Chance Encounters

fourteen

Dedicated to Ish because she's a lovely person, not just because her comments always make me smile but also because of everything else. Thank you so much <3

Chapter 14

As soon as we finished eating the garlic toasts Aunt Rosie had prepared for us, we borrowed their phone. It was an old Nokia model, something Mom had brought for Aunt Rosie a few years back, just to have some way of contacting them other than the landline, and I was surprised to see that they had enough credit for a few calls.

First, we called the number on Hunter's collar. The dog paid no attention to us he just lay there on the carpet, looking lazy and bored as Austin recited the digits to me.

A deep male voice answered on the third ring. "Hello?"

"Hi," I said, looking directly at Hunter. "My friend and I ran across a dog on the streets earlier. This number was written on the collar." 

There was some rustling over the line. "Oh, thank goodness."

I made Austin get a pen and a scrap of paper he had conveniently found from a notepad on the coffee table so we could write the address down, but instead the man volunteered to send her daughters out to fetch the dog instead. We gave him this address and he thanked us for the call.

After ending the call, I repeated the conversation to Austin, who simply shrugged okay.

"Are you calling the Idiots next?" he asked me.

I gave him a look. "Who else?"

Since Austin didn't have any idea what Lewis's number was, I dialed my phone number instead. I've had the same number for three years now and I knew it almost by heart now. After pressing call, I pressed the phone to my ear. I wasn't quite sure how I could keep myself from yelling at her the moment she answered the call, but after a few rings, it became clear to me that I didn't have to worry about that anytime soon.

She wasn't picking up.

"Fuck."

Austin looked away from a photo he was looking at. "What?"

"She's not answering." I redialed the number.

I almost always put my phone on silent mode and I could see how Tori, who always had her phone in the loudest volume because she hardly noticed things like these, could have missed the call. Or maybe she was too busy doing who knows what.

Austin shifted closer. "Still not answering?"

"Gee, what do you think?"

He narrowed his eyes and looked away with a disgruntled eye-roll.

I tried a few more times, only growing more and more frustrated as the phone kept ringing. I cursed under my breath, making Austin raise his eyebrows at me. When I glared at him, he dropped his gaze but didn't comment.

After thirteen more tries, I gave up and suppressed the urge to hurl the phone and throw it against the wall. Seething, I tossed it on the couch instead.

"Why don't you fucking calm down?"

I turned to Austin. "How can I calm down when—"

"Then be angry at your best friend, not at me."

"I'm not angry at you," I spat.

"Right," he replied with a glare of his own.

We continued to stare each other down, both of us fed up with the whole night. Neither of us dared to look away, as if that would prove anything.