All the Lies - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,34

belonging to D. B. Carter is quite slim, but I don't care.

Matt might be making fun of me or playing a game, but I also don't care.

“Why don't you go with me? We can make it a little road trip.”

“I'd love to, but I have a photography session set up for tomorrow.”

“If I do this, then I can only go tomorrow. I'll need to use Sunday to write up some sort of report.”

Brooke orders some Thai food on her phone and then turns to me.

“This is why you're doing this? You want to show your boss the lengths that you will go to uncover this mystery. You know that she's not going to appreciate it, right? Nothing you do will be enough.”

I shrug. She's right. I know that and she knows that.

“No, this isn’t about that,” I say.

My phone goes off and I look at the screen.

It's Liam, the guy that I met at the party.

He has messaged me on Instagram. I click on his profile. It doesn't seem to be very active. A few pictures here and there, most of landscapes with a few selfies.

Most of them are pictures of him running.

Hey, how are you doing? He writes in a direct message.

I know that he contacted Brooke earlier and I wonder if he's writing me to get in touch with her. But why? She wrote him back and it was he who didn't respond.

“What's up?” Brooke walks over and glances down at my phone.

I quickly close the app before she's able to see, but the moment feels suspicious.

I know that she likes Liam a lot, but I think I might, too. Of course, my situation is a little complicated given the fact that I am only un-engaged for a day, but it doesn't change the fact that I’m intrigued.

What is it that people say about rebounds? You have to go through them in order to find the one that you really want.

I didn't really believe any of that before, but now it hits a little bit too close to home.

Suddenly, I get this overwhelming feeling of needing to be wanted. Like most couples, Alex and I had fallen into a groove with our intimacy. It had its ebbs and flows.

It was never completely gone, but it wasn't like it was when we first met.

Then, walking into his office and seeing them together? Something changed within me.

Suddenly, I had this overwhelming need to prove that someone wants me.

Maybe that's all that’s happening with Liam.

Maybe we didn't really have a connection.

Maybe I was just intrigued by the attention that he paid me.

That evening, I make the decision that early the following morning, I'm going to drive out to the desert. I try to contact Matt a few more times, but all my messages go unanswered.

I scour other forums and posts, but no one else has a clue or volunteers any information.

“This is the only thing I have to do,” I tell Brooke that night when we split a bottle of wine. “If I go out there and it's just a ruse and an Internet joke, then so be it. At least I'll spend some time in the car thinking about everything that has happened. If I don't go out there, then I'll always wonder what if? What if by some slim chance Matt is actually D. B. Carter? What if by some chance he is actually interested in giving me an interview and this is some sort of test?”

22

Liam

Alex and I meet up for lunch since we didn't get much of a chance to talk last night. I haven't seen him in a while and am frankly surprised that he called me up and invited me out.

I meet him downtown, not far from where he works.

“I thought that you were going to take off today,” I say when the server seats us at a table with a white tablecloth and takes our drink order.

He shrugs and looks down at the menu.

There's a nervousness to him, that I don't remember from growing up. He was always the alpha guy, confident, self-assured.

“Well, Emma and I had planned to spend the weekend in Laguna Beach, but she hasn’t been returning my calls so I decided to head back to work.”

“Why not just stay home?”

“What's the point? The only thing that makes sense in my life is my work.”

I give him a slight nod.

“So, what is it that you do?” I ask. “I mean, I know that you're in finance, but what does that entail