I cursed myself again for letting last night get into my head. We were only here for another day and a half. While I’d tried to let go this morning and just have fun, I had been extremely self-conscious the entire time and it was affecting me.
Not anymore. Harrison and I were finally on good terms after all this time, and I wasn’t about to let last night get in the way of that. I was being stupid for allowing his rejection—if you could even call it that—to burrow into my insecurities. Maybe I’d always had a little crush on Harrison, but that hadn’t been based on anything other than the physical. Now, I knew him a lot better. He’d become a friend. I couldn’t ruin that for some fantasy.
Deep in my bones, though, I knew my crush was only getting stronger the more I got to know him.
I sighed and shook my head, attempting to shake the thought out of my mind. As soon as we both got back into town, I was turning over a new leaf. I’d smile at Harrison like I meant it, tell him last night was nothing to worry about, and enjoy the rest of our time here. Then, when we went home, hopefully a fragment of our friendship would remain. It would be beyond strange to go back to the way things were, after all this.
The girls and I got out of the taxi once we arrived on the outskirts of town, right where a main street ended and the narrow pedestrian streets began. We stretched and yawned, the hours spent in the sun making us all a little groggy.
“I need an espresso, stat,” Bailey said.
“Same,” I agreed.
“Once the guys get here, I’m thinking we just drop them off at whatever bar they want to go to and do our own thing,” Bailey continued. “I’m dying to check out all the shops.”
We waited on the curb for them.
And waited.
And waited.
Kate pulled out her phone to check the time again. “Could they really be twenty minutes behind us? I saw their taxi pull up right after ours.”
A knot twisted in my chest. I reached for my phone, but panicked when my fingers only brushed the thin cloth of my bag.
“Shit,” I exclaimed. My heart was full-on racing now.
“What?” Page asked.
“My phone. I forgot it back at the hotel.”
Bailey patted my shoulder reassuringly. “I’m sure it’s fine. They probably just got sidetracked by another beach party, or something.”
“Harrison would not let that happen,” I insisted. Worry churned in my gut.
“Maybe their taxi got lost,” Kate suggested.
“Maybe,” I said, not convinced.
“You can use my phone to call Harrison,” Page offered.
I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t know his number.” Hell, I didn’t even know Charlie’s number by heart. Not having access to my phone made me realize how absurd that was. I needed to memorize a few phone numbers in the future. “Do one of you have any of the other guys’ numbers?” I asked hopefully.
They all looked at me with sympathetic eyes and shook their heads.
Shit.
“I’m sure they’ll be here any minute.” Page leaned into the road, looking for signs of the car.
After twenty more minutes, though, the girls started to get restless. They didn’t have the same anxiety I did that something was wrong. But, at the same time, it hadn’t been nearly long enough to go into complete panic mode.
“Come on, Lila. Come to the shops with us. We’ll still be nearby. They’ll find us once they eventually show up,” Bailey said.
“Yeah, and we can come back to this spot in an hour or two just to see if they’re here.”
I gave them a tight-lipped smile, trying to control the thoughts racing through my brain. Could they have gotten into a car accident? Been abducted? The idea that someone would abduct four fully grown men seemed unlikely, but I really couldn’t think of another reason why they weren’t right behind us. Harrison wouldn’t have abandoned us willingly, that was for sure.
“Maybe their car broke down.” Paige snapped her fingers, as if that were a genius revelation.
