Ch. 1-Missing

"Honeybee, are you almost ready to go?" No answer came from their bedroom.
"Paige? We're gonna be late!" Still no answer. Spinner pushed open the door to the bedroom,
"Paige?" He walked through the room, taking in the rumpled clothes from last night in a pile on the floor by the foot of the bed. The unmade bed. All these things that were so natural for him, but so completely unnatural for Paige. She would have cleaned it up, scolded him or something. Instead, the room looked exactly the same as when he left that morning. Thinking that she spent the night with Ash again, he picked up the phone to call her.
"Hello?"
"Sean...hey. Where's Ash?"
"Uuhhh...I think she went out. She wasn't here when I got home. Why, what's up?"
"I just wondered if Paige was with her. We have to go see Manny and she's not here."
"Call her cell, I dunno." With that, Spinner hung up the phone and shook his head. He loved Ash, but what the hell did she see in Sean? Sean had never been his favorite person. He thought he was a bad-ass, but in fact deep down, he was scared of something. Glancing at the clock, Spinner grabbed the keys to his Jeep and ran out the door.

"Mom, I told you, I'm not going to call him!!" Paige declared indignantly.
"Paige, he's your fiancé! He deserves to know!"
"Right now, I'm gonna let it be. I have some things to think over and I can't be near him when I am.
"Honey. I know that-"
"No you don't know!! You don't know what I'm feeling, or what I'm thinking! Just drop it ok?" Paige stalked off towards her room and slammed the door while Mrs. Michaelchuck just sat there with her mouth open.
Paige sat cross legged on her bed while letting the warm breeze roll over her. -I'm 21, I need to stop acting like I'm a child and deal with this!!- she thought to herself. –I'll call him, I swear I will...I just need to get out of here for a while.- With that thought in mind, she cautiously walked out, wanting to avoid another confrontation with her mom. Luckily she was nowhere in sight. She closed the front door and walked down the familiar street to the drugstore. Her parents had moved to Bardell after her sophmore year in high school. At first she had been terrified. But when she found that Dean was no longer there, she relaxed a little bit and even made friends. Eventually she came to call this home, although she did make frequent trips back to Toronto.
She heard the bell tinkle as she pushed the door open and headed straight for the magazine and makeup aisle. Finally after an hour of deliberating, she made her way up to the register with her items. She dumped them all on the counter, without looking up, and began to rummage through her purse.
"Is this going to be all miss?" the bored cashier asked.
"Yeah this is it," she answered finally looking up after her successful retrieval of her money.
"Paige!" the cashier exclaimed. "Well how are you? Haven't seen you in...oh about six years right?" Paige just stood there motionless until finally, two words escaped.
"Oh shit."

"Manny I'm sorry I'm late, I couldn't find Paige," Spinner hurriedly explained.
"Spin, it's ok!" she exclaimed with a tinkling laugh. "We can do this without her, it'll be fine. Where did we last leave off last time?"
"Uuuhhh...wrong one to ask," he shrugged helplessly. She gave a rueful sigh and got up from her desk to retrieve a book.
"So do you think she went off with Ash maybe?"
"I have no idea. I called her house, Sean answered and said she wasn't there."
"You don't know yet, do you?" she asked him.
"Know what, that they're together? Or that they're apparently living together now too?"
"Umm...the last one. Ok, her proposed to her last month. I'm planning their wedding too."
"No way. Paige would definitely know and have told me."
"Actually they kinda wanted to keep it on the DL"
"That's messed up."
"Yeah. So anyway-we were...talking about flowers."
"Oh great, the one thing, well one of the many things, I know nothing about."
"Well, I am the wedding planner. I can help. Let's just go to the florist and look at some."
"Joy," he muttered. Manny gave him a look. He shrugged helplessly and followed her out to her car.

"Oh. My. God," was all Paige could get out.
"So what's going on? Do you live here now?" he asked as he looked at her just like he used to. Paige opened her mouth to speak, but nothing ever came out. She kept stammering and backing away from the cash register until she finally turned and fled. She couldn't stop running until she was at least 2 blocks away, exhausted from her random mile-yard-dash, and collapsed on a bench near by. Paige closed her eyes and leaned her back on the bench, letting the sun shine on her face as the memory that she shut out six years ago came flooding back very much unwelcome.