AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She timidly set the phone on the coffee table where my socked feet were propped and said, “Thanks.” She turned to go back to the bedroom.
“Any word?” I asked.
She turned back toward me and shook her head, worry etched into her features.
“You want, you can throw a movie on.”
“I’m good.” She turned and headed toward the hall.
“You didn’t eat last night,” I added.
“Wasn’t hungry.”
“You can grab food whenever you’re hungry. You’ve got the run of the place, you know.”
“Thanks. Did a delayed fast for my stomach.” She was almost to her door. And she was cold. Ice cold. Not even looking over her shoulder.
“Gigi.”
She turned back and looked at me. She still wore that betrayed, pissed off mask on her face.
Yesterday, while she was blindfolded, while I quizzed her to keep her mind off the blindfolding, she told me her middle name was Grace. I told her mine was James. She laughed about the coincidence, the fact we weren’t just GJ and JG. We were G-G-J and J-J-G. And I called her Gigi twice after that before we got here.
I thought back to the morning we met when her smile died after her joking about it being cute about our initials if it were our love story. I also thought about the words on the inside of that journal. Words that more than indicated she didn’t intend to be a biker bunny, though obviously, it’s where she found herself. I thought about that poem or lyrics if that’s what it was meant to be, and how much pain was scrawled on that page. I fuckin’ hated that last line she wrote with a passion I shouldn’t feel for someone I barely knew. Then again, couldn’t help but think about the intensity that crackled between us when our eyes were locked in that bed in Arch’s house.
“Any updates on her social media?”
A shake of her head.
“Can you think of anyone else who might know where she is? Who you can call without tripping any bullshit?”
She shook her head again.
I shot her a look of sympathy.
She turned and went back to her room before I could say another word.
And her essentially shitting on my olive branch really pissed me off.
***
I didn’t see her again until later that night. She came back out while I was watching a movie and made a turkey sandwich on her gluten-free bread. I thought she might sit down in the kitchen or join me for a movie that I put on just as she was making her sandwich. She didn’t. She took the food and two more bottles of water and went back to the room without looking my way.
When I went to bed, I could hear her softly playing guitar in there, humming along with it to a pretty melody I didn’t know. I leaned against the wall and listened for a couple minutes, thinking it might be a song she wrote. And if it was, it was pretty. And then I went to bed.
***
Wednesday morning, I woke to noise in the kitchen along with the smell of coffee and something cooking.
“Hey,” I greeted, coming in wearing jeans and carrying a shirt.
She gave a little wave from the stove where she was stirring something in a pot and if I wasn’t mistaken, she checked me out before she resumed stirring.
I shrugged the button-down flannel on, then poured myself a coffee and watched her drop three spoons of peanut butter and two spoons of jam into the pot of oatmeal.
“You want some?” she asked without looking at me.
“Nah. Looks disgusting.” I rolled my sleeves to the elbows.
I was teasing, but my tone probably didn’t come across as joking.
She shrugged before dumping the rest of what was in the pot into her bowl, tossed on more jam, muttering, “No brown sugar here”, then she filled the pot with soap and water before she was on the move with her bowl in hand.
“You wanna check your phone?” I asked.
She stopped and turned to look at me with hope in her eyes. “Yeah,” she whispered.
I gestured to the living room where it sat on the coffee table. “I made the password capitals G-G-J-4-3-2-1 to get on my hotspot.”
“Thanks,” she stared at her feet as she moved along.
Her hair was wet, loose, and grazed where those back dimples would be if her high-waisted tights weren’t hiding them. I caught the whiff of her orange shampoo and perfume, lotion, or body wash that smelled like candy. She had on a tight red crop top, no bra on and I didn’t bother to avert my eyes from her tits before my eyes moved down to her bare feet. Red-painted toenails. Fingernails too. Different from yesterday when her fingers were painted black, and her toes had no polish on them. She’d obviously done those nails in the last day or so hiding out in that room. I found myself wondering how many songs or poems she’d written while in there. What else she did in there since there wasn’t anything to do in that room with no television or phone to eyeball.
