Chapter 40

Emma made it to PetHub with only seconds to spare; she had to hurry to make it to the time clock on time. Not that her boss was a bastard about that sort of thing; she simply took great pride in her work ethic and tried very hard to be punctual.

Nothing exciting happened until she checked her phone while on break.

“Holy fuck,” she said aloud in the empty break-room.

Jess had forwarded a link to Todd’s page. Jess had added a note: “Hmm, guess he pissed SOMEONE off.”

When she followed the link, she saw a blurry, but unmistakable, picture of her two new neighbors, clad in black and holding tools aloft.

Right under that was the picture of Todd’s fucked up BMW.

There was another more recent post that neither Jess nor I had seen at that point.

‘FUCKING BULLSHIT! Crazy ass bitch ratted me out to my boss at work AND I have a nasty voicemail from my FUCKING mother! Who the fuck does that!’

Scrolling more, she found the photo and caption of her that had sparked Jess’ fury.

She dialed Jess.

“Jess, what the fuck did you guys do?!” Emma hissed into the phone as soon as Jess answered.

“Well, did you ever see the Godfather? You mess with my neighbor, you mess with my whole family. I’m pretty sure it went something like that. I never actually saw it. Anyway, we had to balance the scales of justice. And we did,” Jess said evenly.

“You guys didn’t have to do that, you know,” Emma said.

“Oh, but we did. And trust me, his chubby chasing days are over,” Jess responded.

“Well ... thank you. Tell Aaron thank you for me as well,” Emma said quietly.

“No problem, girlfriend. We got your back.”

After hanging up with Jess, Emma saw she had a new email.

“From: SuperMatch Server”

“Subject: You have a message from a match!”

“Hello, SexyKittyTwenty!”

“User BNB333 has sent this message:”

“Hi! I saw that you are an animal lover. So am I. I’d love to take you out to dinner this weekend, if you’d let me.”

Emma clicked the name in the message which brought up the profile for BNB333. It was completely blank except for “Likes: Dogs.” No photo, not even a description. It struck Emma as fishy, so she decided to hold off on answering until she talked to Jess later.

- - -

After work, at around 6:30, Emma knocked on our door; Jess answered.

“Hey, kiddo, what’s shakin?” Jess asked. She stepped aside and gestured for Emma to enter the apartment.

“Hey, Jess. Hey, Aaron,” she said, waving to me at the computer. I returned the wave. “Can I ask you something?” she said to Jess.

“Sure, of course. What’s on your mind?”

“Well,” Emma said, “I got another match today. After my experience with Todd – oh, and thanks again for everything you guys did to defend my honor, you guys are intense! Anyway, after my experience with Todd, I’m a bit gun shy. And something struck me as off.”