Maraschino 🍒 (gxg)

19

Chelsea stepped out of her Uber, staring up at the twenty-story-tall apartment building. It was five o'clock in the evening now; the sun was starting to dip and the day's heat was dissipating. She was nervous to go inside - what if she wasn't there? What if Lake had no idea she was gone and they had to go looking for her? Worse -- What if she suddenly wanted nothing to do with Chelsea?

She prayed the whole way she was at least going in the right direction; Julia never mentioned any other family members, and that Lake was the only relative she stayed with or talked to. She had no other leads, so if she wasn't hiding out at the apartment, she would just have to go straight to Lake and figure out what was really going on.

She took a deep breath and entered, the air conditioning blasting her in the face as she walked in. She took the elevator up to his level, the eighth floor, and rushed to Lake's apartment. She held her ear to the door; she couldn't hear the TV on or any movement or voices. Her heart began to drop.

She quietly knocked on the door, still scared for the answer, then knocked louder. No response. She tried knocking again -- nothing. Reaching into her jeans, she grabbed her lockpick and turned to the knob, but she realized that this was a new-age apartment with keycards instead of keys. She angrily shoved the pick back in her pocket.

Without another plan, Chelsea slumped against the wall and slid until she hit the floor. She could run around town like a headless chicken trying to look for her, but downtown L.A. was a beast she didn't want to investigate; it was way too big of a city for her to get anything accomplished. She didn't have any other hints besides Lake's apartment.

She picked up her phone from the floor and, in a half-hearted attempt, dialed Julia's number in hopes that she would finally pick up. She didn't, but she could have sworn she heard Julia's ringtone on the other end of the door.

She shut off her phone in frustration and hit her head against the wall. She felt like she was going in circles and didn't know what she was doing at the same time. She didn't know if Lake was working, and didn't know where else Julia would have been. Julia didn't have any other friends; she only talked to Chelsea. She felt completely stuck.

Chelsea felt like she had no choice. She slowly got up from the floor and headed towards the elevator. On the ride down, she tried remembering the directions to the parlor that Lake worked at. It was the only logical place she could be, and if she wasn't there, at least Lake was there, her primary contact for Julia, and hopefully he could help in some way.

Thankfully, Lake was working, cleaning up the inside of his office as a client walked out. Chelsea stood in the doorway for a minute, not sure how to announce herself, but Lake took care of that for her.

"What's up, Chelsea?" He asked, pausing his cleaning to face her. He didn't seem out of character; he was still his laid-back, chill self, so maybe Julia wasn't missing if he wasn't out hunting for her already. Maybe Chelsea was overreacting. But she still felt her heart pounding in her chest.

"Nothing much. Have you heard from Julia recently?" she asked.

Lake thought for a minute, toying with the rag in his hands, and shook his head. "Not recently, no. How have you been?"

"I'm alright. I'd be better if I could find Julia."

"You can't find her?"

"I haven't seen her in, like, a week and she's ignoring all of my texts and calls."

"Huh," he mused. "Yeah, I haven't heard or seen anything from her." He turned back to his table, fidgeting with the inks and boxes piled there.

Chelsea paused. She had a feeling he knew where Julia was, and was having a hard time trying to hide it -- the way he avoided her eyes, fixated on something else, anything but the topic, now beginning to act shifty and coy.