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She didn’t answer. I figured she’d take a nap, but hour by hour crawled by without a response. At lunch, I stepped outside and called her. It went straight to voicemail. I texted again, but I was starting to get the bad feeling that this silence had nothing to do with a cold or a nap.
At four, I told Maureen I was leaving early.
“You’d better not be sick, too,” she warned.
“I’m not. I’ll be online.” I was too distracted to worry about whether she thought it was suspicious that I was leaving early.
“What about the happy hour?”
I’d already been walking toward the door, but now I pulled up short. I’d forgotten all about the damn happy hour. It wasn’t for anything in particular, just a monthly get together where I got face time with anyone who wanted it, and we patronized our favorite local bar. It wasn’t the most important thing in the world, but I tried to never miss it.
“Shit,” I muttered. I stared down at my phone as if hoping that Layla would have texted in the last thirty seconds, clearing everything up.
“Just go,” Maureen advised. “I’ll be there to field the complaints and buy the first round.” She flicked me only the briefest glance, but I thought I saw curiosity in it. My stomach tightened, but there was no turning back now. Staying wouldn’t alleviate suspicion if it had taken root in her mind.
The tension moved through my body as I drove home. The longer I went without hearing from Layla, the surer I was that her silence was deliberate. When there was no sign of her in my apartment, I went out onto the balcony and bracketed the railing, squeezing until I felt the metal grinding against the bones of my hand. I called her again and got no answer.
If I was smart, I would have done exactly what I’d told Maureen I would. Log on and get my last couple hours of work done for the day. A very stupid thing to do would be to drive over to her apartment and jump start the fight we were about to have.
I stood out on my balcony a little longer and then got back in my car. Fuck the rational thing to do. If she wasn’t going to answer my calls, she was going to have to answer the door. I knew I was risking blowing our cover, but I couldn’t wait any longer.
* * *
A man was jogging up the front steps to the front door of the building when I started up them. When he paused to hold the door for me, glancing over his shoulder as he did so, I nearly tripped.
My heart stopped. How the fuck was I going to explain this?
“Aiden?” he asked, but the voice wasn’t Jack’s.
My vision reset and I saw that it was Bran, not his father, holding the door for me. My heart started again, but slowly. All told, this wasn’t much better. I might not get the shit beat of me today, but I was definitely speeding toward that day.
“Hey, Bran,” I said stiffly. Automatically I’d sped up to grab the door. Now momentum was carrying me through it. “I forget how much you look like your dad sometimes.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“What are you doing here?”
He looked at me, his blue eyes laughing. “I’ve got a thing for Layla’s roommate. What areyoudoing here?”
“Layla went home sick. I’m just checking up on her.”
Our footsteps echoed loudly on the uncarpeted steps. By mutual agreement, we’d both turned toward the stairwell rather than waiting for the dodgy looking elevator. Bran was ahead of me, and I thought I saw a ghost of a smirk on his face as he turned to go up the next flight. But all he said was, “Cool,” in a voice so indifferent I wondered if I’d imagined the smirk.
Thanks to Bran, I didn’t have to knock. The door was propped open on its deadbolt because they were clearly expecting him. He walked in and gestured for me to follow.
I’d never been inside Layla’s apartment. I’d only waited out front while she ran in to grab something. It was… fine. Not the kind of place I thought she should be leaving the door propped open, but it could be worse. It had style, even if I wasn’t impressed by the elevator or the security.
“Layla,” Bran called. “Your boss is here.”
Two voices came at once. An unfamiliar one that said, “I’m on a call!” and then Layla’s voice saying, “That’s not funny, Bran.”
“But you haven’t even heard the punchline yet,” he said, and gestured for me to come closer.
Gritting my teeth, I walked down the short hallway into the living room. There was a loveseat that sat empty and a long couch where Layla and another girl were.
The girl I’d never seen before was sitting at one end, a headset on her head. She glanced up at me, eyes wide, then looked back at her screen. Layla, who had been laying on the last two cushions, bolted upright.
“Aiden!”
