Boy meets girl, girl falls in love, blah-blah-blah.
Let me be clear with you from the beginning. This is not that kind of story.
My name is Cait, and I live in the great city of New York. Okay, so maybe I've only lived here for a week and a half...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The rest of the week passed in a very boring blur. It felt like the walls of our apartment were gradually creeping inward, squeezing me inside the tiny box, until I finally felt like I might explode. I did what I could to escape, including daily runs in Prospect Park wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, but - without work - my days felt absolutely empty.
On the upside, I flew through my 'to be read' list, finishing at least a book every single day, but I was still craving human contact. Val did her best to keep me up on the gossip at work, and Anastasia dropped by with a green smoothie from the juice bar down the road one afternoon, but I was starting to feel like I was under house arrest.
After the "paparazzi incident," Peter insisted that I stay home from work until next Monday at the very least, which meant I was without a paycheck. I'd built up a fairly hefty savings in the five months I'd worked at Starbucks, constantly picking up extra shifts and refusing to spend too much on nights out, but I hated digging into it so I could hide out in our apartment.
Eventually, however, the madness had to end. With Andrew on the media circuit, rumors about us dating were gradually being replaced with other news stories, and he was quick to ask every media outlet to respect my privacy. Even his followers jumped on the bandwagon, defending him by saying that he deserved to have somewhat of a private life, which I hoped was a good sign. If they were backing off, maybe this whole mess would be over soon and my life could go back to some semblance of normal. I was coming to terms with the fact that normal might have to be something other than what I was used to, but anything was preferable to this. Andrew was coming back to New York on Saturday, and we already had plans to meet at his apartment that night for dinner.
All in all, I thought the worst was over.
On Thursday, unfortunately, the world decided it had other plans. I started receiving weird comments on all of my Instagram photos. I'd learned to keep push notifications turned off, but the swarm of comments had died down significantly - and turned overwhelmingly positive - so I was comfortable reading what people were saying about me. I'd just responded to another girl asking me where I bought the outfit I was wearing in one of my photos when I received a notification from @LincolnShepherdFan.
Clicking it, I scrolled down to the comment and frowned when I read it.
Slut.
I worked on developing a thick skin when it came to these comments, but this one caught me by surprise and hit me like a ton of bricks. I scoffed, navigating away from the comment and pretending it didn't bother me, but another notification rolled in - followed by another. One by one, a whole slew of comments poured into my notification feed, all from this one account. Whoever this person was, she was going through each and every of my Instagram photos and leaving a single word - dripping with venom - on each one of them.
