I think. ‘He WhatsApped me yesterday lunchtime. Morning, his time.’
‘Did he seem okay?’
‘Yeah—he said he was fine. Hungover. He stayed on at his parent’s house for a few days with his friends. I think they’ve been partying hard. But he was normal. Sweet.’
I look through the activity on Josh’s account, my heart sinking and twisting as I do. He sent some tweets before the reply to Gordon Kay that all seemed genuine. The reply is the most recent tweet on his timeline. Since then, nothing, even though the Twittersphere has blown up over it while I’ve been asleep.
Mara pulls her phone out of my hand.
‘Don’t look at it. But go get your phone. See if he messaged you overnight.’
I stumble to my room. I leave my phone on overnight because occasionally Josh drunk-dials me to tell me how much he misses me, and even if he wakes me up, I never want to miss those calls.
There’s nothing from him. I check WhatsApp. Hewas last seen around six o’clock yesterday evening. That would be lunchtime Eastern time.
Where the hell has he got to?
And what in God’s name does that tweet mean?
Because I know Josh. I know how he feels; I know he’s in as deep as I am. And I believe, with every fibre of my being, that not only is he nowhere close to ending our relationship, but he would never do it on Twitter. Ever.
Mara’s looking at me with far more compassion and worry than is ever comfortable for her.
‘Nothing.’
‘No.’ My voice is tiny.
‘Call him.’
‘But it’s 2am there!’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck. Call. Him.’
I don’t have to be told twice. My stomach is flip-flopping like mad. I need to hear Josh’s voice. I don’t care what Twitter thinks; I don’t care about damage control on social media—I just want to hear him tell me he was hacked, or that one of his idiot friends thought it would be funny to grab his phone and stir up trouble. This has Brandon written all over it.
I cling to this thought as the call tries to connect. But it goes straight to voicemail. At the sound of Josh’s gorgeous, sexy, warm voice, my doubts kick in. There’s no way he could be ending it. Could he?
‘Hi.’ My voice sounds so trembly. I clear my throat. ‘It’s me. I just… well, I just saw that tweet from you to Gordon Kay and I was wondering, maybe, if you’ve been hacked, or something? It’s freaked me out a bit, that’s all. Call me when you get this. I—bye.’
‘I’m calling Mike.’ Mara picks up her phone. Mike Schultz is Josh’s publicist. He and Mara exchanged numbers in Cannes so they could coordinate on messaging around my andJosh’s relationship. He’s based on the West Coast, so hopefully he hasn’t gone to bed yet.
She gives me a thumbs-up. ‘Mike. It’s Mara. What the fuck is going on over there?’
‘Put him on speaker.’
‘Hang on. I’m putting you on speaker. I have Elle here with me—she’s losing her mind.’
I must be losing my mind, because I don’t even cringe at how uncool she makes me sound.
‘Talk. What do you know?’
‘I have no fucking clue.’ His voice comes through, gravelly but clear. ‘I haven’t been able to get hold of him since the tweet went live.’
‘What? Do you have access to his Twitter account—can you delete the tweet?’
A sigh. ‘No. He does it all himself. And even if I could, the damage is done. I have no clue why he wrote that. He certainly hasn’t mentioned anything to me, Elle, if that makes you feel better.’
‘When did you last speak to him?’ I venture.
