Chapter Nine - Rory
“Hello?” I say into the phone. My voice sounds like I was out drinking last night instead of having sex with Five Aston on a rock.
“Rory?”
Shit. That wakes me up. I swing my legs over the side of the glider, looking around for Five, because when I came back to the porch he was with me and now he’s gone.
“Cliff?” I say, still trying to gather myself into a fully functional adult.
“Yeah.” Cliff sighs on the other end of the connection. “Just checking up on you.”
I have no idea what to say about that. I mean, look. I like Cliff. He’s handsome and rich. He’s got everything in this world and he chose to ask me out. He’s going to law school and he’s got serious plans that have nothing to do with running from the FBI or secret global corporations that plot his demise. So Cliff is awesome.
But he’s no Five.
“I’m… OK,” I say, unsure of how I should sound after the most perfect night of my life.
Not excited though. Definitely not excited when I’m on the phone with my ex-boyfriend.
Please, Aurora. He’s not an ex. You just cheated.
Yup. I did. Which means… this is a breakup call.
“God,” Cliff says. “I miss you already. I know it’s only been one day, but Jesus, Rory. You gotta give a guy time to adjust. Anyway, enough about me. How’s everything at home? Is everyone OK?”
“Yeah,” I say, opening the squeaky screen door and walking out into the grass. “Everyone’s fine. No one’s dead or anything. In fact, it was my little brother’s fault. He sent me a plane ticket and told me to come home and…”
And? What do I say after and? Good job, Princess.
Cliff pauses with me. Waiting for the rest of that sentence.
I decide to rip the Band-Aid off. Sort of.
“Cliff, I’m not coming back to the Hamptons this summer. I’m gonna stay here in Colorado. I’m sorry, I know it’s a shitty thing to do and—”
“It’s OK,” he says.
“It is?”
“Yeah. It’s weird, ya know. How life changes so fast.”
“Yeah,” I say, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Just so fast.”
“Because I got a call from a friend of my father’s last night asking me to come to Denver and do an internship.”
“Denver?” My eyebrows are all scrunched together on my forehead. “Who the hell comes to Denver for an internship?”
Cliff laughs. Like a real, honest-to-goodness, genuine laugh. “You’re silly, Rory Shrike. I know you live up north in that quaint college town, but Global Holdings moved their offices to the Tech Center last year. It’s a huge financial hub these days.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. But I get it. You’ve been away for school. Plus you don’t live down that way. So you didn’t know. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving today and I’ll stop by your place later to say hi.”
I’m actually struck dumb.
“Is that OK?”
Here? He’s coming here?
“Rory?”
And that’s when I remember I didn’t actually break up with him.
“Coming!” Cliff yells. Like he’s calling to someone on the other end of the line. “Listen, Ror, I gotta go. My car is here to pick me up for the airport. I’ll text you when I land and you can give me directions. See you soon!”
The call drops.
“Who was that?”
I turn around and find Kate walking across the lawn towards me.
“And bitch, I cannot believe you slept here instead of my house. Tell me again why I had to sleep on Sparrow’s couch?”
“Sorry,” I say. “Five and I got into a fight at your house and I came here.” I blush thinking about what came next. “He followed me. We…”
“You naughty slut.” Kate beams, hooking her arm around mine. “But that’s all I need to hear. I love you, but sexy details about my brother are my limit.”
I think back to last night and melt all over again. “It was perfect this time, Kate. Perfect. I feel like twirling around with happiness, that’s how perfect.”
“So you two are finally a thing?” Kate asks.
“A thing?” Are we a thing? We didn’t really sort out the details, did we? I mean, we said all the important shit. And we’re in love. So… “I… think we are.”
“Is Five staying? For the summer?”
I gave him a choice. I do remember that. Stay here with me or take me with him. I bite my lip. Because he never answered me. “I’m not sure.”
Kate looks all confused as she leads me back towards the house. “Well… he was supposed to leave tomorrow. Don’t you think you should find that out?”
“Yeah,” I say, getting a bad feeling about this. If fucking Five Aston tricked me into being rational last night, I will kill him. “Where is he? Inside?”
“No,” Kate says. “He’s not here. I have no clue where he is, but he’s not here.”
