“No!” I say quickly, “God, no! There is absolutely nothing going on there. I swear, Chase, I don’t even think of him that way. He’s a colleague, and anyway, he’s really aloof. We’re thrown together by work. That’s all it is.”

Chase looks restored. He smiles at me, then notices the nuts in the bowl are all gone and jumps up to get a refill. On the way past, I pull him back for a kiss.

We stay longer in the bar than we need to that night, order a couple more drinks, until we’re the only two left in the whole place. I watch Chase as he tells me some story about his week. He’s animated, jovial, relieved. We’re a team again, and he’s entirely on my side. She doesn’t own him anymore. I’ve got him back.

RUTH

Things are not going well. Alex and Chase are letting me stay in the loft still, although for the life of me I can’t think why. She’s so terse with me that it’s obvious she continues toblame me for the big Pim reveal. We’ve stopped talking about the photograph—there’s nothing more I can say about it.

She’s cold, distant, and uninvested. So why is she even bothering to help me, to let me stay with her? Maybe with sisters, even when you’re mad at each other you love each other. Meal times are tense, though, and she makes sure she’s never there in the morning when I wake up. Chase is always there, like a loyal dog. But there is some wariness in how he approaches me. When he catches himself smiling at something I’ve said, there’s a moment of panic in his eyes as though he’s just remembered he’s not meant to like me. He doesn’t make me smoothies anymore.

Added to my general sense of unease is the fact that I’m now really worried about Eli. The message he left on my cell phone was razored and ominous: Come out, come out wherever you are, he said, a singsong meanness in his voice. You took something that doesn’t belong to you, Ruthy. Didn’t your mama ever tell you that’s wrong? It’s not the only message he’s left me, although they vary in degrees of menace. I don’t answer any of them and try not to look at my phone, but it dings repeatedly. Glows at night like plutonium. I pray to God that he won’t find me, because the truth is I can’t find his coffee tin. I’ve turned over the apartment, and it’s fucking nowhere to be found.