Page 12

12

SCARLETT

W here is he?

I’ve been waiting for an hour at the café in Hyde Park where Lane and I agreed to meet. I’m jittery with impatience, and it’s only made worse by the fact that I don’t have my phone.

I left it in my room at Demi’s place when we went out for lunch this afternoon. When I came back, I couldn’t find it. I tossed my room upside down, and then the whole house.

Demi didn’t notice any of her stuff missing, and neither did her roommate Cassie when she got home shortly after. I just can’t believe that someone broke into their place and only wanted to take my phone. It doesn’t make sense.

But I can’t think of any other explanation. I’d swear that I left it right on the desk next to my laptop last time I was using it, and I know I didn’t have it with me at lunch.

How could the thing just have … vanished ?

I heave a frustrated sigh as I look at the clock in the café and see that it’s over an hour and fifteen minutes since Lane and I agreed to me.

If he texted me about something coming up and him being unable to make it, obviously I didn’t get it.

I couldn’t even text him using Demi’s phone, because of course I just saved his number in my contacts and never actually memorized it.

I decide to throw in the towel on waiting for him long after I should have already realized it’s futile. Something must have happened, or …

An unpleasant shiver travels down my body. I decline to finish that sentence in my head.

I’m sure there’s a good reason he didn’t make it. I’m sure he texted me and I just didn’t get to see it because my phone apparently decided to hop into a different dimension.

First, I double back to my place to check with Demi if Lane happened to drop by while I was out. Maybe if he needed to get in touch with me to change plans and I wasn’t responding to his texts, he’d have tried to stop by to tell me in person.

But Demi says he hasn’t been here.

I walk to his house, hurrying my steps through the dense, humid evening air.

Music is playing from a porch somewhere, which isn’t unusual for a summer evening in this neighborhood. As I get closer to it, I realize the music is coming from the house where Lane is staying.

A crowd of people spills from the open front door and mingles on the porch.

The porch where Lane’s seated on a chair.

With an open beer in his hand.

And another girl on his lap.

I stop in my tracks. An ice-cold chill ripples from the soles of my feet up to the top of my head. My limbs feel frozen and rigid. A numbness sits heavy in my chest. I can’t seem to think or feel anything.

As the stun fades, the first sensation I register is outrage burning through my bloodstream.

Lane leaves me to wait for him for ages where we agreed to meet just yesterday, and all the while he’s got another girl in his lap, rubbing her ass against him?

The outrage quickly sharpens into anger.

If Lane was interested in still screwing around with other women, why the hell did he string me along for the whole damn summer? Why the hell did he lay that spiel about wanting to have an actual long-distance relationship on me?

Why the hell did he trick me into believing he cared more than he did?

More importantly, why did I let myself believe him? Why did I let myself think a summer fling born out of two coincidental meetings and physical attraction was anything but that?

Why did I let myself believe that I’d actually fallen in?—

No. I won’t even let myself think the word.

Beneath the anger, an undercurrent of heartbreak stirs, threatening to burst through to the surface.

I tense my muscles, feeling the temptation to give into the outrage, so that at least I can put off acknowledging the more painful feelings deeper in my chest. I think about stomping over to Lane and telling him off.

But what’s the point?

It would only be a pathetic display. A sad confirmation that I’d allowed Lane to mean so much more to me than I ever meant to him.

Instead, I turn around and go home.

The next day, I leave Chicago, back to my real life.