“Maybe he’s at home,” I say, pulling on my shorts and slipping my feet into my shoes. “I’m gonna go over there and check. Because you’re right, we need to sort this out immediately.”
Five’s house is locked and empty and there’s no car in the driveway, so even though I really want to break in via Kate’s window and look around, it’s stupid. And I’m pretty sure Ford has this place wired up like a bank vault. If that alarm is set and I break in… I don’t even want to imagine what comes next. So I leave.
Back in my car, I text him. Where are you?
And then I stare at my phone for exactly seven minutes praying for a response, before giving up and heading into downtown to check all the places he might be.
First stop, FoCo Theatre. I park at Shrike Bikes, since it’s across the street, and then jog over and go inside. Sparrow is running the place while her parents are out of town for the Disney trip. And it’s packed—as usual, since the lunch rush is just starting. The theatre doesn’t just show movies and have cool film festivals. It’s a restaurant and a coffee shop as well. A staple in this college-town community since it’s only a couple blocks away from campus.
“Rory!” Sparrow calls over the heads of a billion hungry college students. “Did you come to help?”
I’m about to say no, but then I realize she looks stressed. Sparrow Flynn is more qualified than most to run this place. She grew up in it, after all. But at only twenty years old, she’s still susceptible to all the things that can, and will, go wrong when the parents leave town.
So I say, “Sure. Let me grab an apron.”
I’ve spent my fair share of summers and weekends helping out here too. So I tie up my hair, throw on an apron, and get to work making sandwiches and salads.
It’s surprisingly calming. This familiar work in this familiar place. And even though I have a shit storm of problems brewing on the horizon, I let them fall away as I get back into the swing of being…home.
“So you and Five, huh?” Sparrow says with a wink, once things calm down. “Oliver told me this morning.”
“That little shit needs to mind his own business. He’s the one who caused all this mess by telling me to come home without Five knowing.”
“Don’t be mad. We all want what he wants. You two to finally get that fairy-tale happily ever after. If you two can’t manage it, what chance do the rest of us have?”
Good question. If Five and I aren’t meant to be together, even though we’re meant to be together, then just what the fuck, fate?
“But you’re on track now?” Sparrow asks.
“Have you seen him?” There’s a little desperation in my voice. I can hear it, so Sparrow does too.
She shakes her head. “Oliver says he spent the night with you on the back porch. But I didn’t see him when I got up. He must’ve already left.”
“Do you know why he’s in town? Exactly, I mean? He told me about some meeting in Denver but…” My words trail off because Sparrow’s face turns serious all of a sudden. “What?”
Her eyes dart around, taking in the lobby. Like she’s making a decision about something. Then she leans in close and whispers, “I have a bad feeling about that meeting.”
“Why?” I say. “I mean, I do too, Sparrow. But you tell me why and then I’ll tell you.”
“Come on,” she says, grabbing me by the wrist. “Let’s talk in my office. Sarah?” she calls to the redhead girl at the cash register. “Can you cover me for ten?”
Neither of us wait to see what Sarah says. We jog up the stairs to the higher floors in the old, historic building, and stay silent until we’re inside Sparrow’s makeshift office with the door closed.
“What’s going on?” I ask, once that’s done.
“Look, I don’t know anything for sure, but something weird is happening. The night before my parents left for Disney, Ford and Ash came over and there was a big hush-hush meeting”—she does air-quotes for that word—“and they all disappeared into my dad’s office for like two hours.”
“Hmm,” I say. “Were my parents there?”
“Nope,” Sparrow says. “But they came by the next day and there was pretty much a repeat of the whole thing. I didn’t suspect anything, ya know? Why should I? Nothing has ever really happened. And to be honest, when my mom and dad sat me down and explained the whole thing to me before I left for college… well, I kinda didn’t believe them. Remember?”
“I do,” I say. She called me up. I was home for the summer that year.
“You had to talk me into it. Well, fine. My parents are criminals. Great. OK. I got over it. But again, two years go by and absolutely nothing happens. So I just drop it. Haven’t thought about that shit in a long time now. But then Five came, and you came, and everyone is acting weird. Just what the fuck is going on, Rory? It’s freaking me out!”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I didn’t realize anything was up until… Well, Five mentioned something weird about a meeting in Denver, but he gave me no specifics.”
