Chapter 26
Shane:
Well, doughnut seems to be happy, somewhat. She's even more excited to go to the masquerade ball than I am. I watch her humming a song underneath her breath across from at our table during lunch. I listen carefully to it but I couldn't figure out the song that she was singing and it sounds like a foreign tune. Well, I've never gone that long without speaking so I'm going to break the ice.
"What are you humming? It sounds nice." I say.
She lifts up her head and smiles brightly at me; a smile so brilliant that it reaches the green in her eyes and causes it to sparkle under the shinning sun. Had I been straight, I would have made her my girlfriend. "I think it is called 'y si te digo.' It is a Spanish song."
"Do you even know what it means?" I chuckle.
She nods, "I think it means 'what if I tell you…" She smiles even brighter.
"So you speak Spanish now?"
"Come on, you know I suck at Spanish. I don't even know the lyrics of the song or what they would mean." She sighs, "But, it sounds beautiful."
"You never tried to look it up?"
She shakes her head, "I never got around to it."
"Well, I'm going to look it up. What did you say the name of the song was?" I take my phone out of my pants pocket.
"Y si te digo…" she says and went back to hum to the tune of the song that she doesn't even know about.
I type in the title and the first artist name that pops up is a certain Fanny Lu. "Is it by Fanny Lu?" I ask.
"I believe so, yeah…" she grins. Gosh, what got her so dang happy.
I click on the link that leads to a website that also translates the lyrics, "I found a website that translates the lyrics."
"Oh yeah? What is it about?" she eagerly walks around the table to sit next to me.
"I think it is about this girl confessing her love and how she feels for that specific person. It's quite romantic." I look at her to find her smile even brighter than she did a minute ago as she reads through the lyrics. Then she was no longer smiling; now she was beaming too brightly even as her cheeks turn an embarrassing red that was too apparent even to the farthest eyesight.
"It's beautiful." She says. Her eyes are glistening, giving her smile genuine credibility to her face that displays that beautiful happiness that is completely addictive. I find myself feeling just as happy.
"OK doughnut, I have waited for you to spill the beans for a while now. I've reached the limit of my patience. Please tell me what's going with you."
She laughs, "Come on Shane! Life is good to me, I'm out and I'm proud. I'll let everybody know about it."
"OK, I love it that you are quoting me but seriously, I really want to know what is making you so happy. You've been depressed a lot lately." Curiosity was eating at me hard and I could no longer retain it from ignorance's grip. It escapes to finally appease its appetite.
She smiles too widely, "My Lady Belle still loves me. She told me she never stopped loving me."
"Really? She said that? When? Why?" I keep asking without giving her time to answer.
"The other day, I went to the clinic and she came in."
"Oh," I suddenly remember the day she is talking about, "Lauren and I were asking her questions that day." I say.
"You were?"
"Yes, we wanted to ask her why she suddenly showed up at the party when she said that she didn't want to come."
"What did she say?" she asks.
"She said that she had an intuition but I didn't believe her and surely enough, it was because she received an anonymous text from someone."
She raises an eyebrow, "An anonymous text?"
I nod, "Lauren and I have tried to guess the potential people that might have sent her the text but Liam and Reagan would be too obvious."
She looks away, "Liam and Reagan? Could they?"
I shrug, "I hope it's not them because, I would be seriously pissed at Liam if he has something to do with all of this."
"Oh well! Do you guys have any other leads?"
"Well, not at the moment but we plan on driving to Houston to find Reagan this afternoon. She's the only one we've yet questioned." I run my hand through my hair, "I hope we finally get answers."
"Can I go with you guys?" She asks.
"Why?" I look at her intently.
"I mean, I know where she lives and you guys don't and because, I want to hear what she is going to say." She admits, "Don't worry, whether I am present or not might affect what she is going to say, I know that. I'll hide then."
I think for a moment, "Well, you can come but I want you to stay in the car. Lauren and I will go up and we will call you from her apartment and you can hear the entire conversation."
She shrugs, "Sounds good."
Ok, as soon as the school finished, Amy, Lauren, and I made our way to the parking lot. We walked through the parking with a purpose. We were determined to come out of this interrogation with Reagan spilling her guts to give us answers to our questions. Lauren calls shotgun and I end being the driver when I clearly did not want to. We decided to go through the highways so that it can takes us less time to drive to Houston. The entire time I keep bickering with Lauren regarding, again, who should play good cop-bad cop on Reagan. I mean, reader, I'm more smart than Shorty-by-nature right? So, I know you guys think that I should be the one deciphering this entire suspicious web of lies. I mean, what better cop do I make than her? She doesn't even look like one.
Amy gives us the directions once we reached Houston. Her apartment was located in a very safe area if you ask me. It didn't look too expensive but it was enough to keep you on your toes when it comes to your spending. We get out of the car leaving Amy behind who almost decided to change her mind about staying inside the car because of the heat. I tell to just turn on the AC but that girl was so danm stubborn. Luckily, Lauren changed her mind in the scariest way ever and, surprisingly, Amy listened. The power of finally having a sister to keep you in check works wonders. I might actually want one. Or, is it just that Lauren is that scary and demanding and authoritative and she calls me Gaypetto? I can't believe this. Amy told us that the apartment was in the third floor and the number is 234.
