Strictly Summer Romance (ON HOLD)

Chapter Seventeen, Waiting Game

"What about this one?" Alice asks, holding up a simple, red dress.

"Yeah, it's really pretty," I say. This is the tenth dress she's shown me since we've been in this store. Alice and I have been shopping in the small boutiques around town for an hour, and all I've bought is a leather bracelet band.

"Em, you have to pick one," Alice whines.

I continue mindlessly searching the small, circular racks, not at all interested in their habitants. Alice has said that shopping is therapeutic, which I normally wouldn't have argued with, but I haven't exactly been normal the past few days.

"Have you talked to him?" She asks softly even though she already knows the answer.

"Not since he left."

After Alex had followed Mason back to the house, I'd sat on the beach for a very long time throwing myself a pity/you're-such-a-bitch party. The two kept clashing banners for front runner. When I'd finally found the courage to face my foes I'd made my way inside only to find that Alex had a bag packed sitting in his doorway as he'd stood in front of his mirror fixing his tie. Apparently an emergency at the headquarters in New York had come up, and he'd had to leave with his dad immediately.

Such grand fucking timing.

He'd hugged me tightly, kissed my forehead, uttered the words, "I'm sorry I have to go," looked into my eyes, smiled softly at me, and then picked up his bag, and walked out of his room.

I remember every detail of that interaction because I'd been replaying it in my mind on repeat for the past three days.

All I've gotten since then was a text saying,

I'm sorry I had to leave. It's not fair to you. Can we talk when I get back?

And now I can't stop thinking that he regrets everything. He'd followed Mason inside, left with an "emergency" immediately after, and hasn't called in the fifty three hours he's been gone. He regrets it. And now I feel like a sitting duck waiting for the slaughter.

"Emery, it's going to be okay. Alex isn't like that, and you know it. He wouldn't have kissed you if he hadn't already thought it through," Alice says, reading my mind.

"Or he thinks I'm a bitch that enjoys wedging herself between brothers," I mutter.

She just rolls her eyes and continues searching, the red dress still flung over her arm.

We meander through the shop another twenty minutes before Alice forces me into a dressing room.

I try on the first few articles of clothing Alice had flung over the door, not liking any of them.

The red dress is the only thing I end up buying.

We stop by the ice cream parlor on our way home. It's hotter than usual today, and I feel my shirt dampening with every second I'm not under air conditioning.

"You're still going to the bon fire with us, right?" Alice asks as she holds the door open for me.

"I don't remember having a choice in that matter." I glare as I enter in past her.

"You don't. I was just making sure you hadn't forgotten," she shoots back and taps her chin as she scans the choices in the display case.

"Why are we even going to that? Who do we know there?" I ask still confused as to how these plans came about.

"You remember the DeLuca's? We used to play with them when we were little at that huge water park a few towns over?"

"Yeah. Vaguely, I guess," I say confused.