Chapter 45 Now
Now
I’ve been sitting silently for a few minutes when James comes traipsing down the steps. He’s jittery in a way I’m not used to. Hair a nest of tousled tufts that suggests he’s been pulling at it.
“Rough call?” I ask.
He nods. “You could say that.”
“How come?”
His eyes scan the living room. Land on me. “One of our biggest customers is thinking about pulling our range off their taps. They’re starting up their own brewery. Thought I could talk them around, but…” He paces. “Drink? I could do with one. D’you want one?”
It’s getting a little easier to read James now that I know to look for his dishonesty, and this whole performance is a little much. Still, his suggestion makes my plan a little easier.
“Sure,” I say. “You sit down and try to cool off. Just let me know what you fancy, and I’ll pour us two glasses.”
He takes his specs off and crashes down onto the sofa. “Thanks, baby. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’ll just have a beer.”
“Of course.”
A quick kiss and then I’m off. It doesn’t take me long to fish out two of the lint-furred Valiums buried in my coat pocket in the hallway. It’s the perfect dose to gently send him to sleep. I crush the pills into a fine powder in the kitchen, swill them around his beer, and return.
“Sorry I took a minute—couldn’t find the bottle opener anywhere.”
We throw something on the telly. Our new modus operandi. The perfect way to avoid someone while so physically close you’re exchanging breath. Easier to ignore the lack of anything to say to each other when fictionalized characters’ words are filling the silence.
Eventually, he nods off, breathing deep and even.
The cold, flickering light of the television dances across his face as he sleeps.
I test him with a gentle nudge. Nothing.
A firmer nudge. Not even a gentle moan. No change in his breathing pattern.
With care, I take his hand in mine, wave it a little. Still sound asleep. Perfect.
From here it’s easy to press the soft pad of his thumb to his phone screen. Bring the device to life. Irony is, if he’d trusted me when I told him Face ID is definitely secure these days, I wouldn’t have been able to get into his phone.
I start with the call log. The number he received the call from tonight isn’t saved.
No messages in their text history, either.
But there’s an extensive series of calls back and forth between them over the past few weeks.
A prickly sensation creeps up my spine and I google the number from my phone.
Nothing. Which is no comfort, as surely if it were a business number, some sort of information would have surfaced.
I decide to try my luck, prefixing the number with 141 to hide caller ID and dialing it. No answer. No luck.
Even though I’ve learned more about my husband in the last forty-eight hours than I cared to, it’s clear that James still has more secrets to hide. But it’s only when I get to his Instagram account that I learn just how many.
Because at first, there’s just the pared-back Instagram account that I already follow. The most recent photos on the grid are mostly of the two of us looking happy, smiling, blissfully unaware of the shitstorm due to hit us in the coming weeks.
But then I see the little arrow by his profile name. Click on it. See the second profile nestled there.
The account hasn’t posted in the past couple of years, but across it are several images of James and a pretty Black girl I’ve never seen before, the latest image of them together from five years ago.
She’s also younger than him. Much younger.
Thick black liner rims her eyes in most photos, a silver ring gleaming proud in her nose.
I can’t help but stare at the screen, at James, back at the screen again. My brain is short-circuiting.
A tap against an image pulls up the girl’s handle: jadedacosta_x.
Her profile is quiet, few followers. A snap of her then new custom phone case makes me realize her name is Jade. Jade Dacosta. I kick myself for reading her handle as “Jaded.” And then I notice another chilling detail.
She hasn’t posted in years.
The phone feels hot in my hand.
I tap back into James’s secret account. Want to see how he spoke to her when no one else was looking.
Get a flavor of their relationship. What I see in his private messages confuses me.
Dozens of flirtatious messages sent to a range of girls flood his inbox.
All very different-looking, but none white.
The timeline suggests the messages were sent after Jade had died and before we got serious, which is something, I guess.
He gets a few responses. A few threads show me he even has the occasional success of meeting up with a girl in real life.
By the looks of the acerbic messages in those same threads, he sleeps with them, ghosts, and then blocks.
When I look, I find almost nothing in his DMs with Jade.
I want to throw the phone across the room.
Slam it down. Crack it against the floorboards.
Instead, I reach for my own phone, open Instagram, create a finsta of my own. With the new profile, I find the accounts of the women he’s met. One by one, I send them the same message.
Hi. I know this is a random message, but I am currently seeing James—the guy you dated a couple years back.
I’ve linked his profile at the bottom of this message.
Have found out some things about him and am not sure if he’s safe.
Can you tell me anything about what he was like when you were together?
I’m writing from a new account for my safety.
Please take this seriously if you see it.
It goes to Jade’s account, too. A long shot, but there’s a chance someone who knew James back then is monitoring her account. Better than nothing. I slide the incriminating phone away from me and stand up for a breath.
I can’t ignore what this looks like. Can’t help but wonder anew why James made such a big song and dance about me being his first Black girlfriend. Wonder if Will knows about these women, too. Something about the setup makes me think these women are James’s darkest little secret to date.