Chapter 11
Graham
It was hard to call my third time walking by Lior’s brownstone accidental when I was carrying a note for her in my pocket.
It wasn’t anything scandalous. Just a little, “Hope your friend is feeling better” message. But I felt like I was in middle school every time I slowed down near her stoop, and then inevitably kept walking, afraid she’d think I was uncool, like most girls in middle school had when I was there.
Also, why was I trying to make contact with the woman I’d sworn, childishly I admit, to hate forever? As our initial meeting had shown, she was clearly the type I often fell for and regretted later. I was a magnet for women who could only be described as brats.
Except, that wasn’t exactly true in Lior’s case. Or at least, I’d perhaps jumped the gun on my opinion of her. Granted, that first impression hadn’t been great on her end, but now I knew why.
Still. There was that age-old saying, wasn’t there?
If someone shows you who they are, believe them.
“Does that still count in this case?” I asked Bronte.
A soft breeze kicked up and she lifted her face, sniffing at the air.
“Was that a yes or no? I could really use more clarity, please.”
Suddenly my slow-moving old girl was pulling on her leash and stepping onto the first step of Lior’s front porch.
“Whoa,” I said, panicking. “What are you doing?”
But she was on a mission, ignoring my gentle tugs on the leash as she pushed onwards and upwards towards the front door.
“I guess this is your way of saying I should leave the damn note already?”
Fine. She had a point. But still, my heart was pounding in my chest. What if Lior opened the door and wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me standing there?
“Fuck it,” I murmured, sliding my hand into my pocket and grasping the folded paper with my fingertips.
When we got to the top, Bronte beelined for an item in the corner near the doormat.
The shoe.
“Ah,” I said. “You smell you! I’m not sure if I’m impressed or disgusted, my friend.”
She sniffed at it, her tail thwacking twice against my leg, and then nosed the sneaker, knocking it over so that I could see the bottom and that it was indeed the shoe, the underside still marred by poo.
I let go of the note in my pocket and leaned down, grabbing it by the laces and lifting it above Bronte’s head.
“I suppose the least we could do is clean it and give it back, right? What do you think. We might even make a new friend as a result. At the very least, she might stop glaring at me when she sees me.” I stared down at Bronte and she looked up, her soulful brown eyes meeting mine. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Her tail thumped against the doorframe twice and then she headed back towards the steps and led the way down to the sidewalk, me following with a leash in one hand, a smelly shoe in the other.
At home I made quick work of cleaning the dirtied treads, then put the sneaker outside on the back patio to dry.
I’d return it tomorrow morning when B and I were out for our next walk.
I wasn’t worried Lior would miss it since she’d told me when we’d shared a cab that she was going to Seattle.
I assumed since she was visiting her friend that she’d probably be gone at least a few days.
And, thanks to some light stalking the past couple of nights, I knew she was definitely there – she’d posted a few pictures from the trip of her and her friend, and their freshly painted toenails.
Checking the time, I sat at the kitchen table – Bronte beside me in her bed – and set my timer, preparing to get back to work on my novel.
Right now I was at that delicate emotional stage between “Okay, maybe this isn’t as awful as I thought it was” and “I’m a hack and I will probably never get a deal again. ”
The author life was nothing if not a roller coaster ride filled with climbs, swerves, loopty-loops, and heart-stopping drops.
It was a mix of constant delusions, visions of grandeur, and douses of crippling self-doubt.
Throw in the inevitable bouts of imposter syndrome and weeee!
Welcome to the what I liked to call the Carnival of Hell.
Wouldn’t trade it for anything. Being a writer was fun. Capital F.U.N.
When the timer dinged, I sat back, stretching my arms above my head and debating whether to do another hour of work or take a short break to eat and scroll social media for a bit. Thoughts of seeing Lior helped make the case for a break and I rose to make a snack.
A few minutes later – a plate of tortilla chips liberally layered with shredded cheese and microwaved into a gooey delicious mess beside me – I began what had become my new secret obsession in the past couple of days: finding out what famous fashion model Lior Flynn had been up to.
She had uploaded a dozen or so photos already this morning, and I paused on each one, reading the witty captions beneath.
A haughty-looking white cat with a black beauty mark glared at the camera.
“What say you, Morticia? Is this love?” the first line read.
“Die, mortal fool,” read the second line.
Next was a gorgeous looking pan containing what looked to be a rice dish, complete with pistachios, tofu, cilantro, and bell peppers. “Don’t tell me I don’t know how to cook!” the caption read. In the background was a bag advertising a well-known food delivery service company.
There was a picture of another cat, this one black and looking like he’d be right at home smoking a cigar; an image of seashells; one of a to-go cup of coffee with the word Ampersand on the side of it; and images of Lior and her friend, whom I now knew was named Addie, smiling and laughing, despite Addie’s face being heavily bruised and bandaged on the left side.
They looked like two overgrown kids having way too much fun together. A dangerous combination, as noted on another image showcasing a pile of boxes and bags from what was apparently a drunken online shopping spree.
“Oops, we did it again,” Lior had written.
