Bail | LRH

Chapter 24: internal crisis

Luke Hemmings

"If he doesn't get here in the next ten minutes, we're leaving without him" Ashton said as he leaned against the door of his black Chevy Silverado, bringing his wrist up to check the time on his watch.

"We agreed to meet here at five-thirty, and it's almost six, where is he?" I asked no one in particular, releasing my frustrations into the atmosphere. I paced back and forth in front of Ashton, while Calum fished his phone out of his back pocket.

"I'll call him and see what's going on" Calum said as he found Michael's contact name and pressed the little 'call' button on the screen.

"Put it on speaker" Ashton spoke up, pushing himself off of the car door and walking over to stand next to Calum.

The phone rang for what felt like ages, then went straight to voicemail. Calum tried twice more groaning louder in frustration each time it went to voicemail. We decided to try one last time, and if Michael didn't answer then we would leave without him.

We listened to the familiar ringing sound for a couple of seconds before it cut off and we heard a "Hello?" from the other line.

"Mike, where the hell are you? I thought we agreed to meet at Ashton's at five-thir– Who is that?" Calum started, but cut himself off when we heard a faint female voice in the background of the call asking Michael who had called him so many times.

Now staring down at my shoes, trying to figure out who the voice in the background belonged to, there was an itch inside my brain telling me I knew who it was, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. While most of our other friends our age were guys, we did know a handful of girls that could have been on the other side of the call with Michael, though they weren't snowboarders, they were either skiers or skaters. I knew Michael was decent friends with a couple of them, more so than the rest of us, so by process of elimination I figured he had been with this girl Molly, who had hung out with us a couple of times, but I wouldn't consider her a friend, she was more like an acquaintance.

"Oh, I'm with Adrian right now," Michael answered nonchalantly as my head whipped up from the ground so fast, I almost gave myself whiplash. At the same time I was bringing myself to look at the phone held out in Calum's hand, I could see both Calum and Ashton instantly turn their heads to look at me. Why was Michael with Adrian? My jaw was unknowingly tightening, and there was some feeling I couldn't describe forming in the pit of my stomach coming in waves. I forced myself to swallow down my words and not ask what he's doing with her while she's still in our presence.

"Hi Calum!" Adrian yelled through the phone. Just from the tone of her voice I could already tell she had a wide smile on her face. The waves were getting bigger, and I turned away from the phone, pacing a few steps in Asthon's driveway trying to shake this feeling off.

"Hi Adrian," Calum chuckled, "Mike, we gotta go, so either you get here twenty minutes ago, or we leave you."

"Where are you guys going?" Adrian asked, not to us, but to Michael.

"Basketball game" he answered her before speaking to us again, "I'll be there in ten." And with that the phone call ended, and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding in.

In a little over ten minutes Michael's car finally pulled up to Ashton's house, and the three of us who had been waiting piled into the car and buckled up as Ashton backed out of his driveway and down the street.

Something inside me was feeling off, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"So what were you doing with Adrian?" Ashton asked as he tilted down the rearview mirror to make eye contact with Michael who sat in the back seat with me.