“Kinsley!”
“Haha! Calm down, I’m kidding.” I slipped my feet into my favorite black boots and tied them while holding my phone between my shoulder and my ear. A car horn blared outside. “She’s here. Gotta go. Love you, Mom.”
“Love you too, honey.”
I ended the call, then shoved the phone into my pocket, zipping it up again. My mom always worried about me, no matter how old I was, and especially since the incident.
The horn sounded again, and I opened the front door, set the alarm, and locked up. It was when I got a few feet down the path that I saw it wasn’t Miley’s bug that was at the curb, but a red mini.
“Kinsley!” Phoebe called from her window. “Come on, girl, we don’t have all night!”
I approached her door. “Where’s Miley? She was supposed to pick me up,” I said, pulling out my phone to check my texts. Sure enough, the texts definitely read that Miley was coming to get me, so we didn’t have to take both cars. “She told me this morning.” I turned the phone around so Phoebe could see it, not that it mattered.
She rolled her long-lashed eyes and smiled. “Oh, she said she’d pick up Rachel instead as they live near each other.” Her elbow rested on the sill. “I offered to come to get you.” Her shoulder lifted quickly. “So, here I am. Get in, we’re going to miss the start. It’s already eight-fifty, and it takes at least ten minutes to get there before I even think of parking.”
“Uh, okay,” I replied, unsure about what to make of Phoebe’s strange kindness. I looked back at my car, wondering if I should just go by myself after all, but when I saw Phoebe tapping impatiently on the steering wheel, I got in her mini and buckled my seatbelt. “Is Miley meeting us there?”
She huffed out an irritated breath. “I just said that, didn’t I?” She gunned the gas and sped down the street, taking the corners way too fast. “Her and Rachel will be there when we get there.”
After the scariest ten minutes of my life, we pulled up outside the Astoria, and I wanted to kiss the ground after getting out of Phoebe’s death car.
“I’m going to park out back. Be back in two,” Phoebe said, then sped off again.
“There you are!” Miley said, bounding toward me. She pulled me in for a hug, then held me at arm's length. “Wow, girl, you look great. I love your hair out like that.”
“Thanks.” A blush rose up my neck at her compliment. My hair was long, and I hardly wore it out, but I took care of it. When Phoebe appeared from the corner, I turned to Miley again. “Should we go in?”
She threaded her arm through mine, her deep-red patterned sleeve contrasting with mine, kinda like the erotic lingerie I’d seen in the stores, all black, red, and lacy. “I can’t wait for this movie—I’ve been waiting for weeks to see it,” Miley sighed.
Rachel walked on my other side. “It’s supposed to be hilarious, but with lots of sex,” she said, pumping her brows. “I hope they don’t scrimp on the details—I need a little excitement.”
Phoebe laughed dryly. “What? Josh not doing you right?”
Josh? Quinn’s Josh?
Rachel’s head swiveled over her shoulder. “Hey, I haven’t slept with Josh.”
“Yet,” Miley purred. “But you so want to. I could see it in your eyes when you were flirting on Friday.”
We walked into the movie theater, and the girls lowered their voices while we stood in line for tickets. “Watch this space,” Rachel whispered.
“That’s what Josh’ll be doing,” Phoebe said, causing all three of them to giggle.
Me, not so much. I needed a day, even just a night, where Quinn, or anything relating to him, didn’t interrupt my thoughts.
“This is so boring,” Phoebe complained during one of the many unsexy moments in the movie. “Where’s the dirty sex? Where’s the ground shaking orgasms we were promised in the ads?”
“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. “I was expecting hot, sweaty sex, but this…” she held her hand toward the screen. “This is lame. Even if it were first-time cherry popping, it would still be boring as hell.”
After a few minutes, the main couple declared their love again, rolled around in the bed, and the screen faded to black. Credits appeared on the screen, and I’m pretty sure the entire auditorium let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Girls, I am so sorry,” Miley apologized. “That was my choice, and it sucked.”
“And not in the good way,” Phoebe said, lifting her hand, making a fist while moving it back and forth and poking her tongue in her cheek.
I let out a genuine laugh at that, but with her pursed lips and a tight smile, it seemed Phoebe wasn’t happy with me either way.
“I think we should get out of here while we still have the will to live,” she said, standing up. “Let’s go.”
Once outside, Miley and Rachel got into the bug and left, leaving me standing with Phoebe.
“I’ll just go get the car, okay? Back in two.”
“Don’t you want me to come with you? It’s pretty dark,” I offered, but she just smiled.
“No. You stay put. I’ll be right back.” With an insincere wink, she turned, her hair swishing behind her. Her heels clicked against the pavement until she turned the corner, her pale jeans and white blazer disappearing from sight.
I rubbed my hands together to warm them, the night air cold in the wide-open street. The corner offered no shelter from the wind, the chill growing colder with each passing minute. I checked my watch. Five minutes had gone by, and there was no sign of Phoebe.
Eight minutes.
Ten.
I looked around at the people slowly thinning out, leaving me almost alone on the street corner of Chavene and Smyth, an area I didn’t know. My heart pumped faster, my stomach fluttering inside, but they weren’t butterflies. It was the pulse of adrenaline, the hormone building faster and faster as people disappeared one by one. On quivering legs, I hurried to the parking lot at the rear of the theater and stopped dead.
Phoebe wasn’t there. Nobody was there. Not a single fucking car was there.
She’d left me.
I pulled out my phone and opened my contacts, calling Miley. It went straight to voicemail, her chirpy voice asking to do my thing after the beep.
“Miley, Phoebe’s deserted me,” I said quietly. “She fucking took off and left me here by myself. Please call me as soon as you get this.”
I hung up and dialed the only other person I had in my phone, hoping there was a chance it’d get through. “Please, Mom, be there.” The line was silent, the wait for the ringing tone to start feeling like minutes when it was only a few seconds until it started.
“This is Shelley Jensen, the lead prosecutor at D. S. Mahoney. I’m not available to take your call, so please leave your name, number, a short message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
I hung up before the beep and tried her cell, but I couldn’t get through. The office was in a bad signal area, and our phones were useless in there.
I have to call a cab.
I looked up from my phone to see that I was completely alone, only the lights of the movie theater and the street lamps my company. “Shit.” I had to keep my focus on my surroundings, find my way to somewhere where there were people, and then search the internet for a local cab number.