Reaching the last of the images, I glanced at the section where people had commented, then how long ago she’d posted the photos. In less than eight hours she’d garnered over five hundred thousand likes and had over one hundred thousand comments.
“Fucking hell,” I said.
I had a decent following myself, but nothing like the millions she had. I imagined how many more books I’d sell if I had comparable numbers and glanced down at Bronte.
“We could give this place away. Or burn it to the ground and start from scratch.” She blinked at me and went back to sleep.
I returned my gaze to the screen and scrolled down past images I’d already seen. My text alert sounded, startling me and I jumped, my finger unintentionally pressing a button.
“Shit!” I said, staring at my laptop screen. I’d just accidentally liked the red bikini photo. “What do I do?” I asked the blonde dog at my feet. But B was no help. She merely sighed in her sleep and stretched out a leg. “Shit, shit, shit.”
To unlike or not to unlike? What was the move?
What if she was online and had seen me like the image?
And that one in particular? Fucking hell.
I would come off like a total creeper. She’d obviously tell her friend and then there would be discussions about what a slimeball I was liking only that photo.
And since we weren’t friends on the site, she’d know I had come to her page specifically and—
I hit unlike and then sat like a statue staring at the screen, waiting for something to happen. But what? A DM from her saying, “Saw ya, loser. Stop stalking me.”
But nothing happened. There was no message. No social media police pointing their virtual fingers at me and laughing. Maybe no one had noticed and I was… in the clear?
I waited another minute and was about to close my laptop, feeling a little relieved, when a wave of curiosity I hadn’t felt in a long while swept over me.
“Don’t do it, man,” I murmured to myself as I opened the search bar and typed in a name I hadn’t in a while. “You are just a glutton for punishment today.”
Instantly my eyes were assaulted with flashy images of my ex-wife Nadia at a number of fancy events, her bright white smile and blonde highlighted hair practically blinding me at every turn.
Every item of clothing she wore was vibrant in color.
Every pose perfectly executed to show off some part of her toned body.
Every piece of jewelry was oversized and sparking dramatically at the camera lens.
She’d gotten a dog, a tiny thing she’d over-accessorized to the point of it looking more toy than real.
And then there was the boyfriend. I’d never been particularly fond of Brett Harrison’s music, and as far as I knew neither had Nadia.
Until she was. Or at least until she saw an opportunity and jumped, quite literally, on top of it.
I stared in disgust at an image of her in a too-tight t-shirt with his name emblazoned across it, her breasts looking like they were fighting for air.
I made a strange sound in my throat and then clicked in the search engine again, a sick sort of curiosity now piquing my brain.
Typing in the name of the woman I had dated before meeting Nadia, I held my breath as her feed filled my screen with similar images to the ones Nadia had posted.
I closed my eyes for a moment and then returned to the search box, this time typing in the name of my high school girlfriend, Elizabeth Bristol.
The first to break my heart. The one I’d thought for a long time had gotten away.
Once again the images were eerily similar to the other two women’s. Bright. Flashy. Obnoxious. And gave me an acute feeling of chaos.
I was an unstoppable moron so I typed in Lior’s name again.
While the content was more high-end, and the aesthetic classier, sweeter, and more authentic, to me it sort of read the same as the other two women.
Drama. It was all drama. Lior’s life was filled with it by the very nature of her job.
Travel, celebrity, money… Drama was the name of that game, and no matter how many pictures she posted doing “normal people” things, she would never be “normal”.
She would never not be followed and photographed.
Her stained scarf would always have a tag that read Burberry or Dior.
And her broken heel would always come from a Jimmy Choo or a Manolo.
My mind went to the decades-old, worn-in sneaker I’d taken from her porch this morning. That certainly hadn’t felt contrived in any way. Maybe she did have a little bit of “normal” in her life after all?
“Oh, fuck off,” I told myself, shutting my laptop in disgust. “Don’t give her another thought. The last thing you need is any sort of drama, created or otherwise. Or a woman to be obsessing over. We are all about work now, right girl?”
I reached down to give Bronte some scratches behind the ears, then went upstairs to my home gym to work out the frustrations I was clearly in denial about.
The following morning, Bronte’s leash in one hand, Lior’s now-clean sneaker in the other, we exited the house and began what was now becoming our new familiar walk.
At the corner we paused to let a group of school kids dressed in uniforms go by, and a few blocks later we stood aside to allow two harried-looking women leading a dozen or so preschoolers across the street to a small playground.
I grinned as one of the kids shot me a slobbery smile and then continued on my way, ignoring the confused looks I got when people noticed the shoe in my hand.
As we approached Lior’s home, I paused, causing Bronte to look back at me with a question in her big brown eyes as the leash tightened.
“Sorry, girl,” I said, nervous suddenly as I realized I had no idea when Lior was returning. She could’ve flown in last night and was in her house now. What if she saw me? What if she was irritated I’d been there and taken her shoe?
“Jesus, grow up, Graham,” I told myself.
Taking a breath, I resumed walking, Bronte shuffling along beside me until she seemed to realize where she was and picked up speed, her head directed towards the stoop leading to Lior’s door.
We climbed the steps and I set the shoe back in the corner where Bronte had found it, putting a new note inside and then heading back home.