Jude had moved on, and I was trying to.
“Can you remove the tag?” Monica asks.
“Yeah, of course.” I place the phone aside and grab my laptop off the nightstand. Only when I crack the lid open, the screen stays black and the password prompt doesn’t appear. “Shit. I think my computer’s dead.”
“Just do it from your phone,” she says.
“I deleted the app on my phone when I did that social media fast last month,” I say. If I install it, I’ll have to re-enter my password using one of those code generator authenticator app things and to be honest, I’m not even entirely sure how those work. I just know that I made my account so insanely secure that I basically made it impossible for me to get back in—at least on my phone. Everything’s good to go on my laptop … if it would just start. “Hang on. I need to find my charger.”
Untangling myself from my sheets, I all but trip to the door, burst down the hall, and locate my laptop cord in my office.
“Okay, I’m back,” I say as I finagle the plugs. A minute later, I’m logged into my computer.
Double-clicking on the web browser, I clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp when I realize I’m already logged into Facebook … and the last image pulled up is the very same one I’m tagged in. There’s no denying I did this.
“You’re quiet,” Monica says. “Everything okay?”
It’s true.
It’s real.
It happened.
“How would I … why would I … I don’t understand …” I can’t finish my sentence. If I could crawl into a hole right now and die, I would.
“Can you remove the tag?” Her question is frantic. She fully understands the nature of this grave mistake.
“I’m trying.” I’m terrified to click anywhere on the image, worried I’ll somehow tag myself again, but I hover my mouse above the sunset corner of the image anyway and give it a right click. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” I say when the option to remove the tag pops up.
I can’t click it fast enough.
“All right. It’s gone,” I say.
But the damage is done.
Glancing at the upper right hand corner of the screen, I spot twelve new messages waiting for me.
I’m guessing Monica wasn’t the only one who noticed the tag …
“This is mortifying,” I say.
“I’ll be honest, my secondhand embarrassment is going strong right now,” she asks. “How did this even happen?”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I say, “I don’t know. I’ve been sick lately. I took something to help me sleep last night … it made me a little loopy … I must have been out of it?”
Years ago, I was prescribed a sleep aid that used to give me mild amnesia and eventually led to me sleepwalking. One morning I woke up to find an empty can of tomato soup in the kitchen, next to a bowl and spoon, and my tongue and the roof of my mouth were both raw, as if I’d scalded them. I never took another pill again after that, but I figured I’d be safe with some over-the-counter NyQuil …
Apparently not.
“What are you going to say if someone asks you about it?” she asks.
“Nothing. I’ll probably just pretend like it didn’t happen.” Odds are the twelve people who saw it and reached out to me will forget about it soon enough.
“Oh,” she says. “You could always say, like, you were on your second bottle of wine when your old song started playing on your favorite Spotify station, which made you nostalgic, so you took a glimpse at his profile just to reminisce for a moment, but then you saw their engagement photo and accidentally clicked something—”
“—I don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
“But they’re going to ask. You know they will. And if you don’t give them any details, they’ll fill in the holes in the story with details of their own. That’s how rumors spread …”
I shrug, even though she can’t see me. “Oh, well.”
It’s not like I have an ounce of control over anything people will or won’t say.
“I don’t know how you’re not beside yourself right now. I’d be freaking out,” she says.
“Maybe it’s because you’re freaking out enough for the both of us?”
I’m so drenched in humiliation I can taste it on my tongue and smell it in the air and every time I blink, I can see that engagement photo on the backs of my eyelids—but what’s done is done.
“I need to hit the shower,” I say.
I want to wash the events of last night and this morning out of my hair and off of my skin. I want to scrub it from the forefront of my mind and replace it with anything but. I want to sing at the top of my lungs to some Sia or Robyn or some old-school, upbeat Taylor. Anything to move forward from this unfortunate incident.