ASSUMPTIONS [H.S.]

chapter 47

Amber Easton

"Well, aren't you one busy gal?" Olivia's voice erupts from my new phone, and I steal a glance at the screen, watching her play with the FaceTime filters. "How was England?"

I dust off my make-up brush, trying to still my hands as much as possible to avoid messing up my eye shadow. "It was pretty fun, actually. Harry's mom's the absolute best. We played Scrabble, tried out her new grill, and walked around to scope out random bakeries in town. I'm a little sad we had to leave so early."

"Ah, damn. Sounds incredible." Olivia can't decide whether she'd like to have a mouse or a monkey filter on her face. "At least you left for a better cause. I mean, you must be feeling unimaginably excited for the tour starting."

I wouldn't particularly define what I'm currently feeling as 'unimaginably excited', but okay.

"Don't know how to feel yet, I'll be honest." I try to concentrate as much as possible when doing my mascara. "It's my first show ever. I'm used to playing to 10 people max. Now there probably will be a full venue with the capacity of a couple thousand."

I distantly hear Harry's opening act Muna already playing on stage, and a wave of cheers erupting from the seats. It makes my blood rush quicker in nervousness.

"I'm sure you'll do amazing." She encourages. "I really wish I could be there tonight, but San Fran's too far away. I'll try to make it to the next shows, though."

I take a couple of sips of chamomile tea in the middle of applying little amounts of blush. "Don't worry about it. I'm glad you're taking time for yourself as well."

"I should come over to yours when you're back in LA." She finds out about another section of FaceTime filters.

Her sentence hits a strange spot in my chest that I didn't expect to sink. "Yeah... I-I'm not sure when I'll be able to go back to my apartment."

A look of realization flashes past her face, and she's immediately apologizing. Even though I filled her in on my apartment's robbery, I guess it slipped her mind. "Oh, shit. Right. Sorry. Have you gotten any updates on that?"

"Uhm... The police couldn't really find solid DNA evidence, and since there had been no security cameras installed, it's pretty much a dead end. They tried tracking the IP addresses, but it lead to a random internet cafè, so that also didn't quite work out." I explain, feeling my heart race quicker.

"But, they did go and ask my neighbors for their statements and discovered that about 3 days before the robbery a young man came to my door and was fiddling with the locks. At the time, they thought I had some handyman doing some maintenance. From what the police gathered, it was a 6-feet tall, mid-twenties male with dark brown hair and a couple of tattoos on his left arm."

"So pretty much any guy in LA?" She tries to lighten up my mood. I carefully trace the tip of my lipstick over my lips and am baffled by the way the color red looks so good. It's almost perfect, even.

"Yup. Plus, it's not guaranteed he's the mastermind behind it all." I let out a nervous chuckle. "What about you, though? What's new in your world?"

"Nothing grand. Just doing many auditions, "Border" is coming out soon in theatres, so now I'm just waiting for that." She talks about her upcoming movie, and I'm baffled at how she's able to talk about it so casually.

"Fuck, you must be so busy." I breathe out, now moving on to fixing a couple of curls of mine. "No wonder it's so hard to reach you lately."

"Yeah, my phone's been going off like crazy. All these producers and my agent have been calling non-stop. Plus, random people like Nate phoned a couple of times this week. I didn't pick up, though."