Page 85 of Bachelor

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Whitney

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IWOKE UP FRIDAY MORNINGafter a dead, dreamless sleep. The kind where I fell asleep and felt like I only just shut my eyes before over ten hours passed. I looked at the clock on my bedside table. I’d slept in for the first time in weeks, maybe months. It was nearly ten in the morning, and all throughout the cozy, dated graduate dorm building that housed my studio apartment, I could hear the sounds of other students slowly waking and gathering their things for whatever trips they had planned.

I blinked into pure, warm sunshine radiating through the windows that heated the sheets. I stretched out, curling my fingers around the headboard, and then reached for my phone and pulled it off the charger.

No calls or text messages from anyone.

I pulled up Rhys’s number to call him again but hesitated. This was unlike him. He would have told me if he had second thoughts about this. He wouldn’t have just left.

But he hadn’t told me he was taking any leave, even if just for the day before Spring Break began.

Questions clouded my mind. I set my phone down, removed my pajamas, and tossed them in the laundry hamper, to be ignored until I returned from New York City. I took a shower and took my time blow-drying my hair. I packed up my toiletries and started packing a suitcase when a knock sounded on my door.

My heart wanted it to be Rhys. But I knew it was Jessica with one glance at the clock. We’d decided to leave campus for the city at around two in the afternoon. There were a few hours still to pack and get ready, but she’d wanted to make a road trip out of it, stopping at a few places along the way. She also wanted to get lunch at the bakery downtown, and she was right on time to come and get me.

I unlocked the door and threw it open.

“Did you just wake up?” she teased as she came inside. She handed me a latte and perched on the end of my bed as I closed the door behind her.

“About an hour ago. This is just what I’m going to look like today.” I sighed, motioning to the rollers stacked throughout my thick hair. “I didn’t mean to sleep in.”

“Well, I did too. After this past week, all I’ve wanted was to lie down and sleep forever.” She sipped from her drink as I continued to pack. “Heard from Rhys yet?”

“No,” I breathed, the word tinged with annoyance.

Jessica sighed heavily and watched me pack. “Well, he’s supposed to come with us, so whatever he’s up to better be some world-saving adventure. Otherwise I’m going to kill him.”

I gave her a look as I zipped up my suitcase. “I’m really upset about it.”

“I know,” she replied.

Last night, I’d told her everything. I recounted my conversation with the Chancellor and how Rhys was just straight up missing. We’d even gone to the bookshop together and asked Bill about it, but if he knew anything, he wasn’t saying anything, either. Now Jessica was mad at Bill because she was sure he knew something about Rhys’s sudden disappearance.

So, we’d gone back to campus and pouted in our own apartments until we fell asleep.

“Well, this trip is already off to a rocky start,” Jessica mused as we walked across campus with our lattes. We’d left our luggage in the apartment building. “Bill’s supposed to pick us up later this afternoon, and he’d better.”

“He will. He loves you.”

“I know he does.” She sighed. “But I don’t like this whole keeping secrets from each other thing both Bill and Rhys have going on right now.”

“I think Rhys left, Jessica,” I admitted as we stepped off the bike trail and started walking to the bakery. We passed the bookshop, the curtains drawn and a sign on the door saying Bill’s shop would be closed for the next eight days.

“I don’t think so, Whit. He has another quarter left of the semester. He can’t just back out of his tenure midsemester.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell me he was leaving? I just don’t get it. Especially now that he’s ignoring my calls. His phone is off, Jessica. Like, dead. What if he’s in trouble?”

“You’re thinking far too deeply into this.” She snorted, finishing off her coffee and throwing the cup into a recycling bin we passed. “I mean, where could he have possibly gone on such short notice? Bill is involved somehow, I’m sure. Maybe he’s planning a surprise for you.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

Jessica rolled her eyes and held open the door to the bakery so I could pass through.

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