Chapter 9: Word for Word

At six the next morning, Roxie was waiting outside the gym with two cups of coffee.

She had her phone held out in front of her.

"You're famous," she said.

"I'm asleep."

"You're famous and asleep. Look."

She turned the screen toward me.

It was Zara's video, shot from the booth.

It showed me in the doorway in the black dress, saying that my husband invited me.

Then Quincy walked out of the dark with his jacket over his arm.

Under it somebody had written: WHO IS THAT MAN.

It had eleven thousand views.

"Quincy VanHorne," Roxie said, tapping the screen. "Second-year law. He doesn't go to parties and he doesn't date."

She held up a finger.

"A girl in my econ class asked him for a pen once. He handed her the whole pencil case and never spoke to her again."

"He's nice to me."

"He's staring at you in this video like nobody else is in the room." She handed me a coffee. "June. What did you do to him?"

"I called him husband."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the whole answer."

We went into the gym and taped our hands.

The instructor was a retired welterweight with a limp.

He put us on the heavy bags and told us to hit them hard.

I did.

When we took a water break, Roxie sat on a bench with her phone and went quiet, which she never did.

"What?" I said.

"Okay. Don't kill the messenger."

She held it out.

It was a screenshot of Zara's close-friends story, the kind that vanishes in a day.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Mistook Me for My Roommate, So I Called a Stranger Husband from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.