“Amy Stake.” Talia says the name slowly. “A mistake. I think it’s supposed to be a pun.”
“Clever.”
It would be smarter to report this email as a phishing attempt, but with Meera standing over her shoulder—part protector, part audience—Talia feels emboldened to click. She opens the email and steps to the side so she and Meera can read it together.
Don’t think I forgot about you bxtch. I know your with Townsend now and I know it’s not going to last. Watch your fxcking back. As soon as it falls apart I’m coming for you both.
“Holy shit,” Meera breathes. “Amanda?”
“I don’t—” Talia takes a deep breath to center herself.Inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight.“Do you think it’s really her?”
“Who else? Just look at it. They mix up ‘your’ and ‘you’re.’ And they weirdly censor any profanity with x’s. Even the syntax is similar.”
Talia sits down at her desk again. “Would that mean ...?”
Meera nods. “Unless Amanda sent this from beyond the grave, I’d say she’s very much alive. And from the sound of it, she’s very much pissed.”
Chapter Eleven
Amanda
It was his first message on Cuff that roped her in:You look like a good time.Flirty without being overtly sexual—it was a refreshing change from the sort of messages Amanda usually received on the app.Look at those dick-sucking lips. What’s that kitty taste like? I can just imagine the sounds you’ll make when I choke you.It was incredible what men were emboldened to say when they could talk to a woman without having to look her in the eye.
But Townsend wasn’t like that. He was too educated, too well bred. And while the secrecy was fun for a while, nothing felt quite as delicious as getting that prissy bitch of his out of the picture. As her sister would confirm, Amanda had never been good at sharing.
The first time she saw Talia, she didn’t even realize they were in competition. It was early December, and she was running late to a Pilates class taught by her friend Raquel (whose friends-and-family discount was the only reason Amanda could afford to step foot into that bougie studio). Having forgotten to take her Converse off at the door, Amanda was creeping across the crowded room, trying to find an open spot, when the toe of her sneaker landed on Talia’s mat. The two locked eyes for only a moment, and though she didn’t say a word, the look on Talia’s face could only be described as puredisgust—toward not just the toe of Amanda’s shoe, it seemed, but the entire core of Amanda’s being.
Later, in the locker room, Amanda listened in while Talia chatted happily with another woman, apparently having recovered from the great upset Amanda caused earlier. As discreetly as she could, Amanda looked Talia up and down—fresh blowout, matching Alo Yoga set, toned physique. The rich-bitch type who’d looked down on Amanda her whole life. She and her big-boobed Indian friend were discussing something stupid—a new downtown facial bar, it sounded like—when Amanda overheard a name that made her ears prick up:Townsend.
“You’ve been dating Townsend for six months, Talia,” her friend was saying. “You shouldn’t be this stressed about what to get him for Christmas.”
“But that’s exactly why I’m stressed,” the woman—Talia, apparently—argued. “Six months is half a year. And I really feel like this could be forever.” She grinned, and then added, “He changed the key code on his door to my birthday. Isn’t that sweet?”
At this point, Amanda and Townsend had been talking for a little over two weeks and had hooked up once, an impulsive move that he’d seemed to regret, based on how quickly he’d gathered up his clothes and left her apartment afterward. She thought he was ashamed of slumming it with a cocktail waitress—which is perhaps why he insisted on the secrecy—but now it made sense: He was cheating. Sure, she could have been talking about another Townsend (not that there were many of them). But somehow, Amanda knew without a doubt that she and this Pilates princess were fucking the same guy.
Amanda waited until the two had left the locker room, and then she sent Townsend a message on Cuff. (Sothisis why he insisted on them keeping their correspondence on Cuff, she realized. Texting was too obvious.)
I’m going to a protest tomorrow at Waller Beach Park,she wrote.You should come.
His answer was almost immediate.What’s it for?
Does it matter? It’s a chance to hang out with me.
She couldn’t help but grin when she saw his response:When you put it like that, how could I say no?
The fact that Townsend had a girlfriend should have annoyed or upset her. It wasn’t the first time she was the other woman, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Her sister Kaitlyn once asked her (after it was revealed that she’d been sleeping with their dad’s married coworker), “Doesn’t it bother you, being everyone’s sloppy seconds?” But it didn’t, because she wasn’t anyone’s sloppy seconds. Time and time again, men were willing to upheave their lives for the chance to be with her. That made her the victor, not the backup. And now it seemed she was going to win again.
In these relationships, she never even thought of herself asthe other woman. While taking an Arthurian literature class for community college (which was as awful as it sounded—no wonder she never finished her degree), she was forced to readLe Morte d’Arthurby Sir Thomas Malory, which is where she first learned the termparamour. It sounded so sexy to Amanda—and Queen Guinevere, fucking around with both King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, seemed pretty sexy too. So what if she was sentenced to death for her actions? She had a good time while things lasted.
Amanda and Townsend continued to see each other casually for the next few weeks, their meetings always furtive and quick—because it was hotter that way, as Townsend claimed. And because she was always game to fulfill someone’s fantasy, Amanda never mentioned Talia; she allowed Townsend to believe she was blissfully ignorant. Like most men, he didn’t tell her she was the other woman until after they were caught ... by Talia, in his bed, just about a week before Christmas. It was all just too predictable and, frankly, a little funny. Naked beneath Townsend’s sheets, Amanda watched as Talia’s mouth gaped like a fish’s—the same look of disgust she wore when Amanda accidentally stepped on her precious Pilates mat—and she had to stifle her giggle.
Even though he was handsome, and sophisticated, and on the cusp of making even more money than he already did (as he kept telling her,alluding to some start-up idea), she thought things with Townsend would get boring once the chase was over. Surprisingly, they didn’t. After things with Talia ended, Townsend began calling Amanda his girlfriend, and belonging to him—beingjusthis—was more thrilling than she could have ever imagined. Maybe Kaitlyn had been onto something. Maybe being someone’s person was even better than being their paramour.
Because it wasn’t just sex, though it may have started that way. With Talia out of the picture, Townsend could finally relax, and she began to know him as more than just the monied playboy who sometimes snuck into her bed at night. As their relationship developed, their conversations deepened, broaching topics like Townsend’s sick father and Amanda’s dead parents, Townsend’s fear of failure and Amanda’s lack of direction. Intimacy had never looked like this in her past relationships, and she’d never realized that baring her soul could make her feel so much more vulnerable than baring her skin. The first time Townsend peed with the bathroom door left open, she nearly cried—how good it felt, to be let in, to be trusted. It didn’t matter that Amanda wasn’t a debutante like the girls Townsend was likely used to courting. He wanted her. Maybe even loved her.
Amanda only saw Talia at Raquel’s Pilates class on one other occasion, a few weeks after she’d successfully stolen Townsend away. Late, as usual, Amanda set up her mat near the back of the studio, and she didn’t approach Talia until later, in the locker room, where—this time—she was without her friend for protection.
First, Amanda stripped naked, wrapping herself loosely in a towel. Then she snuck up behind Talia and tapped her shoulder. When she turned around, Amanda thought she saw a flash of recognition in her eyes—but whether she was recognizing Amanda as the woman who’d once stepped on her Pilates mat or the woman she’d discovered in her ex’s bed, or maybe even both, she couldn’t be sure.
