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Blake and I don’t go out to dinner much anymore.

We don’t have much money, so eating out is a luxury we can’t afford. Fortunately, I like to cook, and I love to bake, so it’s not a major sacrifice for me.

But tonight is Friday night, so we decided to go out. We went to this cheap, hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that is known for smothering their food in spicy and delicious sauces. Technically, it’s more of a takeout place, because you order at a counter. But they have seats, and after you place your order, they bring your food to you. And if you order a margarita, it comes with a little umbrella in it.

Blake is sitting across from me while we wait for our food. He got a steak burrito, and I got the burrito bowl to avoid the carbs—after all, I will be single again very soon. He’s wearing a T-shirt and scratching absently at his arm. He has a horrendous rash from the small amounts of fragranced detergent I have been mixing with his hypoallergenic one. The rash itself makes his skin red and bumpy, and he’s got angry scratch marks running up the length of his arm because it’s intensely itchy.

He also has dark hollows under his eyes from not sleeping well. He was already suffering from insomnia since losing his job, but I got the brilliant idea to blast a soundtrack of ominous thumping noises on my phone in the middle of the night. I hide the phone at the top of our closet so it sounds like it’s coming from above us, and then the second Blake leaves the room to confront Amanda, I shut it off. I doubt he’s gotten one decent night of sleep in the last month. It’s easy to drive someone out of their mind when you know them well enough.

I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

He and Amanda hate each other now. I have helped things along considerably by leaving little sticky notes from Blake inside her door. The notes say things like “stop leaving the light on in the kitchen” or “please request permission twenty-four hours in advance before using our television,” and all of them are signed with Blake’s name. When the two of them are together, she looks like she wants to strangle him with her bare hands. If she had anywhere else to go, she would be gone. But since her last landlord thinks she’s a drug dealer, she doesn’t have a lot of options.

“I’m thinking about selling the brownstone,” he blurts out.

My heart sinks. If he sells the brownstone, Amanda will have to move out. It will all be over. “What? You love our house.”

“I do,” he admits. “But, Krista, I can’t afford it anymore. I can’t make the mortgage payments. I’ll find something else cheaper, maybe in Queens or something.”

“Queens? Oh God, we’re both going to have a horrible commute.”

“I know.” He rakes a hand through his hair, which makes it stand up a bit. He used to be the most put-together guy I ever knew, and now he’s a mess. “But what do you want me to do? I can’t pay the mortgage.”

“What about Whitney?”

He makes a face like he always does when I mention her. “What about her?”

“We already spent the two months’ rent she gave us plus the deposit. We’ll have to pay her back.”

“Yeah…”

We get interrupted by a server coming over with our baskets of food. Blake looks down at his burrito like he couldn’t be less interested in eating it. He scratches his arm again.

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “I don’t see any other way.”

I’ve got to figure out a way to get him to hold off on selling, at least for a little bit longer. But I get distracted when a familiar face comes inside the restaurant, walks up to the front, and gets in line behind a family of four.

It’s Elijah.

What on earth is he doing here?

Blake tosses a glance over his shoulder. “Hey, isn’t that guy one of the people who was looking at a room?”

I blink at him. “What guy?”

“The short squirrely guy with the beard and penguin hat?” He takes another look. “I remember that stupid hat. Don’t you?”

I shake my head slowly. “I don’t know. There were so many people. Maybe he looks familiar…”

Damn it, Elijah. Now that Blake has focused his attention back on me, Elijah is looking this way. It’s no coincidence that he’s here. He lives in Brooklyn. He wouldn’t just randomly be at the same Mexican restaurant as us on a Friday night.

Is he following me?

“Excuse me,” I say to Blake. “I have to run to the bathroom.”

I grab my purse and hurry to the single bathroom, which turns out to have an out-of-order sign on the door. But the knob turns, and I push my way inside, closing the door behind me. The toilet bowl is drowning with paper towels—unusable—but that’s not why I came in here. I lock myself inside and find Elijah’s number in my phone. He picks up on the second ring.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss into the phone before he even has a chance to say hello. “Are you following me?”

“No,” he says quickly.

“Elijah…”

“Fine, okay. A little.” He clears his throat. “I’m worried about you, Whitney.”

“ Krista .”

“Blake doesn’t look good,” he goes on. “He looks…unhinged.”

The lights flicker in the bathroom. “Yes, that’s the whole freaking point.”

“Yeah, but… Are you safe with him? What if he really does have a breakdown?”

“Blake isn’t going to hurt me.”

“But what if he does? What about what that psychic said?”

I roll my eyes. I cannot believe he is bringing that up. I only told him about it because I thought it was so ridiculously funny and I wanted to share it with somebody. Well, I shared it with Becky and Malcolm, but when I told them, I had to act like I really believed it.

“Blake is not violent,” I assure him. “I promise you, he’s not going to hurt me. I don’t think he’s ever even thrown a punch in his entire life.”

“I’m just worried about you…”

I feel like a jerk yelling at Elijah when that’s what this is all about. He’s worried about me.

“You need to stop following me,” I tell him. “Blake recognized you just now. If you keep doing it, he’s going to notice, and he’s going to freak out.”

“Okay.” That finally seems to get through to him. “I’ll stop. I’m sorry.”

It’s beginning to occur to me that while Elijah has been my greatest asset since I left home, he is also becoming quite a liability. He knows too much, and he worries too much. That’s a problem.

But it’s a problem that I need to put a pin in for now. I have other things to worry about.