Everything Happens At 2:04 AM

Chapter Twenty: Thou Is Not Drunketh.

Chapter Twenty: "Thou Is Not Drunketh." 

Sydney hung up so fast I barely had time to process that she called me. 

I moved my leg from Caleb's hands and he looked at me confused. "Bathroom," I told him, making my way through the house. When I had found the bathroom and thankfully no one was inside, I locked the door behind me, sitting down on the ground.

Once Sydney answered the video chat, she looked like she had news to share. No, my best friend looked as if she had major tea to spill and the extremely nosy part of me got excited. She knew how much I loved to gossip. Her eyes were narrowed, her curly hair gelled and tied back in a ponytail. "Octavia."

"Yes?" I asked slowly, also questioning why I didn't gel my hair tonight instead of putting it in a scarf updo. 

"Are you drunk?" She questioned. It was night over in New York for her and I noticed that she looked like she was leaving the house. The music blaring on her side didn't sound like her type of music instead it sounded like the screamo type music Zen listened to. Jesus. How she didn't go deaf from his music taste all these years living with him astounds the life out of me.

"No, I'm sober," I assured her. "I didn't drink anything that had major alcohol and I only had one can that was hours ago. What is the emergency? No, wait, where are you going?"

"Date," Sydney said and I had the most perfect view of her ceiling as she walked away from her room. She placed her phone on an angle where I could see her apply her red lipstick.

"Same guy from Zen's work?"

"No, the guy from Tinder from last week, remember?" 

"Ah, Tinder guy," I recalled our last conversation. "He got you the flowers."

"Yes, that's not important at the moment," Sydney put the lipstick down and I could feel her bearing holes in me as she stared at me through the camera, her attitude showing rather brightly.

"Here I am," Sydney starts, and I almost start laughing. I hated how alike we could be. "Casually opening up my Instagram app and your account pops up as the first picture because Instagram obviously knows how much I love you over the rest of the people I'm following."

"Of course," I said like it was obvious news. "We're married. Instagram already knew that."

Sydney grinned at me before getting back into her theatrics. "I look at the picture Instagram has decided to show me to see my best friend standing next to a guy. His arm is around her, her arm around him, they look very hot together. Models, truly. And I think to myself, how could you not tell me that Caleb, the screenwriter guy, is Caleb Romero Henderson?"

"So, he's a famous writer," I elaborated, heavily confused as to why she was shocked. I used to drag her around to meet 'famous' people all the damn time. This shouldn't have been surprising. "What's the issue?"

"He's one of the greatest authors of our generation and you're telling me that this isn't a big deal?"

"Sydney, you've met people like him before."

"I know but it's just-here's what I wanted to tell you: I met him once."

"You did?" Sydney's been in New York for a long time and Caleb went to New York on occasion. I wouldn't be surprised if she bumped into him once or more. But again, this doesn't make it surprising or anything truly newsworthy. She literally looked as if she was going to explode with information.

"Yeah," She said eagerly as if trying to make me connect the dots. How the hell am I going to connect the fucking dots if you're not telling me what the big de- "Back when Lucas and I were dating. Back in high school, Tavi."