The return
After my unexpected meeting with Kyle, I gathered the courage to return home, lock the doors and turned on my phone. It had not been a minute when it started ringing.
Hailey.
My finger hovered on the phone before I answered.
“I’m so sorry, Hailey.” I began before she could say anything.
“How dare you not face me after everything you did? I swear if you don’t come here right now and explain yourself, I’m going to call the police. I don’t care if you’re my sister. You nearly got my daughter killed.”
Not the police. If I involved the police, it would be me going to jail, and not Jake and his mother who truly deserved to be there.
“Please Hailey, do not call the police. I will do whatever you want me to do, just don’t do it.”
“Well come here right now and tell me why the hell you had my little girl kidnapped and pretended to care about me. I don’t understand how and when you became such a psycho.”
Grabbing my purse, I headed to the door and opened it. My eyes went wide when my sister barged in and started hitting me. She grabbed my hair, trying to pull it out, sending pain throughout my entire head. I didn’t try to fight her back but tried to push her away from me but she was not budging.
Her boyfriend was leaning against the wall, his hands crossed on his chest, watching as fight. Hailey punched me near the eye, and I screamed. She started screaming obscenities at me, blaming me for everything. She kept hitting me so much that I had no choice but to hit her back. Then we found ourselves on the floor, trying to rip each other’s hair out.
“Stop.”
The voice made us freeze. I looked up to see my landlord staring down at us.
“If you want to kill each other, I don’t care.” He said. “Just go and do it elsewhere.”
I noticed that a number of neighbours had come to see what was going on. I disentangle myself from Hailey’s arms and stood up slowly. “I’m sorry, sir. This won’t happen again.”
“I hope so,” he said before turning and walking off.
“Show’s over,” Hailey’s boyfriend said, and shoed everyone away before closing the door. “Can you two please stop trying to kill each other and talk? There’s no point in fighting right now. Lilly, we need you to tell us everything. That was quite a scare and you shouldn’t have walked away without explanation. Do you have any idea how Amy felt when you just disappeared? Have you even considered what she might think about you?”
Hailey stood up and went to sit in the couch next to him. I pulled out a chair from my dinning sat and turned to them.
“Okay. I’ll tell you everything.”
The couple leaned forward and listened as I told them everything about the kidnapping. I didn’t tell them about most of the events that had occurred before that day because I wasn’t sure whether to trust my sister. It was easier to trust the man because he seemed put together but my sister was way too volatile. Who knew if she wasn’t already planning revenge against me in her mind?
Hailey did not interrupt like I had expected. She waited until I was done before speaking. “Is that really true?”
“Yes, I didn’t really mean for Amy to be harmed. That’s why I have deleted the blog and I’m not going to write about Jake ever again. I just want to get my old life together.”
“What’s with you and this man anyway?” Hailey asked.
“I just wanted to write a breaking story, and it got out of hand. I loved the reaction I was getting so continued to milk the situation. I never thought he would go that far.”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.
“Let’s go,” Hailey told her man. I wasn’t sure if she believed me or not, whether she would forgive me but decided not to prod. At least she was not going to kill me.
After that, I called Leah. I needed someone I could unburden my heart to, someone I could honestly share everything with. It had been a long time since we talked but now I needed her more than ever.
Leah was thrilled to hear from me. Apparently she had been just about to call and invite me for the friends dinner she was hosting.
Leah was obsessed about cooking and having people over at her house. She said it was probably because she had grown up in a big family. Things were hard for her when she moved out and came to live in New York alone. She needed people around her so she always had friends over. She didn’t care about all the work it included. I, on the other hand, couldn’t imagine having to host so many people for free occasionally.
Even before I entered the house, I could smell the delicious food. My stomach growled in response and I made my way into the house. Since I was her best friend, I never had to ring the bell.
Most of our friends were already there. “Where’s Cali?” I asked.
“She’s running late. Some cousin of hers visited her but they’ll be here soon.”
“Okay,” I said before disappearing into the kitchen where Leah was heating up some milk.
“Hey,” I said and went to hug her.
“Be careful,” she said, “We might end up falling in the fire.”
I offered to help, and we got to work while I narrated everything to her. Leah said she thought everything was like a movie and even said she was jealous of my life.
“I’m jealous of your life,” I told her.
She opened the oven and removed some meat pies from it. She placed the tray on the table.
“All I want now is a bit of normalcy. I’m going to stay so far away from Jake that he will wonder if I’m dead.”
While everything else seemed sorted, I was a bit scared of what my sister would do. Hailey had not forgiven me, I knew that. Her reaction after hearing everything had not been drastic. It could either mean she understood everything or she was planning revenge. Now I was not going to have a minute without anxiety over what she could possibly do to me.
After sometime, Leah and I were joined by Cali and Jenna. Cali hugged me. “Hey, it’s been a while. What have you been up to?”
I sighed. “You wouldn’t believe.”
“Is your cousin with you?” Leah asked.
“He is, and he’s quite hot.” Jenny said.
Cali rolled her eyes. “Nuh, he’s just normal.”
“Come on. I like him although he doesn’t seem to talk much.”
“Oh he just has a lot in his head right now.”
After a while, we all went to the living room with tea and pastries. I froze when I saw Kyle Munther siting on the couch next to Mary.
“Kyle?”
“You know him?”
“Lilly?”
“You have a bit of explaining to do?” Leah said after placing the pastries on the table. “Is this the Kyle you were talking about?”
I blushed, hoping she would not continue to tell everyone that I had a little crush on him.
“Kyle and I met at the beach,” I said, and proceeded to tell my friends about our two meetings. Everyone was surprised but I was sure not more than me.
I was getting more and more suspicious of Kyle. Surely, these were too many coincidences. It was hard to believe there wasn’t more to it.
When we finally had alone time, I voiced my fears to him and we laughed about them. I hadn’t heard from Ian, or gotten any closure from that chapter of my life so my fears were still quite strong.
But we ended up enjoining each other’s company amidst the weird stares from my friends. The red flags in my head kept lighting up and reminding me not to be too happy, or let myself fall. Despite all that, I enjoyed the evening.
I enjoyed it so much that I found myself in Leah’s guest room with him. I could hear my hazy drunken brain screaming no but my body lit up as our lips battled each other for dominance. By that point, I had lost all control and knew there was no going back.
In the morning, I woke up next to him. Nude. I sighed as everything came back to mind. Well, whatever happened had happened. Sitting up, I placed one leg on the floor. I was just about to do the same for the other when I felt him move.
Shit. I was not ready for the awkwardness.