Page 89 of ClickBack

I am reaching for another fry when Trina goes quiet over her phone.

“What?” Rae asks.

Trina looks at me first. “I don’t know when this was taken.”

She turns the screen around. Jarrett is beneath a hotel canopy with a woman tucked against his side, his hand low on her back. I know her face from the old articles I read after we met. A recording artist. Somebody he used to date.

The caption says they left together tonight.

I take the phone. Her bare shoulder is angled toward him. He is looking down at her, smiling. I can see the hand I had on my knee at dinner a few nights ago, familiar enough that I want to move it myself.

“Let me see where it came from,” Trina says.

I give it back.

She checks the account and enlarges the photograph. Rae sits beside me. Di sets her glass on the nightstand.

“Call him,” Rae says.

“He may be flying,” I tell her.

“Then he’ll call when he lands.”

“Maybe wait until you’ve had some sleep,” Di says. “You’ve had champagne, and we don’t know what we’re looking at.”

Rae turns to her. “She can ask him. She doesn’t have to decide anything tonight.”

I call. Voicemail. I send the link with a message beneath it.

Me: This is going around. Call me when you land.

Trina is still searching. “It looks real. That doesn’t mean the caption is.”

I nod, but I keep seeing the woman’s easy smile. Last night, I watched my own face on a screen until I could hardly bear being in the call. In this picture, she seems to have forgotten anybody could be watching.

“Maybe that’s easier,” I say.

“What is?” Rae asks.

I wish I hadn’t spoken. “Somebody who doesn’t have to think so hard about everything.”

Di puts her hand on my knee. I expect her to argue. She doesn’t. Neither does Rae, though she moves closer until our shoulders touch.

For the next forty minutes, we leave the television on and fail to watch it. Trina turns her phone facedown when I keep looking toward it. I want an answer badly enough that every minute feels like new evidence, even though all it proves is that time passes slowly when I’m frightened.

When Jarrett calls, I take the phone into the hallway.

I come back to find the fries covered with a napkin and all three women pretending they haven’t been listening for the door.

“They ran into each other,” I tell them. “He was there for work. He left with Cam.”

“And you believe him?” Di asks.

“Yes.”

Rae looks at me closely. “Because of what he said?”

“Because I asked him what happened, and he answered me.”