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It was messed up. That’s all I kept coming back to.
Bren had reached out to Tabatha. She went to her house the next day after work, but Tab wasn’t there. The sorority girls were adamant that Tabatha had taken off for the weekend. Bren was fine with that, opting instead to send a few texts. She called her, too. No response from Tabatha.
Monday happened. Nothing.
Tuesday. Same.
Bren tried getting in touch with her again last night, and I only knew about it because I walked in as she was leaving a message. Her eyes found mine over the table, and I was reading the sorrow there. She was asking herself the same question that Jordan had asked himself over and over again…had she done enough?
“If Tab wanted to talk, she would contact you. You guys are in the same position as she was when she decided to do something to help her dad. Wrong decision made, but it had been hers. She owned it.”
“And now?” Jordan asked me. The guy had been a walking corpse all week. He was staring into the void like he was half-dead. “Now that we know? I took her phone back to her the next day. Handed it over to one of her sorority sisters. I don’t even know if she got it.”
Bren frowned at him. “I went to the house, too. They turned me away.”
He looked at her, staring. He didn’t respond.
Zellman rolled his eyes. “Fuck this.” He shoved his chair back, grabbing his own phone out of his pocket. A number was dialed, and he put it on speaker as a female’s voice came over the other end.
“Zellman?”
We all paused.
Then Zellman said, “Sunday, where’s Tabatha?”
“What?”
It was Sunday. Zellman’s ex on-again, off-again, and one of those times when they were off-again, she hooked up with Bren’s ex and was now pregnant with his kid. That ex. Tabatha was high school friends with both Tasmin and Sunday, and that had me wondering if my own sister had heard from Tabatha?
Sunday chose to remain in Roussou to have her kid, while my sister and her boyfriend went to Grant West, a college four hours away.
Zellman was standing like a statue, listening to his ex, but at her ‘what?’ he snapped into action. He whisked his phone in the air, almost punching it with words, “You know where she is! Where is she? Is she there? Is she hiding?”
“What? What are you talking about?” But her voice was straining. She was obviously nervous.
“You’re lying to me. I can tell because you’re being nice. Normal Sunday would be pissed that I’m calling. You would’ve already bitched about two things by now, and you haven’t bitched about anything. Where is she?!” Zellman was yelling into the phone.
There was silence. Then a ruffling sound. Footsteps. A door opened.
A second later, a quieter and much more subdued voice spoke, “Is Jordan there?”
A pin could’ve dropped.
I didn’t think anyone expected Tabatha to come on the line.
Another beat passed.
“Jordan?”
Suddenly, he shoved back his chair. Two long strides around the table, he plucked the phone out of Zellman’s hand and he shoved his way outside. All three of us shared one look, then our chairs were pushed out of the way. We went to the window, and we weren’t trying to look pressed against it, eyes bugging out, but we were. We couldn’t help it.
Jordan didn’t spare us a look.
His hand was in his hair, like he wanted to rip it out and he was barking into the phone. He was pacing.
He was pissed. Tense.
Then he stopped.
He dropped to one of the chairs. The phone was on the table and his forehead was by it. He remained like that the rest of the convo. His legs were bouncing, restless, and he had his hands in fists, bouncing right alongside his legs.
“She was there the whole time.” Zellman was glaring out the window. “I should’ve known. I should’ve just known. I mean, I couldn’t have known, but I should’ve. She and Sunday got close at the end. They were both our girls. I mean, besides Bren and Tasmin, but it’s different with both of them. Those two got close.” He drew in a breath, his voice bleak. “We should’ve known.”
Yeah.
We should’ve.
But we didn’t.
Bren sighed. “We know now.”
It was midnight when Jordan came back inside. He’d been out there for hours, only taking a break to come in, piss, grab a new beer, get a phone charger, and head back out. The phone was always in his hand. He left it on the table when he went to the bathroom, but swooped it back up as soon as he went to the backyard.
He looked like shit when he was out there, even before he was out there. Now he looked like a wrecking ball came at him and targeted him for a direct hit. He tossed the phone to Zellman. “You need to charge it.”
