I felt this was somehow my fault. If we—Fiona and I—hadn’t gotten into that argument and broken up, if I hadn’t given up on her, then she wouldn’t have gone off and tried to find her father on her own. She left everyone behind from her obsession to find him, and I knew better than anyone to what lengths she was willing to go, to do that. I should have seen this coming. The warning signs were all there.

It was true, I didn’t want her to keep putting herself through the pain of rejection, due to someone who very likely didn’t want to be found in the first place. He’d had every opportunity to contact Fiona or her mother sometime in the last eighteen years; I didn’t buy the fact that he didn’t know.

But then again, I always trusted her mother. I believed she was telling Fiona the truth about Fiona’s father leaving before he knew anything about the girls, and that she hadn’t heard from him again. Fiona questioned her, but never doubted her sincerity—and maybe that was our first mistake.

I thought I knew more than anyone what was going on in Fiona’s life, but maybe I didn’t know as much as I thought. Maybe she didn’t open up to me as much as I thought she did. Maybe there was more to her story that the rest of us were blind to. She told Alexis and Candace quite a lot—they were her best girlfriends—but she didn’t tell them everything. There were things she told me that I knew she never told them, and there I was, thinking I was special and the one confidant she told everything to.

Who is Matthew?

The picture of her and that mysterious guy haunted me. And not because I was jealous… okay, maybe I was… a little. But he seemed to show up out of nowhere shortly after we’d broken up and I’d never seen or heard of him before. According to Candace, he hadn’t just walked in off the street—a new Hot Coffee customer who’d taken an immediate liking to her and instantly become a regular. They had a backstory that appeared out of thin air. He was supposedly a family friend, yet one I had never heard of in the six years I’d known her.

As strange as his sudden appearance was, he knew something the rest of us didn’t—something the rest of us were missing. I needed to find him, but where would I even start? I guessed the best thing I could do was mention him to Fiona’s mother and gauge her reaction.

I sat up from my bed and reached over to the nightstand to grab my phone. I had Candace’s number even though we rarely conversed that way; she was just so close to Fiona and Alexis, though, that it was good to have her as a contact. Now it would finally pay off.

I texted Candace to ask if she’d send me the picture shown to me at the coffee shop, then simply waited for the reply.

A part of me wished I could free myself from Fiona, but we had so much history and my life now felt so empty without her. I stood up and stretched, looking at my walls covered in pictures I’d taken and developed. I’d got interested in photography as a freshman; it had started with just my iPhone and filters, but I’d found capturing something as a still life—encapsulating a specific moment unique to the world—magical and fascinating. I yearned to capture more of those moments.

I paced my room, more closely examining the pictures I’d displayed. One day, I would have my own exhibit, which people of distinguishing taste would flock to. I smiled at the thought. Fiona had been my muse for the past few years, even before we’d officially gotten together. And some of the moments I captured with her simply took my breath away.

I stepped up to a black and white of Fiona on the Newport Pier, looking out over the ocean, the sunlight dipping below the water. She’d been a beautiful participant of that moment, not its pure focus. My attention wandered to others on the Pier, going about their own lives in the background of ours, all in one enshrined, captured image—and noticed something I hadn’t before. In fact, I’d had no context before, so there had been nothing to notice. Now, I knew better.

Standing by one of the vendor tents, leaning against the pier railing, was the sudden and mysterious Matthew. At that moment, he wasn’t looking at Fiona or the camera. He seemed to be innocently gazing at others walking down the pier, but nevertheless, he was there. He’d been there with us, and I had seen him before, yet I hadn’t noticed his presence.

What the hell are you doing in my picture?

I tried to remember when the picture was taken. My images were all organized on my laptop, and the digital file would have the date on it, but I’d first have to narrow down when to search. This wasn’t the previous year; Fiona’s hair was too short in the picture. It must have been two years ago, or maybe even a little more.

What were the chances he’d simply been there on his own accord, having nothing to do with us whatsoever? One picture could certainly be a coincidence; Southern California was a big place with a lot of people, but it was funny how you could randomly run into the same characters in this sea of strangers.

My phone pinged in my pocket. I checked it, and Candace had texted me the picture just as I’d requested. I’d expected a sarcastic comment to accompany it, but there was nothing else at all.

I moved on from the pier picture on the wall and began to scan others, specifically ones of Fiona, examining them carefully. After looking at a few more, I noticed a blurred figure in the background that definitely reminded me of Matthew.

Is that you?

I moved onto more pictures and found another clear shot of the guy I was looking for. As I continued from wall to wall, I found another three, all showing Matthew in the background of the pictures I’d taken. He was blurry whenever the photos had primarily been focused on Fiona, but examining these pictures with a new lens, I knew it was him.

Matthew had been around this whole time and no one seemed to notice—even Fiona herself. She may well have known him, but I was sure she had no idea he was following us. It was like he was obsessed with her… a thought which first brought my blood to a boil, but as I thought about it more, the realization now turned my blood to ice. Obsessed people were dangerous and did crazy things.

What the hell did you do, Matthew?