"Shit! The only time I even worked out that much was when I was dating Duke." I pant, "Shorty-by-nature?" I look back to find Lauren sitting down on the stairs, breathing heavier than I am.
"You can just keep going. Don't…don't mind me." She waves at me in a dismissive gesture, "I'll catch up."
I shake my head, "Huh! Huh! You are going to suffer with me." I go back to pull her up. "Hold on to me Shorty!"
"One would think that they would have an elevator up in this shit." Lauren breathes as she places her arm around my neck.
"I know right, it looked like some building that would have an elevator on the outside."
She nods, "I know, everybody must be fit because this …shit is worth a week of work out."
We receive a text from Amy, "You guys made it yet?"
I reply, "Bitch we are still on flight stairs number two."
"How come? You guys left twenty minutes ago?" She replies.
"Hey, those flights of stairs are long."
"No, they're not you guys are just being lazy as fuck." She texts back.
I was about to reply but someone just starts running past us like it was nothing. I caught myself staring at the pair of ass bumping up and down as he runs up. "Lauren, I have seen that ass somewhere before." I tell her.
"The fuck is wrong with you?" she seethes.
"No, I feel like I know that person from the back, like the profile is familiar." I say.
She looks up at the guy, "What? One of your old boy toys?"
I shake my head, "I wish but no."
We continue walking up the stairs until we finally reach our Haven, which is ground and we can rest. We catch our breath for a minute before getting up to walk to Reagan's apartment. I hope she's here because I would be disappointed if I go through all of this unnecessary work out for nothing. I make sure to dial Amy's phone number before knocking. We finally find the apartment that read 234, so I knock and I was too glad to find Reagan opened herself.
"Reagan, how are you?" I beam, pulling her into a hug so that I can dial Amy's number from behind her back. I pull away quickly, after I finished.
She looks dubiously at us both, "What are you guys doing here?"
Well, we came here to see and make small talk." Lauren stalls. She let her eyes sift through Reagan's apartment, "Why would I want to have a small talk with you? We weren't even close – at all."
"Well, we can always change that can't we?" she smiles, walking past Reagan and I follow suit.
"Reagan, we came here to ask if you remembered anything from the party." I end the stalling. There was no need so I go straight to the point because I had stuff to do. Like, buy my costume for the masquerade ball.
"I told Amy already." She sighs.
"Yes that you two ended up fucking because you were both high on ecstasy." I say, "But how do you know that it was actually ecstasy?"
She stammers, "I…I…don't know…I just assumed."
"So you didn't know for sure?" Lauren asks.
"Well no, I just thought that's what it was because everybody else at the party kept passing it on to each other."
"How do you know that it was ecstasy that they were passing on?" I ask, taking a chair right across from her in the living room.
She scans around her apartment, looking at everywhere but at us, "I heard two people having a conversation before the party started." She shrugs, "I thought you'd know since it was your party."
"I did not ask anybody to bring drugs neither did I encourage or promote the spreading of the drug. Some douche may have done so without me knowing about it." I say.
"OK, so you say that you were high, how did you know who you slept with?" Lauren pitches in, "How would anybody as high as you say you were, be even remotely aware of the person that they are sleeping with - especially when they left your side the next morning without leaving any clue behind?"
She gets up, "Why so many questions? Am I being interrogated or something?" she asks.
"Does it feel like it?" I ask.
"Yes…" she answers.
"Well, that's what it is then." I say, "It is only because we are trying to figure out what happened that night so that we can move forward with our lives."
"Or you can just move forward and forget about everything." she says.
Lauren chuckles, "It is impossible because we've got in too deep to turn back now. We can't just quit."
"Oh it is very easy to quit. It will save you the disappointment." She says looking at her wrist watch, "Can you guys please leave? I have to get to work and I hate being late."
"We just have one more question?" Lauren and I both get up, "How can you be so sure that it was Liam who brought Amy home? Because I am assuming you were passed out just like Amy were when Liam found her."
She doesn't say anything for a good while, "I'm going to be late. Now, if you'll excuse me, you guys need to go." She leads us to her door and opens it, "I can't stay that it was a pleasant meeting, unfortunately."
"Yes, very unfortunate indeed," Lauren says as we walk out of the apartment before Reagan slams the door in our back.
We walk back downstairs, "Well, I think it is appropriate now to say that we found our liar."
Back in the car
Amy:
Listening to Reagan's answers made me sick. I can't believe she'd play me dirty like this. I know I have been cruel by not returning her feelings but there were no reasons. I know what she must have felt like, I know because I was in that same place. I had to watch Karma loving a guy instead of me. I had to watch for months. So she could have grabbed her fucking invisi-dick and deal with it. I keep listening up until the point Reagan said that she had to go to work. I turned off my phone because I was too pissed off to even want to keep listening to the bullshit. A car slowly parks right next to ours and I just assumed that it was just some other dweller in the apartment. But I was shocked to find Sam, Karma's friend step out of the vehicle and head to the building. She did not see me since I instantly lowered my head as she walks past near my side of the car.
"What the devil is she doing here?"