“Don’t you think we earned those specifics?” Sparrow asks. “Where is he? I’ll ask him myself. We’re a team, remember? He can’t just keep shit from us, ya know?”
I agree. But… “I don’t know where he is. I came here looking for him. We spent the night together last night on your porch, but he was gone when I woke up. He wasn’t at home, I checked. Where could he be?”
She throws her hands up and shrugs. “You know him better than I do.”
“Yeah, but he moved away so long ago. And I haven’t been home in two years. I have no idea what he does or where he goes.”
She chews on her lip. Then her fingernail. Sparrow is flighty. And sometimes I wonder if she gets that from her name, or she’s just naturally that way. But she’s also very smart. Her talent all growing up was lying to the parents every time we wanted to get away with stupid shit. And now that I know what her father’s role was in their little criminal escapades when they were our age… am I surprised?
“What should we do?” I ask.
She chews a little more, then holds up a finger. “Ask Oliver. That little fuck knows something.”
“Yeah,” I say, sorting through all the events that have happened over the last twenty-four hours. “You’re right.”
“I’d go threaten the little monster myself, but I have to work. So you do it. Go shake that little shit until he spills.”
I laugh at her characterization of my little brother. “Where the hell would he be?”
“He’s across the street at Shrike working on some stupid dirt bike. I gotta get back downstairs, so make sure you call me with an update as soon as you find him, OK? Thanks for the help!”
And with that, she opens the door and disappears.
I make my way back downstairs and wave goodbye to her as I leave. Shrike Bikes is half a block up College Avenue, on the opposite side of the street. So I walk over there—have to anyway, that’s where I parked—and make my way in through the front door.
It’s Saturday, which is a busy day for Shrike. And there’s tons of people milling about looking at the display bikes in the showroom. Usually all us kids help out working the counter in the summers, but Belle is the only one here now and she’s busy with a bunch of customers. So I just head towards the shop and find Oliver in the back where my dad made space for him when he was a kid so he could work on his trikes.
“Hey,” I say, walking up to him. He’s so consumed with what he’s doing, he startles. “Jumpy today, or what?” I ask.
“Sorry,” Ollie says, getting up from his crouched position on the floor next to the dirt bike. “I didn’t hear you come up.”
“Or,” I say, leaning casually on a nearby counter, “you’re thinking hard about something and you were distracted.”
He grins at me, a grin I think he learned from Five, because it makes my heart jump in recognition. “Nah. Everything’s cool.”
“Of course everything’s cool. Why wouldn’t everything be cool?”
His smile falters. He’s only twelve, right? No way can my kid brother bullshit me better than I can bullshit him.
“What’s going on, Oliver? If you know something, you need to tell us.”
“Who’s us?” he asks, buying time. I know that move.
“All of us. Me, Belle, Kate, Sparrow. If you know why Five’s here, you’d better spill. Because nothing seems… normal right now. And just why the hell did you send me a plane ticket, anyway? Five didn’t come here for me and you know it.”
“Yeah, but it worked, right?” He winks. Like he’s some kind of charmer. Well, he is. Will be, anyway. Once he grows up. But then—
“Did you spy on me last night?”
“No! Don’t be sick. You’re my fucking sister.”
“Stop saying fuck. Dad will kick your ass if he heard the way you swear.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“But I’m a grown-up and you’re not. And stop evading the subject. Why is Five really here?”
“Did I hear my name?” Oliver and I both turn around to see Five walking towards us. He comes up close to me, leans in, and kisses me right on the lips. I might faint, that’s how unexpected that little move was. “I saw your rental outside. Figured I’d find you back here. Have you eaten yet?”
And just like that… my world is right again. “Um, no, actually.” I laugh. “I helped Sparrow out over at the theatre making sandwiches, but didn’t make one for myself. I could eat.”
“Perfect,” Five says, grinning down at me. “I’d invite you along, Ollie, but… you know. Third wheel kinda shit, right?”
“See ya,” Oliver calls, taking his attention back to the dirt bike. “Don’t get her pregnant.”
I’m just about to call out something nasty in response, when Five leans into my ear and says, “One day, Princess, I will.”