"𝗂 𝗁𝖺𝗏𝖾 𝖺 𝗉𝗈𝗌𝗍𝖼𝖺𝗋𝖽 𝗆𝗈𝗎𝗍𝗁
all it ever says is:
𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦."
- trista mateer, honeybee
when valerie forester heads south to visit her best friend in nashville, the last thing she expects when she departs is an...
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★ ★★
i was a lot of things, but it went without saying that a big city girl was not one of them. regardless of all the time i'd spent with layla in her cute little nashville home, i found that i grew homesick even quicker than i grew sick of home. that was saying a lot.
where i came from, it was relatively quiet. mostly peaceful. the air was fresher, and dewy. and the only thing i worried about was running into my old high school classmates, and my family. here, it was the complete opposite. and while it was nice for a bit—getting away, visiting my best friend—the noise and the questionable scents never failed to get old. nor did the men i'd encountered, who i always found to be remarkably entitled.
tonight was no exception.
each and every one of my nashville trips began with a night on the town with layla. we'd stay up all night, get drunk out of our skulls, then wander down broadway back to her place in the gulch at some ungodly hour. it was basically tradition. except this time, layla seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth. i'd called her about a thousand times in the last hour and a half, but each attempt to reach her proved to be a complete and utter waste of my time.
jaw set forward, i dropped my phone on what had been our shared table, and downed the rest of my whiskey. my chest tightened anxiously. i couldn't believe her.
all i wanted was to go back to layla's place, but i felt stuck. i couldn't be certain that she wasn't dead in some sketchy back alley, but at the same time, i wasn't about to go wandering around a busy, unfamiliar city in the middle of the night looking for her—much less on my own. i knew better. so it only made sense for me to stick around until she called me back. all i could really do was hope to god that she would.
the bar was pretty much bursting at the seams, illuminated by a vast array of neon lights, and the floors buzzed to the beat of a thin lizzy song playing on the jukebox. i half-expected most of the patrons to file out by the time the clock struck midnight, but it was nearly one o'clock now, and i couldn't spot an empty table anywhere.
and still, layla was nowhere to be seen.
i tried her cell once more, tapping away on the tabletop.
"you've reached layla oswald, leave me a—"
promptly, i ended the call to pull up our messages. if it were any other day, i would have been embarrassed by the copious stack of blue texts beneath her name, but her radio silence rendered me careless.
valerie: where the hell are you ??? call me back.
"you look lonely."
i turned to glare at the stranger who took it upon himself to invade my personal space, his hands atop the glossy veneer. he was a scruffy young man, sporting a strong jaw full of stubble, and a trucker hat blackened with oil. he reeked of booze and tobacco. i willed my nose to wrinkle.
