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My phone rings and yanks me out of my futile ruminations. My first instinct is to ignore it, merely side-eying the thing as it lights up on the side table next to me. But when I see the name of my friend Chase pop up on the screen I decide that a little distraction can do no harm. I haven’t spoken to anyone other than Christopher during the past few days and am about to lose my mind.
“Hey.” Even my voice has lost its vigor. I clear my throat and sit up straighter, fighting to compose myself.
“What’s up Mr. Vanguard Overlord,” Chase bellows at the other end of the line. “You in or what? Please tell me you finally convinced those lame squares.”
“Not quite,” I growl, already regretting my choice to answer his call.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not in yet,” I tell him. “And from the looks of it, I never will be. Fuck it. Who cares.”
“You care!”he argues. “Are you kidding me? For months you’ve been talking about how this is your big chance, your only chance to clear your soiled name or whatever, and become a legit businessman. You know, like me.”
I can imagine the grin on his face without actually seeing him in front of me. Chase has this peerless crooked snicker, a display of the rogue he truly is.
“What’s going on man?”he probes. “Since when are you so whatever about this? What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” I lie. “I tried. It didn’t work. I’ll be okay without them. Fuck it.”
“You tried what?” he wants to know.
I growl and shake my head, unwilling to go into detail about any of it.
“Tell me,” Chase insists when I take too long to come up with anything to say. “You know I won’t leave you alone until you tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“No, you can’t,” I maintain. “This is on me. I tried something stupid, and that plan blew up in my face. Can’t we just leave it at that?”
“No we can’t!” Chase maintains, and after a pause that’s heavy with meaning he adds: “Wait, is this what I think it is?”
I curl my eyebrows in response, my eyes turning into narrow slits as I fixate the dark horizon in the distance.
“I don’t know what you’re conjecturing—”
“Girl trouble,” he throws in. “Dude, it’s so obvious.”
“It is not!” I argue, realizing too late that I’m only reinforcing his assumption.
“Yes, it is. You, suddenly doing an 180 on something and then refusing to talk about the reasons behind it, come on! I’ve seen you like this before, when you were all over that girl who was writing for our college newspaper and you were interested in journalism all of a sudden, and you tried to get on the team as well,” he goes on. “And then when you guys broke up, that whole endeavor fell apart and you claimed that being a reporter was never of any interest to you. Remember?”
“Can’t say that I do,” I growl, even though I know exactly what he’s talking about. I hate that I’m this transparent to him, but I shouldn’t be surprised.
“So, tell me,” he probes. “What happened?”
I deflate in defeat and take another sip of mybourbon before I concede to his relentless probing.
“I tried something and it backfired,” I begin. “In fact, you’ll be happy to hear that I took your advice and—”
“Wait, you actually paid a girl to marry you?!”he bursts out before I can finish my sentence. “I knew it! You are such a fucking cheater! So much for ‘that new pact was just a drunken joke’! You are such a fucking hypocrite, just like Gabe.”
I frown at his ridiculous comparison. He couldn’t be further from the truth. I hadn’t even thoughtabout that dumb pact for one second. And to compare me to Gabe, a guy who I just scolded for getting his head screwed by the same girl for the second time.
“Gabe started fooling around with his toxic ex!” I argue. “How can you even compare this to…”
I pause, biting my tongue as I remember my conversation with Gabe from a couple of weeks ago. I warned himnotto get back with his witch of an ex, but of course he wouldn’t listen—and now he finds himself in yet another episode of unnecessary heartache. I’m pretty convinced that girl is playing him like a puppetmaster—and he’s hanging from her strings like a defenseless victim.
Just like I let my mood be dictated by Kat’s disappearance.
“Compare what?” Chase implores. “Dude, please don’t tell me you didn’t actually get a mail-order bride?”
