Maneater

Chapter Thirty-Seven

    Austin was surrounded by beautiful, dancing women illuminated by flashing colorful lights but one woman managed to dominate his thoughts. Standing in the VIP area of a premier club that had recently opened in the Los Angeles area, he leaned over the upper level balcony with a glass of champagne in one hand. His boys flanked him on each side, chattering about this girl or another, or about the girl waiting for them back home in Toronto. Their words traveled into one of Austin's ears and flowed right out the other. He couldn't focus on anything people were saying or doing; he was lost in his own world, trying his best not to fear the worst.

    But Crystal still hasn't texted me back. The video director hasn't heard from her. I don't really know enough about her circle of friends to try to reach out to them. Could it be possible she's avoiding me? Maybe she did somehow change her mind about trying to make something between us work. Maybe she's completely fine, but doesn't know how to tell me that she doesn't want to see me anymore. Maybe she even decided to give Disney a shot. Who the hell knows?

    Even as the thought occurred to him, it didn't feel right. Something about that thought didn't sit well with him. He'd seen the look in her eyes the night he'd taken her out. There had been genuine feelings there, something akin to love. She had been the happiest he'd ever seen her that night; even though she was unpredictable, there had been no cause for her to cease all contact with him.

    She was also never concerned with sparing my feelings, he thought, raising the champagne glass to his lips. So why would she start caring about my feelings now? If she didn't want to see me, she would tell me...which means that her lack of contact is most likely not related to not wanting her to see me. And that was the thought process that filled him with a sense of dread so strong, that he nearly lost his balance.

    "Are you even listening to me, man?"

    Austin turned his head, arching a single thick brow. "Sorry. I'm just...on another planet tonight."

    "You've been on another planet this entire week," his friend and business partner Oscar Al-Faatib remarked. Wearing a stylish, cream-colored jacket, matching dress pants, and a pair of transition designer glasses, he smoothed a hand over the top of short, dark hair. "You still worried about your girl?"

    My girl, Austin repeated in his head with a wistful smile on his face. "I just can't shake the feeling that something is severely wrong," he muttered before taking another swig from his glass.

    "It kind of seemed like she was the type who would ghost you," Oscar said with a shrug.

    "At first," Austin agreed, turning to look down upon the frenzied dancers on the floor below. Overhead lights pulsed, creating a slight strobe effect as some of the dancers' moves were lost in brief darkness. "I'm trying to tell myself that, because I would rather her avoid me than have there be something wrong for real. But I can't shake the feeling that something is really, really wrong here. I don't know...something is off."

    Oscar nodded slowly and mimicked his friend's movement, casting a look down at the dancers on the lower level. "Are you going to look into it?"

    "I want to. I just feel like I'd be butting in. What if she is just avoiding me?"

    "She'd have to appreciate that you were willing to check up on her," Oscar said. "Did you want me to have some of our team look into it? They have resources at their disposal. It should be relatively easy to determine whether or not she's fallen off the planet or whether you're the only person she's ghosting."

    Austin drummed his fingers on the balcony rail. "Yeah," he replied after some thought. "Have some of the guys look into it for me. Maybe I'm just worrying about nothing."

    "It's beginning to interfere with your work and your ability to promote," Oscar remarked. "For that reason alone, it's worth looking into."

    "Do it. Let me know what they find out."

    With a final nod, Oscar backed away from him, raising a glass of Ciroc to his lips.

    Still staring out over the crowd below, Austin sighed and closed his eyes. You had just started to lower your guard around me, he thought sadly. We were just starting to get to know each other, without all of the bullshit in our way. After just that one night, I could imagine spending the rest of my life with you. So while I'd love for you to not be avoiding me, all I really want is for you to be okay. Please, Crystal. Please be okay. "I need you to be okay," he said aloud, opening his eyes.

~~~~~~

    Water was dripping somewhere. Without having a large, cold glass or bottle of water in front of her, the sound of dripping water only served two purposes:

1) to make her wish that she did have a large bottle of water in front of her or;

2) to make her feel like she had to go to the bathroom.

    There was also no bathroom at her disposal. As a result, the room she was being kept in smelled horrific. It smelled more horrific than her current circumstances were. She could smell her own waste, could feel the dirtiness of it on her. Her captor wasn't kind enough to allow her to shower. He wasn't even kind enough to hose her off. So she either sat or lie on the floor, teetering in and out of consciousness. Sometimes she allowed herself to dream; dreams tended to result in waking hallucinations, though.

    And it had been days since he'd visited. Or, at least, it had felt like days. Was he even still here, or had he gone off somewhere? Had it really been days, or had she completely lost track of time? No visible windows, no source of natural light. There was no dependable way for her to tell time; she could only guess.

    The ragged sound of her own breathing creeped her out; it was like the sound you heard the girl from The Ring or The Grudge as she was crawling down one of the walls.

    Tired, she thought, drifting off into another restless sleep. Too tired to fear what will happen to me. Too tired to try to think of a way out. Too tired to even think. Tired. Hungry. Just wasting away down here, praying that someone, that anyone, will somehow stumble across the fact that I'm being held here against my will. But how would anyone possibly know that when I don't keep frequent contact with my own family and when I'm often too busy to even hang out with my friends? How is anyone supposed to even know that I'm gone when I spent so long building up walls that are too tall for anyone to climb?

    The irony hadn't been lost on her: Just as soon as I was beginning to open up to someone to the point of allowing them into my life is when someone snatched me away. So if Austin can't reach me, all he's going to think is that I withdrew back into my shell and don't want to be with him anymore. My way of life, and those stupid rules that I created in order to become some savage bitch have actually fucked me over. I've fucked myself over by not being open with people, by closing myself off, by not living my life as fully as I possibly could...and now I might lose the chance to enjoy life.

    It was the last thought she had before passing out.