Chapter 2 The Morning After

Terik was gone for about six minutes. I sat on the edge of his bed with my handbag pressed against my stomach, listening to his voice drift up from downstairs: low, clipped, one-sided. Whoever was on the other end was doing most of the talking. I couldn't make out the words. I only noticed that he hung up before the other person had finished. When he came back, the crack I had seen in his face was gone, smoothed over so completely I almost believed I had imagined it. He had his car keys in his hand. "Get your shoes," he said. "We're going back to the club." "You don't have to do that." "I know." "Why would you-" "Because you won't be able to think about anything else until you find it." He glanced at me. "Am I wrong?" There was no arrogance in the offer, and no expectation that I owed him anything. I put on my shoes and followed him downstairs. His house was bigger than I had realized in my panic: polished floors, tall windows, a staircase that curved like something from a magazine. It was also strangely empty. No family photos on the walls. No clutter. Nothing to suggest anyone lived there except the blanket still folded over the arm of the couch. The city looked like a different place in daylight. The streets that had throbbed with noise a few hours earlier were nearly deserted, the shops still shuttered, the roads shining under a pale sun after the rain. I leaned my head against the window and tried not to think about everything inside that phone. Every photo. Every important message. Mary. She had called me four times before I stopped answering. By now she would have called twenty more, and she would probably be planning her own revenge in the same breath.😹 Terik drove without asking questions. "Thank you," I said eventually. "For what?" "Last night." "You're welcome." "I'm still not sure you're a good person," I added. The corner of his mouth lifted. "That's fair." "But you didn't have to help me." "No." "Then why did you?" He kept his eyes on the road. "I don't know." I turned to look at him. There was no heroic speech. No attempt to make himself sound noble. Velvet Eclipse was shut when we arrived, the neon sign dark, the front doors chained. In daylight it looked smaller. Shabbier. Like a stage after the play. My heart sank. "What if nobody's here?" "Someone's here." Terik walked around the side of the building and knocked on a metal door. It opened after a minute. A woman in a cleaning uniform squinted at us, then at me, and recognition flickered across her face. "You were the lady from last night." Her voice softened. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine." It was becoming my favorite lie. I explained everything to her and pleaded if they was a chance they found any phone last night The lady nodded Okay " just wait here let me go and call the manager. "He lives close," she said, then she walked out when she came back. "He will be here in fifteen minutes." We waited by the car. Terik leaned against it with his arms folded, completely at ease. I paced. "You're wearing a hole in the pavement," he said. You worry alot. I glared at him. He didn't even try to hide his smile. The manager arrived in twelve minutes, a heavyset man in his fifties with a ring of keys at his belt and the tired eyes of someone who had seen every kind of bad night. He listened to my story without interrupting. "Phones go missing here every few weeks," he said. "Most end up in lost property." Okay let's check We went inside and the two lady brought out a bag and poured out some phones on the front table I glanced at all of them but I couldn't see my phone there. "Mine isn't there," The lady gathered the phones back and put it inside the bag. "Then let's look at the cameras." He unlocked the door. "Give me a few minutes to pull the footage." Inside, the club was unrecognizable. Last night it had been a roaring, glittering animal. Now the lights were harsh and white, chairs were stacked on tables, and my footsteps echoed across the dance floor. I checked the bar anyway. The stool where I had sat. The floor beneath it. The shelf under the counter. Nothing. Terik searched the lobe without being asked. When he finished, he came and sat across from me at one of the tables. He looked tired Bianca I don't think this phone is here or what do you think I'm suggesting someone took it when I brought it out yesterday.

The manager's office was small and dim, lit mostly by a bank of security monitors. He motioned us in and leaned over a screen. "Last night. Time stamp, twelve thirty-eight." There I was on the grainy footage, alone at the bar with a glass in my hand. My phone lay face down beside it. I watched myself drink, and drink again, and slide off the stool at 12:43, leaving the phone behind. For more than an hour, it sat there alone. Bartenders passed. Customers came and went. Nobody touched it. Then, at 1:20, the crowd thinned. A man in a grey shirt took the stool I had used. He ordered something and paid with a card. He glanced left, then right. His hand dropped to the counter and slid my phone into his pocket in one smooth movement, like he had done it a hundred times. Then he looked up and stared straight into the camera. He held the look for two seconds. Then he walked out. "That's him," Terik said quietly. I turned. "Who?" "The one who grabbed your wrist." My stomach turned over. I looked at the frozen image again. The grey shirt. The jaw. The man who had told me to relax, who had smiled while I said no. "I thought they left that night," Terik said, and for the first time, his voice sounded rough. "I was watching you on the dance floor. I didn't see him come back." "It's not your fault." "Still." The manager rewound the footage and paused it on the stare. "He paid for two drinks at 1:20 with a card," he said. "That gives the police a name. And he looked at the camera like he knew exactly where it was." "Or like he wanted someone to see him," Terik murmured. A chill crawled up my arms. "I'm calling the station," the manager said. "It's theft, and I won't let it slide. An officer can come this afternoon, around two. They'll take your statement and collect the footage. I can't hand it to anyone else." "I don't have a phone for them to call me," I said. "Give them mine," Terik said. I hesitated. He didn't press. He simply waited, and the manager wrote down the number. That was how my phone stopped being a small problem and became a crime. Back at the car, the sun had climbed higher. I felt wrung out, as if someone had squeezed every drop of energy from me. "Do you mind," Terik said, "if I get you a new phone?" I blinked. "What?" "Just until you get yours back. You'll need to reach people." "No." "you don't have to. "I don't take things from strangers." "Strangers?" He raised an eyebrow. "you already knew me. "No," I said again, softer this time. "Thank you. I'll sort myself out." He studied me for a moment, then nodded and let it go. He opened the driver's door, got in, and started the engine. "Where should I drop you?" I hesitated. I didn't know this man. I wasn't going to give him my address. "The junction by the eatery on Harlow Street," I said. "That's close enough to my place. He didn't ask why. He just nodded and drove. For a while, neither of us spoke. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, but my mind was crowded: the phone, the police, I watched the buildings slide past the window until the words came out on their own. "I don't think I've ever told any stranger about myself. But I think I'm going to tell you." Terik glanced at me. "About Henry?" "Both," I said. "Him and me." His eyes returned to the road. "You don't have to if you don't want to." "I know." I sighed. "But I think I need to tell someone." He stayed quiet. That made it easier to begin. "I loved him," I said.