A rare show of decency

It's not often that you can tell how another person is feeling with two cell phone screens and a couple of miles dividing you. My phone remained idle. Sitting in my palm, it was so still it actually made my hand feel numb. I started drawing up plans for my follow up pleas. Whoever said you should never triple text has never been in a mess like this. Eden watched over my shoulder as I composed and deleted two completely different texts. There wasn’t time for a third. After five full minutes, my phone vibrated again, startling me so hard that I dropped it. Luke was faster than me.

I held my breath. Was he actually considering believing me?

I was ready to pull my hair out. Making an aggravated sound, Eden reached over my shoulder and took the phone from me. She used her long legs, the envy of every girl and the desire of every boy, to climb over the back of the couch and sit beside me. "Don't worry, I'm not going to say anything crazy," she said.

"Shit!" I gasped, slamming my palms against my head.

"Oh my God, are you okay?" Eden said. Too late to stop the whoosh of her message to Luke from going out. She put down the phone and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "Babe, I think you might need to go to a hospital. Or a doctor. Do you have a doctor?"

Yes, but he was infamously hard to get a hold of. And handsy. And judgy. I only went to him when I was on death's door or needed a prescription refilled. Sometimes not even then. "I'm fine. What did you say?" I asked. Finding out what was causing those spikes could wait. We were on the verge of learning something important from Luke.

Eden looked at me for a second longer. Then, seemingly deciding my skull wasn't going to break open just then, she handed me back the device.

It was a polite reframing of what I'd told her. Luke might've bumped into Rania over the course of the night, as well as the mystery man in the bathroom--it occurred to me that I didn't actually know it was a man; maybe we were having a real Artemisian evening, nice, good work girls, if only I didn't need to nearly die to do it--but he didn't need to know every detail. Unless he already did. In which case it doesn't really matter, I thought, squirreling that possibility away.

My first glimpse inside my missing time. No, I didn't remember it. I also didn't know who Alonso was. Was Alonso an Italian name? I was pretty sure the men Luke were meeting with were Italians, or Mediterranean of some kind if not. It was also possible he was just somebody we'd ran into at the bar. The strange thing was the person he didn't mention: Rania. Had she not joined up with us by then?

Suddenly I felt like a total dolt. I tapped out of my conversation with Luke and scrolled through my texts from last night. Nothing notable. My heart sank again. Holding out hope, I tapped out again to home and saw the pale green box of the Call icon. There were no notifications. Still...