However, when she attempted to shoot her shot with a twenty-two-year-old philosophy student at the Sorbonne (she thought she’d open with a simple “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?”), an error code popped up on her screen. “Message not sent,” it read. Because of course shewould be cockblocked by technology, right when she was on the cusp of reclaiming herself.
A quick check of her outgoing messages confirmed that her latest missive had failed to send. But strangely enough, it seemed several other messages had been sent from her account over the past couple of days ... even though she’d deleted the Cuff app from her phone. What was even more concerning was that they’d all been directed to Townsend. Head pounding, Amanda quickly scrolled through the messages, each one crazier than the last.
Your going to be so fxcking sorry,one message read, sent the same night she and Townsend split.
Sleep with one eye open motherfxcker,read another, supposedly sent the next day.
Yet another message, sent a few hours later:I’m gonna make you wish you never met me.
Amanda may have lost herself in her relationship with Townsend, but she knew this much to be true: No amount of tequila could have compelled her to fire off these insane threats.
Scrolling back further, she reread the messages exchanged before her breakup with Townsend, which had struck her as uncharacteristically sappy when she first saw them (likely sent in a stupid post-sex fog, she’d figured) but now seemed entirely foreign.I want to have five kids and I want them all to have your eyes? There was no way she would write that shit to a man, no matter how infatuated she was. Not even on ketamine. Not in a million years.
It became clear to her now what should have been obvious to her before: Someone was messing with her account.
On the app, Amanda navigated to the “Troubleshooting” tab and selected “Trouble with Messaging.” When asked to describe her issue in detail, she wrote,Someone hacked my account and wrote a bunch of weird shit to fuck with my relationship.Then, thinking better of it, she pressed backspace until the words disappeared, and she rewrote her complaint:I believe someone has gotten access to myaccount because I’m seeing outgoing messages I didn’t write myself.As Kaitlyn always reminded her, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
After receiving the standard “thank you for your inquiry” autoreply, promising help from a member of Cuff’s support staff within twenty-four hours, Amanda waited. No response ever came, so the next day, she submitted another complaint:Someone is sending messages from my account. Please advise.
Another twenty-four hours passed. Still no response.
After sending her third complaint (Someone has stolen my identity. Is this not a violation of Cuff’s terms?), Amanda decided that honey was too sweet for her taste anyway. She scrolled through her camera roll until she found the picture she had in mind—a racy shot of herself taken with a self-timer in Townsend’s room one day while he was in the shower—and posted it to Instagram along with the captionHe’s in your head but I’m in his bed. So what if she and Townsend were broken up? This would annoy the fuck out of whoever was messing with her account—and that was all that really mattered.
Plus, there were her followers, who were better than any man, or drug, or even designer bag. Watching those likes and comments pour in, Amanda flopped onto her couch and luxuriated in the familiar dopamine rush, that addictive tingle brought on by the soft pings of her phone and the steady stream of praise that accompanied it.
Literal dream girl.
Your body is unreal, my God.
Just saying, whoever is sleeping next to you in that bed is the luckiest man alive.
The comments were so different from the ones she received on dating apps, where men—emboldened by the unspoken agreement thatthey were all looking for someone to fuck—felt welcome to thrust their tawdry fantasies upon her. That never happened here, in the safe space that was her comments section. Here, she was seen,reallyseen, by men and women alike, and loved for what she had to offer.
But as she watched comment after glowing comment appear under her photo, an eerie one materialized:You’re not done paying for your actions.It was written by a user with the handle @geminibaby530—which wouldn’t have caught her eye if not for the fact that geminibaby530 was her password for everything, from her Instagram to her Cuff account.
She clicked on the username, but it led nowhere; the profile associated with the handle had somehow already been deleted. Could this be the same person who’d sent those unhinged messages to Townsend on Cuff? The thought made her uneasy. After a moment of hesitation, Amanda deleted the comment as well. She didn’t need this kind of negativity in her life, not when it was finally about to get good again.
For the rest of the day, Amanda tried to block it out of her mind: the breakup, the Cuff impostor, the creepy Instagram comment. Still, a sense of unease followed her, like an intruder lurking out of sight. It was almost a relief to go to work, where she’d be too busy to even sit down, much less think about herself. She put on the tight black T-shirt that always earned her extra tips, and by the time she got back from the cocktail club at two a.m.—tired, sticky, and slightly tipsy from taking shots with customers—the day’s anxiety was already a distant memory.
Then she noticed the light on in her bathroom. She never left the light on in her bathroom.
Still standing in the doorframe of her apartment, Amanda tried to rationalize the situation. She’d been distracted all day. She’d gotten ready for work in a rush. It was entirely possible she forgot to hit the switch before heading out.
But then she heard a cough. And there was no denying it: A stranger had broken into her home.
Slowly, quietly, Amanda crept from the front door of the studio toward the bathroom. The door was slightly ajar, and she could see a pair of hands rifling through the medicine cabinet above her sink. Her heart hammered in her chest so violently, she was surprised her unexpected visitor couldn’t hear it. But the intruder was too busy rattling her pill bottles and inspecting her toothbrush to notice she’d returned.
This was her chance. She could turn around, creep back out the door, and call the police without the trespasser being any the wiser.
Except that’s the moment the intruder chose to close the medicine cabinet, revealing the mirror on the other side. And in its reflection, a pair of eyes landed on Amanda, caught halfway between the front door and the bathroom.
Then came a command, delivered by a shaky voice: “Don’t move. We need to talk.”
Chapter Thirty
Townsend
When Townsend hears the knock on his door Friday evening, he assumes it’s Talia, hands too full to punch in the key code. But when he opens the door, her friend Meera Ratnam—a woman he has not seen or spoken to in over two years—is waiting on the other side.
