Stalker Problems - Chapter 7 - Literally Dying #2
I ran into my room and grabbed my gym bag.
As I sprinted back towards the door, Chastity popped out from behind the sofa and tried to bag me like a nematode, but instead of a microfiber blanket like one would use in a traditional nematode bagging, she used her makeshift straitjacket.
We rolled around on the ground. Somehow she managed to get both my arms into the sleeves.
I laughed to myself, knowing that the tape wouldn't hold up against any amount of force.
But my amusement came to an abrupt end when I tried to burst free and found that I was wrapped up tighter than Jason Momoa in size-small Spanx.
"Let me out!" I yelled.
"Can't do that," said Chastity as she wrapped more duct tape around me. "You'll thank me later."
I tensed my whole body and tried to get free. All it did was make me sweat.
"Oh no, you're turning all red. How do you feel?"
"Trapped."
Chastity grabbed her phone. It was still open to WebMD. "When you say trapped...do you mean tightness in your chest? That coupled with your excessive sweating might signal that you're having a heart attack."
"Or it might mean my best friend duct-taped me into a winter coat.
And let's cool it with calling it 'excessive.
' This is a perfectly normal amount of sweat.
" I glanced at the time on my DVR. 7:35.
Shit shit shit! Triple shit! There was only one way I was going to make it on time.
"Have I told you about the hot guy I always pass on the way to spin class? "
Chastity's eyes lit up .
Gotcha, bitch. "He walks out of One57 every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 pm on the dot. If we leave now, we can still catch him."
"How hot are we talking? Like a classic New York ten, or...?"
"Picture if Zac Efron and Chris Hemsworth had a baby. I mean, don't picture the actual birth. Or the gay sex. Just picture the full-grown male result of their DNA combining."
"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 he met 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 definitely not my 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.
Did they inject me with some sort of magic powers?
The Society's logo was a 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. I needed him 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. He was my 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.
"Then open it!"
"Shh," I said. I didn't want her to draw any attention to us.
Not because I didn't want people to know about the envelopes. I just didn’t want anyone to remember the scene Chastity had caused at my last spin class.
I was hoping everyone could just forget about it and move on.
If anyone mentioned it today, I for sure would never show my face here again.
Before I could reach for the envelope, Chastity had already snatched it up and broken the gold wax seal. She pulled out the single piece of parchment contained within.
We hope you enjoyed your first spa session. To check your results and accept our terms of service, please log in to the Society app.
Username: Raven
Password: 8JTY79
"Results?" asked Chastity.
"App?" I added. "Every one of these letters gets more confusing." And who the hell was Raven?
The last girl to leave the locker room gave us a judgy look on her way out. Usually I would have been annoyed, but now I was just happy we were alone so we could freely discuss what the hell this letter was talking about.
I pulled out my phone and searched the Google Play Store for the Society's app, but that was as useless as our earlier Google search. “There’s no app called that.”
“Are you sure?” Chastity searched too, and her face looked more crestfallen by the minute. “Damn.”
Oh well. I was done with the Society and their creepy letters. The only thing that concerned me was scheduling a doctor's appointment to figure out what those Moroccan assholes had injected into my arm. Or at least...that should have been the only thing that concerned me.
Instead, I found myself wondering if my stalker had been the one to deliver that letter.