Hello, Sunshine

She tilted her head, as if she was trying to remember. “This is your apartment? I should know that, right? I’ve been here before?”

I nodded, noting Amber’s nervousness—her over-explanation of whether she should remember the apartment.

“It’s a shame, what’s going on with your show and everything,” she said. “Did you see my tweet?”

“I did, thanks.”

“Of course. How’s it all going?”

“Not great.”

She cringed, full of faux-sympathy. “I just don’t know why anyone would do this to you! I was talking to Louis earlier, and he was saying, we were both saying, you don’t deserve this. I mean, regardless of what you did. To be outed.”

That stopped me. “You were talking to Louis?”

“Well, yes. We’re putting together a cookbook. Tender Toast.”

“You are?”

She shrugged. “They have an unexpected spot in their catalogue. Do you think Tender Toast is too soft? We’re just rushing to get the book out and I can’t tell if it’s genius or not. Louis thinks it has a good ring to it, and he’s the best there is, but . . . I don’t know . . .”

I took Amber in, sobering up, quickly. “Where did you say you’re going tonight?”

“I’m just going to get some dinner with my boyfriend.”

She pointed down the street, like proof of a restaurant. Except she was pointing toward nothing. My block was small and—at least in New York terms—far away from everything. Restaurants, cabs, stores. There was a world in which you started here to get somewhere, but there was no world in which this was the block where you ended up.

“So are you still in a tizzy trying to figure out who’s behind this hack?”

I stared at her, not answering.

“That’s why I try to be nice. I’m nice to everyone, so no one would think to fuck me like this.”

Which was when it hit me like a sledgehammer. I had been thinking that it was Violet or Ryan. But Amber had the most to gain from any gap left in A Little Sunshine’s wake. That was what she was doing on my street—my quiet, untraveled street in Tribeca. Like a serial killer, returning to the scene of the crime, she couldn’t help herself. She had to gloat.

“It’s you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re behind the hack,” I said.

She laughed in a completely unnatural way: high-pitched and squeaky, a laugh that was trying too hard. “Have you been drinking? I have nothing to do with this. I mean, what on earth would I have to gain?”

“Seriously?”

“Okay, so I could see how maybe I have a little to gain,” she said, trying to hide a smile.

It was the strangest thing—watching her struggle between proclaiming her ignorance and enjoying her victory. Sometimes being drunk can impede your seeing things clearly, though in this case, I thought it was helping me to see how shallow and silly this all was—any issue Amber thought was between us, anything that would lead her to tear so many lives apart.

“But I’m still innocent,” she said.

Innocent. If she were really innocent, wouldn’t she have said, I have nothing to do with any of this? Innocent was a word chosen when another word was equally weighing on your mind. Guilty.

I reached out, grabbed ahold of her arm. It was the most forceful I think I’d ever been with anyone. “Would you just be honest?”

Amber smiled, tightly, removing my hand from her arm. “Honesty is what you want? That’s ironic!”

But then her faux-smile gave way to something darker. And I saw it flash in her eyes. The truth of how she felt about me; the competitive fire, the jealousy, and something uglier.