Borrowed Time

Chapter Sixty Six

Juliette never thought that she could be nostalgic for the beginning of the year, when she'd been living in a depressing amount of blissful ignorance, but she did. Every half empty moment in her mind had been filled with thoughts of Ingrid and how she was treating everyone... and the holes in her story, the emptiness of her threats. Why give up her blackmail material in such a public way? Why had she been so cocky about it?

Did she even really have anything on Shelby? Juliette knew that she had Esme's photos, that'd been confirmed by outside sources, but she wasn't sure about Shelby.

"Hey." She glanced up at Shelby with a raised eyebrow. Had her thinking face been that clear? "What's going on? You're like, a million miles away... Admittedly, that's pretty normal for you, but you're clearly in your head about something. What's going on?" Juliette sighed, and shook her head... How did she approach this without sounding like she was batshit crazy? It'd been in her head for a week and a half, she should probably talk about it with someone, and Shelby was the primary source.

"I've been thinking recently... Didn't you only have a flip phone until your sixteenth birthday?" She asked, and Shelby thought for a moment before nodding. Yeah, okay, that was what she'd thought... Ingrid's story didn't really check out.

"Yeah, my mom was sure that I was going to send nudes if I had an iphone so she wouldn't let me have any sort of smartphone until I proved that I understood internet safety. Why?" Yeah, in that case there was no way that Ingrid's timeline made sense unless she was taking the photos herself, which Juliette didn't see happening... Well, maybe it did, but it wasn't all that likely in the grand scheme of things.

"So... How would Ingrid have photos of you?" She asked, and Shelby shrugged, like she hadn't really thought about it... Like it hadn't been plaguing her mind as much as it'd been plaguing Juliette's. That probably wasn't the case, but god, did Juliette ever envy her if that was the case.

"I don't know... I mean, I don't remember sending her any but it's possible she took them while we were together, maybe... That whole time is kind of a blur, anything's possible." Part of that made Juliette's heart sink... She hadn't realized that Shelby's time had been a blur during that time, she wanted to ask if it was a good blur or a bad blur, if it was something she missed or if it was just high school... But she didn't. It wasn't relevant. "Didn't you say that she showed them to you?" Juliette shrugged. Yeah, she'd tried, but Juliette hadn't let herself look, she didn't want to see them, she didn't want Shelby's privacy to be ruined in that way, it wouldn't have been fair to her.

"Well, she tried but I closed my eyes before I could actually see anything because I didn't want to see them, that's private and you were a child." That was arguably the most important part. Shelby had been a child in those photos if the photos were on there to begin with... That was fucked up if Ingrid wasn't doing this for intimidation... Arguably, even if Juliette had seen anything, it was the glare of a screen, not anything definitive.

Shelby cleared her throat, looking down at her with a raised eyebrow as she continued to brush her fingers through Juliette's hair softly.

"What are you implying?" She asked, and Juliette sighed and folded her hands across her stomach as she thought of what to say... What was she implying? Ingrid was clearly still jaded about Shelby, even though it had been years ago, she just didn't get over things... Maybe she didn't really have anything, maybe she just wanted to still have Shelby under her thumb... After all, if she had something on her, why was she waiting until now to start using it as a threat? She had had no issue threatening people right away before, why wait with Shelby?