Page 23 of Blocked Score

But for her, maybe it’s been the opposite.

Maybe she’s reconsidered our agreement to stay together even when we’re back east, feeling that this whole thing between us has run its course.

That thought has pain rocketing through me, and my heart clenching like it’s being squeezed in a cold vise.

A couple weeks was enough time for me to fall in love. Enough time for me to want so much more with her than what this summer in Chicago affords …

But maybe it was just enough time for her to have her fill.

We’ve known each other for just a couple weeks. She told me she doesn’t want to go through the trouble of trying to date while living in different states back home. What right do I have to barge over to her house like a caveman and throw a tantrum about it?

Instead, I head home, heart feeling like it’s smashed to pieces in my chest and held together with flimsy tape.

At least I know my roommates are throwing a party tonight. Not that I’m in any fucking mood to celebrate. But I am in the mood to drink my heartbreak away.

12

SCARLETT

Where is he?

I’ve been waiting for an hour at the café in Hyde Park where Lane and I agreed to meet. I’m jittery with impatience, and it’s only made worse by the fact that I don’t have my phone.

I left it in my room at Demi’s place when we went out for lunch this afternoon. When I came back, I couldn’t find it. I tossed my room upside down, and then the whole house.

Demi didn’t notice any of her stuff missing, and neither did her roommate Cassie when she got home shortly after. I just can’t believe that someone broke into their place and only wanted to take my phone. It doesn’t make sense.

But I can’t think of any other explanation. I’d swear that I left it right on the desk next to my laptop last time I was using it, and I know I didn’t have it with me at lunch.

How could the thing just have …vanished?

I heave a frustrated sigh as I look at the clock in the café and see that it’s over an hour and fifteen minutes since Lane and I agreed to me.

If he texted me about something coming up and him being unable to make it, obviously I didn’t get it.

I couldn’t even text him using Demi’s phone, because of course I just saved his number in my contacts and never actually memorized it.

I decide to throw in the towel on waiting for him long after I should have already realized it’s futile. Something must have happened, or …

An unpleasant shiver travels down my body. I decline to finish that sentence in my head.

I’m sure there’s a good reason he didn’t make it. I’m sure he texted me and I just didn’t get to see it because my phone apparently decided to hop into a different dimension.

First, I double back to my place to check with Demi if Lane happened to drop by while I was out. Maybe if he needed to get in touch with me to change plans and I wasn’t responding to his texts, he’d have tried to stop by to tell me in person.

But Demi says he hasn’t been here.

I walk to his house, hurrying my steps through the dense, humid evening air.

Music is playing from a porch somewhere, which isn’t unusual for a summer evening in this neighborhood. As I get closer to it, I realize the music is coming from the house where Lane is staying.

A crowd of people spills from the open front door and mingles on the porch.

The porch where Lane’s seated on a chair.

With an open beer in his hand.

And another girl on his lap.

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