or shifted, or maybe even slipped through her fingers, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
You know.
She ignored that. She had to focus on Portia. Gus would understand.
They spent the rest of Saturday pretending neither of them felt the awkwardness that trailed them like Dementors, siphoning the joy that had been a part of their hanging out from the start—their ability to just be with one another. Reggie was on edge and guilty because she hadn’t said what she felt, and the more time passed, the more her silence in that moment seemed to balloon between them.
On Saturday evening, Gus had suggested that he go back to his apartment if she needed some space, and she’d felt the awful certainty that something was wrong with them now. Figuring out what was wrong would require thinking about what had been right, and what she wanted to do about that rightness, and fear pushed that option to the bottom of the list.
He’d stayed in the end, and they’d watched Akira because Gus had remembered one of her wheelchairs was named that and pulled it out of her Blue Ray collection. He hadn’t liked the cult classic, and for some reason his reaction had seemed like a personal slight against her.
They’d fallen asleep with space between them for the first time.
On Sunday morning, they sat on the back porch having coffee, both staring down at their phones, when Gus held his out towards her. “There. It says she was spotted going into this fancy hotel. Maybe we can try calling?”
Even though there was something off-kilter in their once seemingly harmonious relationship, he was still trying to give her what she needed. Reggie pressed her lips together against the sudden rush of sadness that hit her. What if she couldn’t fix whatever was wrong between them? What if she couldn’t fix her own family either?
“Cool. Thank you.” She pulled up the hotel’s number on her own phone.
“Hello, Walton Hotel. How may I be of service?”
“Hi, I’m looking for . . .” Neither Portia nor Naledi would provide their real names with the press after them. Naledi had once been a commenter and contributor on GirlsWithGlasses, though, and had a nom de plume she used on the site. “HeLa Hoop. Can you please connect my call to her room?”
There was a long pause.
“That’ll be just a moment.”
Another long pause, and Reggie was sure the employee had hung up on her, but then the phone began to ring.
“Hello?” Her sister’s voice was calm, slightly expectant. She sounded fine. Fine, after Reggie had spent the last two days worried sick and pushing her own problems to the side.
“Why haven’t you answered my fucking texts?” Reggie exploded. “You know I hate the phone. Mom and Dad and I were worried sick.”
Her parents had surprisingly not bombarded Reggie with angry texts and calls after her outburst, and had instead been sending worried texts about Portia and getting angrier and angrier about how the tabloids were treating their daughter. They seemed to be trying to be supportive, and Reggie didn’t think it was only because of what she’d said to them. Of course they cared that one of their children had disappeared.
“I’m sorry,” Portia said. “I haven’t turned it on for a couple of days.”
“Well, I get that, but the internet has been going wild.”
“Umm, that’s what I was avoiding.”
“Typical. Stick your head in the sand and everything will just take care of itself, right?” Reggie didn’t mean it, but she was just SO MAD. Why hadn’t Portia called her?
She saw Gus walk back into the house, giving her privacy, from the corner of her eye.
“About that,” her sister said into her ear. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
Chapter Ten
Gus had called his brother the day before, while walking to the corner store, and asked him if it was bad that his girlfriend didn’t seem to love him back.
“So you’re saying she just . . . closed her eyes after the second time you said it?” Dave had asked. “And then changed the subject? Shit, man. I don’t know if that’s a good sign. Maybe give her some space.”
He hadn’t needed Dave to tell him that, but he’d hoped he was missing something. When she’d opened her eyes again he hadn’t expected her to say “I love you” back. He knew she would feel it when she felt it. But he hadn’t expected the distance in her gaze. Just like that, the Rubik’s Cube in