Chapter 2

The moment I reached the end of the street, I pulled out my phone and unlocked it.

My best friend Carissa Chapman's latest post on my feed from an hour ago was a photo of her and her boyfriend, Gavin Ferguson, at dinner. She had the sweetest smile and a genuine sparkle in her eyes. The caption read, "He's so good to me."

I stared at that photo for a long while. Carissa and I had been friends for a decade. I genuinely thought I knew her inside and out.

On our first day of college, we'd moved into our dormitory together, and she'd claimed the top bunk. We used to skip our major classes just to go to the movies. When I'd gotten my heart broken, she was right there, weeping with me for three whole nights.

I'd fallen in love with Wendell during my junior year. I'd confided in her, telling her I had a crush on an upperclassman.

Her reaction at the time only hit me now. "What's his name?"

"Wendell Lowe. He's a senior in the literature department," I'd answered.

Carissa's face had fallen. Yet, she'd masked it with a smile almost instantly.

"He seems like a nice guy. Go get him!" she'd told me.

I hadn't thought much of it at the time. Looking back on it now, the look on her face was exactly like someone who had just been slapped.

…

I took a cab home. The second I crossed the threshold, I was so dead tired that I just crashed on the couch.

Wendell and I had cohabited for a year. I was the one leaseholder for this apartment. The rent was 4,800 dollars a month.

Wendell would wire me 2,000 dollars every month, and I covered the rest. Every single time, he'd say, "Renting is like flushing money down the toilet. Let's just split it for now. Once we buy a place, we'll be set. Just tough it out for a bit longer."

I toughed it out for a year, but he never once brought up the topic of buying a house, and I never bothered to ask.

I pulled open the drawer and dug out my ledger. I'd been bookkeeping since college.

Carissa used to tease me all the time. "Why are you so stingy? You even log a single cup of coffee."

"It's a force of habit when you grow up poor," I'd explain.

I turned the pages to the entries for this past year.

Money spent on Wendell:

"March: His birthday. Cake and gift: 4,800 dollars."

"May: His mother's birthday. Gold bracelet: 6,200 dollars."

"July: His promotion. Suit: 8,900 dollars."

"September: His company team-building trip. Tracksuit: 2,300 dollars."

"Total: 22,200 dollars."

Meanwhile, the only thing Wendell had ever bought me was a 99-dollar lipstick. He had casually grabbed it from a convenience store shelf on my birthday last year.

The shade didn't suit my skin tone at all. When I'd brought it up, he'd clicked his tongue. "Why are you so picky? Carissa wears this shade all the time!"

I thought it was weird at the moment, but he brushed it off, saying he just remembered seeing it on Carissa's social media. Now that I thought about it... Why on earth did he bring up Carissa out of the blue back then?

I closed my ledger, pulled up WhatsApp, and found my chat with Carissa. The last time we had spoken was a week ago.

Carissa: "What are you up to, Tania?"

I: "I'm working overtime."

Carissa: "What about Wendell?"

I: "He's on a business trip."

Carissa: "Oh. In that case, you should go to bed early."

My eyes locked onto that "Oh."

It had never crossed my mind until now, but every single time Carissa asked where Wendell was, she would follow it up with an "Oh" and then go radio silent. It was as if she were confirming something.

A chill ran down my spine.

I pulled up Wendell's WhatsApp. He didn't have a passcode. He never set a passcode because he knew I wouldn't snoop through his phone.

For the longest time, I thought it was a sign of his trust in me. But now, I realized he didn't set a passcode because his chat history with Carissa wasn't on WhatsApp.

I scoured his WhatsApp from top to bottom, but there was nothing. It was clean as a whistle. His chat history with Carissa only contained a 200-dollar transaction on New Year's.

There wasn't a single word of conversation. It was too spotless. Uncannily so.

I switched over to his X. He never used X. I clicked on his following list, which consisted of exactly 12 accounts.

Eleven of them were colleagues from our company. The 12th was a strange alternative account with a green leaf for a profile picture and the handle "@youthfulreverie".

I clicked on the account. The profile only had a single post, dated three years ago.

It read, "But you're the one I like."

There were zero comments underneath, but it had exactly one like.

When I clicked to see who had liked it, I realized that it was Carissa's alternative account, and I froze.