straitjacket," said Chastity. She sounded crestfallen.
"I really wasn't. Let's just give him...wait! There he is!" I pointed at the next guy to walk out of One57. He was about 5'8, half bald, and had a rockin' dad bod. He was most definitelynotmy stalker. At the closest, he was my stalker's accountant. Not even the head accountant though. More like some sort of junior accountant. Or an accountant's assistant. Or the dude who polishes their transparent green visors after hours.
Chastity blinked and tilted her head. "Just to be clear, you said he's the combination of Chris Hemsworth and Zac Efron, right? Because that dude looks like Seth Rogen after an unfortunate accident involving his hair and an industrial meat grinder."
I shrugged. It was actually better if Chastity thought this was the guy I was obsessed with. That way she couldn’t win over my stalker for herself. "Potato, potahto."
"Uh, no. I don't need WebMD to tell me that whatever they injected you with has ruined your vision."
"Nope. Don't think so. That's definitely him. God, I'd love to run my hands through his thinning afro."Gag.
On the way to spin class, I wondered if my wish had actually worked. For months, my stalker had been appearing like clockwork. And then I wished that he wouldn't appear, and he didn't. It seemed like too much of a coincidence to dismiss.Didthey inject me with some sort of magic powers?The Society's logowasa genie lamp, after all. Maybe. That was still up in the air.
I shook away the thought. There was no time to dwell on magic powers. The elevator was about to take us up to our spin class, so I had to mentally prepare myself to deal with the trauma of being surrounded by thirty women who were all taller and skinner than me.Strut your stuff, Ash. You’re confident AF and mastering the perfect revenge body.
Chastity and I got onto the elevator and hit the button for floor 3. Just as the elevator doors closed, I thought I saw a glimpse of an electric blue suit flash by.
"That was him!" I said, trying to wedge my hands between the doors before they shut completely. But it was too late. They slammed shut and the elevator lurched upwards.
"What about that other guy?" asked Chastity.
"No really, it was him this time."It definitely was."I was just lying about that other guy."
"You can't back-track now. I know that you secretly love ugly dudes. I mean, I should have known after you married Joe…”
"That's a fair point. But in my defense, I thought I was going to die single and be eaten by my cats, so at the time Joe felt like a pretty good option. In hindsight, I can see that death by cats would have been preferable."And it would still probably be my fate.
Chastity kept making fun of me for my love of uggos, but all I could think about was my stalker.Had it really been him? What was he doing here?My imagination started to run wild. I looked around at the trophy wives in the locker room. Was one of them his wife?Could be.A beautiful man like him deserved a beautiful woman.
No! No, no, no!I hated that idea so much. I wanted him to be all mine. Ineededhim to be all mine. The thought of him stalking me was the one thing in life that kept me going. Otherwise I’d spiral into constantly thinking about setting Matthew Caldwell on fire. Reliving that incident every day would drive me crazy. And I wasn’t crazy.
I took a deep breath. Hewasmy stalker, so the most reasonable conclusion was that he had been here to stalk me.
"Did you leave that there?" asked Chastity.
"Huh?" I snapped back to reality. She was pointing at a little black envelope sitting at the bottom of my locker.
"Uh, no. I haven't been here since before the party on Tuesday." How did that get in there? I looked both ways, but everyone around me looked innocent enough.
