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“Yeah. I won’t get a ticket, but—”
As if on cue, a black sedan with tinted windows rolls up to the curb. The front passenger window rolls down, and Lennox’s granny waves madly at me from the driver’s seat while grinning the kind of grin that says she definitely has something devious planned for us. As usual, she’s dressed all in black. It’s a strange, somber color for a granny to wear, but now I kind of get it. I mean, power suits are pretty cool, and she’s an extra special person with an extra unique skillset.
This woman saved the man that I’m coming to care for. Really, truly beyond care for. A man that I would give up a lot for if I could just stay by his side. A man that I would rearrange my whole life for, even if I essentially have the job of my dreams right now. She took Lennox off the street and gave him a home, a job, an education and a safe environment, a family of brothers who all love him, and the therapy he needed to get past what he went through. I owe her a lot.
I suppose I can get in the dang car and stop being so suspicious.
Even if the whole thing is mega, ultra, over-the-top suspicious.
I take the backseat behind Lennox’s granny, and Ayana straps Maya into her car seat. It’s rear-facing, so it’s easy for me to peek over the side and check on her. She’s such a happy baby. She’s more than content to stick a fist in her mouth and nom on it or go for her shoes to try and do the same.
Lennox’s granny takes off from the curb at the speed of light, and I’m glad I’m strapped into my seat. I grasp the living daylights out of the handle on the side while Maya screams in delight along with the screech of the engine.
Yeah, this granny drives like a bat out of H-E-double-hockey-sticks.
We stay speeding along at a good clip for a good long while, buildings flashing by. I keep watching to see where we’re going since I know practically all the good spots for thrifting or antiquing close by, but we aren’t heading in that direction. The granny doesn’t appear to be following a GPS, so either she memorized the route, or we don’t have a specific route, which means this is fishier than a tuna sandwich left out for hours on a ninety-nine-degree day. And that, my friends, would be disgustingly fishy.
Ayana turns in her seat and angles back around to face me. “Um…” she says while chewing her lip. “Please don’t freak out, but Lennox might be kind of, ummm, MIA at the moment.”
“What? No, I just saw him this morning.” I glance at the window so Ayana can’t see how red my face is getting.
“That’s the thing. His granny tracked his phone to the airport, and then it shut off.”
Wow. Cue the sickening feeling in my stomach. It feels like I just consumed that fishy, overheated sandwich. Major stomach sloshing, major acid reflux, major pain in the chest. “The…the airport?” I gasp. “When?”
“This afternoon.”
“He wouldn’t have just left me. Not after…no, he wouldn’t do that.” He wouldn’t be that cruel. He wouldn’t make me believe there was hope and then just pull a fast one and get out of town. That would be the equivalent of doing an emotional hit-and-run. He would know how much that would hurt me, and he just…he wouldn’t do that.
Unless he thought it was for the best. Unless he thought he was doing the right thing—the thing that would hurt me the least in the end. The thing that would keep me safe.
I refuse to believe that.
Why not? You have terrible luck at the best of times. This is just par for the course, baby.
I ignore that bit of inner nonsense and focus on my best friend’s face. It happens to be swimming all strangely. I swipe at my eyes, and yup, the eye leakage was the problem. Ayana doesn’t literally have six noses and four heads.
“He’s gone off the grid,” Lennox’s granny says without turning around or slowing down. “It was probably coming for a long time. He just disappears.”
“He’s done this before?” I hold my breath.
“You betcha he has.”
I don’t know why I sigh in relief. I should not be relieved. This should not be good news, but if he’s done this before, then maybe it’s not because he wants to leave for good, and maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Or maybe it does, and he’s just gone off to think about how to move forward with me, not without me.
I wouldn’t count on it. Remember, your luck is shit at the best of times. Or have you forgotten about the near-flattened ex-boyfriend already?
