66I don’t think he likes Crystal for her moral pulchritude, which is a word I know.
67This might delay our next reunion.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
After the police clear out with Kobra in cuffs, I sit at the bar, order another glass of wine, and scroll through the#LBArthashtag on Instagram. There are so many posts—and I have no idea how I’m going to get through them all. I hop over to Twitter and see a bunch of tweets and photos with the hashtag as well. It’s like everyone at the party spent the whole time staring at their phones. Which is probably true, especially given the theme of the exhibition.
There are about five hundred selfies, most of which aren’t interesting, until I catch a glimpse of myself in the background of one of them. I stare at the photo, zooming in and looking at it pixel by pixel. I see JP with me.
There’s another photo of JP and me standing next to a table of appetizer trays on the museum’s official Instagram account. I can see why they’d feature us. We’re young and good-looking and that yellow dress photographs amazingly.If only I still had the cape! But the longer I study the photo, the more it becomes clear how off it is. We’re standing too far apart, our bodies stiff and our smiles forced. I’ve read enough of thoseUs Weeklysidebars about the body language of celebrity couples to know when I see a happy pair and when I see two people who are in the middle of a giant fight about intellectual property.
The post is time-stamped at 11:03 p.m. on Tuesday. I was admitted to the hospital not long after that.
Suddenly, I’m super weirded out. If JP had been there, why didn’t he know about the head injury? Why didn’t he follow me to the hospital? Why did I wake up alone? You don’t just watch your girlfriend bash her head on an ice sculpture and then go to Switzerland to get clarity on a fight you had before the party. It’s a damning photograph. If the trial attorney showed this to the jury, they would deliberate for all of five minutes and send JP to prison for five years, of which he would serve six months maximum because, let’s face it, he’s a billionaire.
I can’t think of a good reason for him to pretend he didn’t know about my injury. Was he hoping to come back from Switzerland and find me dead?
A chill runs up my spine. I do the first thing that comes to mind. I text Max.
Can you talk? You might have been right about JP.
He responds right away: RU OK?
Yes. In fact, I left JP’s this morning.
I see three dots appear and then disappear.
Going to stay with Crystal tonight. Idk.
I wait a beat, hoping he’ll offer to put me up now that I’m not with JP anymore. He doesn’t take the bait.
Glad ur safe. If you need me 4Realz let me know.
Wow, I really expected him to jump for joy that I wasn’t with JP anymore. Instead I get aglad ur safelike he’s my dad or something? He still hasn’t liked our Instagram couple pic and I’m pretty sure he’s seen it by now. For some reason I feel worse about that than about the very real possibility that JP tried to kill me. Crushed, in fact.
I’m lucky that Crystal doesn’t turn me down when I ask to stay with her—she’s still riding high from Kobra’s arrest. On the bus to her house,68I explain that JP might’ve tried to kill me. “It must have been him. We had a fight in the car on the way to that art gala about GoldRush. Then, we were at the party eating appetizers probably moments before I was injured.” She nods to show she’s listening, and I hit her with the clincher. “Then, he left the party by himself, went to Switzerland for a few days, and has been acting like he didn’t know it happened. Itmusthave been him.”
Crystal is quiet.
“He probably thought I was dead and ran. When he didn’t see my death recorded in the papers, he probably texted me to see if I was alive. When I answered, he had to act likeeverything was totally fine and that he missed me. Ugh, what a psychopath!”
Crystal murmurs something.
“I should probably call the police. Now that I’ve helped them catch Kobra, they owe me.” How conveniently I’ve forgotten the whole check fraud business.
Crystal is dead silent.
“I was really hoping that Kobra did it. That would have been so easy. I’m not in love with JP, but I don’t want to send him to jail. I don’t want to think I was in an abusive relationship. But it can happen to anyone, I guess.”
Crystal murmurs again. “It wasn’t JP.”
“What?” I turn the full force of my attention on her. “Did you see something?”
“JP wasn’t there when you fell. He’d already left.”
“How do you know that?” My jaw drops. “You were there? I had a memory of you storming in, but I wasn’t sure if it was real or if I was conflating it with something else. How come you didn’t say anything?”
