Chapter Seven Eleanor #3
“There’s an unrelated issue.” He frowns and hands me his phone. Which is cued up with a picture of us feeding each other bites of cake. The three-tier monstrosity is blurry in the background. A wedding cake.
The most disturbing part is not that one of my fingers appears to be in Adam’s mouth, but that this picture is posted to the events account of the hotel Adam’s staying at.
“I’ve already untagged myself so it’s off my feed—”
“They tagged us in it?”
My anxiety has been on the rise all morning.
Sometimes it’s like my own heartbeat—always there, but easy to ignore until something sets it off, and then suddenly I’m hyperaware of it pulsing through my body.
I’ve been ignoring it for hours now, focused on dealing with the annulment.
Maybe because that’s handled and I let my guard down with Tyler, or maybe because I drank tap water from a strip club and am now probably going to get norovirus—whatever the reason, I can’t ignore it anymore.
My chest is tightening and my lungs won’t fill all the way anymore, no matter how deeply I try to breathe.
“It was posted less than an hour ago,” Adam says. “I highly doubt anyone has seen it. But you need to untag yourself before they do.”
I reach into my bag for my own phone, then freeze. “I can’t.”
“Uh, why the hell not?”
I cover my eyes with both hands. “I deleted all my social apps from my phone. And I don’t have any of my passwords memorized.”
“Can’t you do a password reset?”
“Theoretically, yes. But… my personal email isn’t syncing to my phone right now. I’ve been meaning to fix that.”
“So your phone is basically a brick,” Adam says, exasperated.
“It’s a phone. I just need it to make calls.”
“You sound like my grandmother, oh my god.” He drags both hands down his face. “Who deletes social media?” he mutters, mostly to himself I think.
“It was supposed to be beneficial for my mental health!”
My therapist recommended it. The idea was that less screen time would help me sleep better, and that cutting out socials would help me focus on my own goals rather than making comparisons to strangers on the internet.
It would also prevent me from lurking on Griffin’s socials, which I have, at my lowest points, been known to do.
We all collectively know that social media is terrible, so dropping it seemed like a great idea at the time.
I was actually proud of myself for following through.
And this morning, it had seemed like a saving grace.
One less thing to worry about, because god only knows what kind of nonsense my drunk ass would’ve posted last night if I’d had access.
He takes his phone back to glare at the photo some more. I watch as he sends the account a DM asking them to remove the photo.
“What is that even from? Did we have a reception?”
“How would that even be possible?” Adam shakes his head, wearing an adorably confused expression that scrunches his nose. “… I do vaguely remember licking an ice sculpture, though.”
“Okay, I don’t know what to do with that information,” I tell him as I pull out my own phone. I may not be able to untag myself, but I can certainly track down the social media manager for the resort and make sure they delete the post.
I’ve managed to navigate my way through the hotel’s website to the phone number I need when an alert pops up that I have a new message from Josie. I tap over to it and my stomach pitches as I scan through it.
Hey E—
Nora relayed your message, but if you have a moment before the show, I’d love to hear how last night’s dinner went. I’m sure you’ll let me know as soon as you have any updates, or if you need anything from me in the meantime.
—J
The phrasing is gentle enough, but I know how to read between the lines with Josie by now. She’s irritated with me, and I can’t pretend I don’t understand why. Increased transparency and communication came up in my last performance evaluation.
A small voice in the back of my head—one that sounds suspiciously like my therapist’s—is whispering that this might qualify as another side effect of the two years I spent under Griffin’s thumb.
The urge to hide my failures. To fix things on my own.
It’s nothing new. But I’m not avoiding Josie.
I am going to call her. I just want to have good news when I do.
By the time I realize what a supremely bad idea it is to spend the entire cab ride staring at my phone screen, it’s too late.
Nausea hits me all at once, my mouth flooding with saliva and a cold sweat climbing up my spine.
I drop my phone into my bag and hastily roll down my window.
My gaze snags on the ring on my finger, which somehow I’d forgotten about for a minute, and I tug ruthlessly at it, but still can’t get it over my knuckle.