But then she was looking at me as though I was a stranger and asking questions I didn’t like in an accusing voice, and it was clear she didn’t understand. I had done everything for her. I’d been a devoted follower for years, made her my religion. I’d decorated my apartment with art she would appreciate (I even sourced a print of her favorite Jackson Pollock after reading about it in a blog post titled “Let Me Tell You Why Jackson Pollock Is the Bomb,” posted May 21, 2014) and peppered my shelves with books she liked, from Gone Girl (WTF?! ♥, she had captioned an image of the book on September 3, 2012) to a dog-eared, secondhand copy of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Collected Poems (finding the poem that had inspired her tattoo and flagging the page with a bookmark, so that she might stumble across it, then flip over her wrist to show me the very same lines indelibly marked on her body).

I’d kept a detailed spreadsheet of all the music she posted about or added to public playlists, and then I used that as a guide while I painstakingly assembled a record collection from scratch. That first Ted and the Honey album had been hard to find (there hadn’t been many pressings, and with the band having hit mainstream success, people weren’t parting with theirs) but I did. Knowing how much she loved them, I even listened to their entire catalog despite the lead singer sounding like he had a mouth full of gravel and the whole thing being a bit too noise-rock for my liking. I knew which songs were her favorites, and I learned the lyrics, would be able to sing along if the situation demanded. I even threw out all the animal products in my kitchen in case she decided to open my cabinets. How could she not understand?

Did she have any idea how much effort I had put into our first meeting? I’d originally planned to “meet” her at bar trivia, hoping I could catch her alone at the jukebox. How about something from Abbey Road? I’d planned to say. When she asked what my favorite song from the album was, I would say “I Want You” both because I knew it was her favorite (“Unpopular opinion: ‘I Want You’ is the best track on Abbey Road,” she had tweeted last April) and because the words were true. I imagined her catching the double meaning and the corners of her glistening, bitable lips curling up, and then the two of us discussing the finer points of Lennon’s songwriting and debating which Beatle had the most successful solo career, conversations that I had researched and prepared for. But then that idiot Connor had tried to swoop in on her and ruined the evening.

Even so, fate had offered a silver lining: that night I saw Cat Harrell in person and realized Audrey’s best friend was the same Cathy from Camp Blackwood. Later, when I observed Audrey and Cat discussing the Rosalind preview through the RAT, I realized that would be a better venue for our first meeting. Audrey would be primed and in her element. All I needed was to get myself in the room and I could let Cat do the rest.