Wordle by Wordle: Day 71
Monday, March 11, 2024
Wordle #996 - PESKY
After a minute goes by, I feel calm enough to face Austin’s Instagram once more. Two tagged photos could be an accident, a case of fat-fingered misclicks. But any more than that I would consider proof of… something.
Maybe Austin is a weirdo who’s obsessed with Bree, roleplaying imagined dates with her, trying to manifest a real relationship through staged photos. Maybe Bree was yelling at him outside of Cover to Cover because she was telling off a creepy stalker. Or maybe they’re just fucking. Occam’s razor and all that.
Another ten minutes of digging unearths just as many photos tagged with Bree’s name. All over-filtered tableaux, usually of a meal or a landscape, like Austin fancies himself some kind of Millennial Cézanne.
Well, that’s enough for me to work with. Next step: where to find Austin so we can have a friendly chat.
Aside from sweaty selfies with his shirt off, most of his posts are of him teaching at his yoga studio—Early Morning Yoga. How original.
I’m sure I can find him there, but I track down his phone number and home address too, just in case.
“Can I get you anything else?” A voice barks in my ear, making me jump. I knock over the empty coffee cup as I scramble to see who’s speaking to me.
It’s the barista with the blue hair and grunge t-shirt. She scowls at me like I’m a pesky mosquito that needs swatting. Or like I’m a squatter who has purchased only one cheap drink yet taken up an entire table for the last two-plus hours.
“Uh, no thank you,” I say quickly and snap my laptop shut. “I was just leaving.”
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