The Lady Next Door - A Sequel to "The Man Next Door"

Chapter 8: Blood, Sweat, And Tears

He gets up from bed to the thumping of a headache. It was hardly the crack of dawn and Patrick was already awake.

He trudges into his bathroom with his eyes scarcely open, digging through the drawers, with only a blanket wrapped around his bare torso, looking for medication.

By the time he had successfully made it back to bed, he was wide awake and assumed he would not be able to go back to sleep, so instead, he took his phone and opened it to find notifications of all kinds.

In his dark room, he scrolled through them with his nose pointed to the ceiling, feeling his stomach churning at all the messages and missed calls he had received. Patrick noticed that many of them had been from Emma and Sawyer, and was surprised to see that there were none from Vera.

Without any hesitation, he dials Emma's number in hopes that she was awake. He needed answers as he could barely gather anything from the night before.

To his surprise, she picked up almost immediately, "hello?" He asks in a deep voice.

"Patrick? How are you feeling?" Emma immediately says.

"I'm okay," he tells her slowly, "what happened last night?"

Emma quietly sighs as she tries to think of a way to put things, "Listen, Patrick, you and Sawyer drank a bit, and when you two had gone to the bathroom, Maria came over to me and picked up a call from your phone."

Patrick's eyes widen, wincing at his headache as he props himself up from bed, "go on?"

"Patrick, did Vera know you were working with Maria?"

"No... oh," Patrick felt his heart sink, "so she knows now?"

"Yeah," Emma says, silently lying in bed, "and you know how Maria is..."

"Vera thinks I'm cheating," Patrick mutters, suddenly climbing out of bed and throwing any kind of clothes on he could find by feeling around in the darkness, "how could Maria do that?"

"I don't know," she says vulnerably.

"What should I do now?" He asks her.

"I think you should try and call her?" Emma sighs, her eyes widening as if she had just remembered something, "Patrick, there's one more thing I forgot to ment-"

"I doubt that would work," he puts the phone on speaker and places it on the table, sitting down in a chair as he bent down to tie his converse. From the corner of his eye, he notices the warm sun beginning to rise, making its way up from in between the skyscrapers and up into the multicolored sky, "I'm gonna go for a walk, I feel like I am going to break something if I don't."

"Patrick! There's more to the problem," Emma snaps at him, making him freeze in his chair and glance his curious eyes down at the device, "Vera is in New York."

-

He was walking along the sidewalk all day that morning, spying into the windows of every store or bar he passes. Patrick had already called Vera multiple times only to have it ring out each time.

Patrick's worrying had only grown since he had left his hotel, and he wasn't planning on returning anytime soon, not until he had found some sort of answer to Vera's whereabouts.

But then again, she knew the city more than him, she certainly knew the area and the people more than he. As he was just about to turn around and head back, the sign of bar he had just been facing began to sound awfully familiar.

Patrick looked up toward the sky to get a good look at the small building, it looked similar to the spot they had chosen to sit down and purchase drinks the other night. That might be it. Patrick began to look through his phone for photos and successfully found one of the place during the nighttime.

The name was glowing in a vibrant neon color like the rest of its competitors that sat on the same block. It was the same bar, but he remembered he had chosen the place for a reason... that reason being his girlfriend telling him wild stories about it, and how she and her friends from high school would always stop in for lunch.

He smiled at how Vera would giggle as she told him these stories late at night, it made him rumble in laughter at how she would laugh so hard to the point that she physically couldn't finish telling him about it.

With plenty of hope, he steps into the bar, scanning the room of people for a particular brunette girl, and before he knew it, he spots her.

He begins to make his way up to her without thinking much of it, stopping where she could see him. Patrick's smile falls when Vera's eyes land on him, and a displeased look falls over her face. She then nudges the man that was sitting beside her to take a look over his shoulder, "what are you doing here, man?" The blonde man began.

He stood there as chills ran along his spine, but soon he breaks his glare with the man and turns to Vera, who wasn't even looking at him anymore, "Vera, listen to me... all of this is just a misunderstanding. Can we talk?"

"You're gonna have to speak to me first," the blonde man speaks, "allow me to introduce myself," he holds out his hand as he gets up from his stool.

"I know who you are," Patrick says, shaking the man's hand, "you're Owen, Vera's childhood friend."

"Yeah," Owen smiles smugly, "she talks about me?"

Patrick shrugs, "she tells me everything." He sighs, "can you please step aside so I could speak to her?"

"You messed up man," Owen says, laughing mockingly as he begins to lead Patrick outside, "she doesn't wanna talk to you, alright?"

"Who are you to tell me that?" Patrick speaks up, ripping away from him, "Vera," he looks over at her, "please?"

She sits there in silence, facing the bartender as Owen continues to walk Patrick out the door. Once they've made it outside, Patrick attempts to rip away again, only to earn a fist to the jaw. He stumbles back a bit and looks up at Owen, "you douchebag," Patrick mutters under his breath, running it back and thrusting a strong fist to Owen's stomach, and then an uppercut to his chin, and lastly a big strike to his nose, leaving him falling to the floor in agony, blood gushing out from his face and onto the cement floor.

Everyone around them had formed a circle, and once Patrick noticed that all eyes were on them, he steps away. He watched as Vera sprinted out the door to help him off the floor, "Owen?" Vera shouts, shooting Patrick a baffled look.

"His phone fell out of his pocket," Patrick says to her quietly, holding a hand to his hurting jaw as he walks back into the bar for an icepack, "wouldn't want him to leave it behind."