hello, goodbye, hello.

Chapter 15: A Window of Opportunity

Hey! This is the one and only, EJ Caswell. Sorry I'm too busy being extremely hot and popular to answer your call right now, but feel free to leave a message for me to ignore.

Beep.

Three things were very out of the ordinary this morning.

The first being that Gina usually found EJ's facade cockiness to be endearing. Today, his voice mail message was nothing short of demeaning.

Secondly, Gina wasn't one to double text or redial when her calls went unanswered. This morning, She had three unanswered calls to EJ and a triple-text good morning message yet to be read.

Naturally, she had decided to check on EJ at his house. It's not that she was trying to be overbearing, but after last night, she was concerned about him, and rightfully so.

Gina's unordinary morning reached its trifecta when she pulled up to the Caswell house to the sight someone climbing out of a second story window. The mystery person shimmied out legs first. They then sidled along the mansard of a first story window, but lost their balance, and fell about five feet, rather ungracefully, into the rhododendron bushes below. They popped up out of the bushes moments later, seemingly unharmed, and ran off through the neighborhood.

To say that Gina was shocked was an understatement. The room that the mystery person had exited from was EJ's bedroom window and she was almost certain EJ would've opted for the front door.

Gina drew up two possible conclusions:

One, A burglar had broken into the house and escaped and she should call the police.

or

Two, EJ had someone over last night, they had to sneak out, and she should be furiously knocking on the front door right now to confront him about it.

Deciding that, in either scenario, she probably take on the related outcome, Gina stepped out of her car and stomped up to the front door.

She rang the doorbell and could hear a long, ceremonious chime from inside. Moments later, a stout, grey haired old man answered the door. It was Reilly, the Caswell's totally-not-a-butler 'personal assistant'.

"Good morning Ms. Porter." Reilly said seeing Gina at the door. "What brings you here on this fine morning?"

Probably not a robber then. Gina thought.

"Hi Reilly, Can I speak to Ej please?"

🌼🌼🌼

About ten minutes ago...

Hi! You've reached Big Red. Well I guess you haven't reached me, because I didn't pick up, and also I probably didn't have to say my name, you called me and you probably know who I am. Anyway, sorry I missed your call, leave message and I'll get back to you soon! Unless this is Ashlyn, in which case, I am SO sososososososo sorry for missing your call baby! I-

Beep.

Three things were very out of the ordinary this morning.

The first, and most obvious, is that Ricky has woken up in EJ's bed, pitching a tent, and no real clue about what had happened last night.

Secondly, Ricky had several strange texts from Big Red. 'Where did you go?', 'Hey it's okay, we can talk about this.' , 'Are you okay? It's storming really bad, please call me!' just to name a few. And now Red wasn't answering his phone.

Finally, He had just seen EJ running out of the room, half naked with terrified look on his face, and Ricky just heard the shower come on. Maybe EJ just thought he smelled really bad or something, but he had never seen someone rush to the shower so fast.