He pulls himself up short in front of me and shimmies back and forth again—this must be his signature move—and he wiggles down the length of my body until he’s squatting on the floor. Then he falls over.
Mrs. Hobbes screams, and I bend down to him.
“A little help?” he cries, clutching his back.
Someone cuts the music. I hold my arms out to him and try to help him stand, but Magic Matt screeches in pain.
“My back!”
I look around, wondering what to do, and Kya jumps up onstage with me.
“It’s better if I can lie flat!” Magic Matt bellows.
Kya kneels on the other side of him, and I support his head enough to keep it from banging against the floor as he stretches out. My party crowd thins. Blaire comes back with an employee, maybe a manager, who calls for an ambulance.
The employee—a muscle-bound man whose tight black T-shirt struggles to contain the sculpted ridges straining to break free of the fabric and who would have been far better suited to Magic Matt’s job than Magic Matt is—shakes his head. “I thought you said you were better, Angus.”
“I thought his name was Matt,” I whisper to Kya.
“Matt’s his show business name,” the manager tells me.
Because this guy is someone who really needs a show business name.
“I was better!” Matt-Angus yells.
“Obviously.” The manager talks to someone through his headset then turns to Blaire. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any other dancers. And the paramedics are going to have to come through here any minute. You all can go out on the main floor, but your private party is over for tonight.”
Blaire nods. I’m proud of her for not arguing. And for not trying to dig up a replacement stripper for our replacement stripper. But maybe she’s only pretending to be understanding because she’s making eyes at the manager, and I’m wondering if she’s going to use him to make the new guy at work, Troy from Sports, jealous—she’s been trying to get his attention lately. Or if attractive Mr. Manager is already becoming her own personal main stage show.
The paramedics arrive, and Kya and I watch Matt-Angus get loaded onto a gurney while Blaire flirts with the manager. All of the other guests have fled the party, and I wonder whether they’ve disappeared into the crowd in the main room to enjoy the show or if they’ve given up and gone home. I feel certain Mrs. Hobbes is out there whooping it up. She’s surprisingly hard-core.
Kya’s phone rings loudly in the now-quiet room, and she answers it. “Hey! Yeah.” Her casual, familiar tone says it’s Tarek. But then she does something that raises all my Kya-alerts to high. She looks me in the eye, looks away, and then turns one hundred eighty degrees around so her back is to me.
Her voice drops, but I can still make out what she’s saying. “Yes, she’s here. Yeah. With Blaire and me.” Big pause. “She’s going to wonder why we’re not going together. Uh huh. Yeah. Um. Oooooh.”
I creep up on Kya. “What’s he saying?”
She jumps and shoots me a guilty look. “Nothing.”
Oh, it’s something. Worry gnaws my insides with giant woodchuck teeth. “Give me the phone.”
“No.” She turns back around and hunches over. “No, it’s Marissa. I know! I know! Of course not. I—”
“Let me talk to him.” I try to angle around her, but she pivots so her back remains toward me. We end up turning in a complete circle with me still unable to face her or grab the phone. The woodchuck of fear in my stomach is growing into a grizzly bear.
Finally I resort to grade school tactics. I tap Kya on her left shoulder and, as she turns away, I come at her from the opposite direction and pluck the phone from her right hand.
“Hey!” Her expression is so panicked that liquid dread drips into my gut. I put the phone to my ear. Tarek is still talking.
“Just keep her busy for as long as possible and act normal until I fix this.”
“Fix what, Tarek?” I ask.
“Shit.”
Big pause. My heart slams against my rib cage in the silence.
“Hello? Tarek?”
A labored sigh on his end. Kya’s watching me, her eyes large with fear. She has given up on getting the phone and is instead chewing her fingernails.
“I’m here,” he says at last in a toneless voice. I can picture him swallowing and looking off in the distance, his strong jaw clenched against the words I want to yank out of him.
“What’s going on? How is everyone?”
“Fine. It’s fine. Everyone is beyond great. Really great.” His voice, which is strained at first, becomes falsely bright. “And you guys, huh? How’s your night going? I know Ky got some hot guy lined up to strip for you all. How’s that going?”
“Um…good. It didn’t go exactly as she planned, I think, but it’s been a nice night.” I glance at Kya. She smiles and nods encouragingly. But with visible fear. Like you’d smile at someone who was figure skating at the Olympics but was just about to skate into the wall.
“That’s wonderful. See! You’ve got lots of things in your life to live for.” He gives a small cough.
A chill climbs up my spine despite the heat of the room. “Tarek, what the hell? What’s going on? Has Liam had a heart attack? Is he hurt? In the hospital? Tell me right now.” I squeeze Kya’s phone so hard I think it will crack and break in my hand.
Tarek takes a deep breath and exhales so slowly I have time to breathe in and out three times before he speaks. “Duchess. No, he’s fine. I just sort of…lost him.”
I laugh, relieved beyond measure. The grizzly bear slashing worry in my belly calms. “Is that all? He’s got his phone on him, right? When he sobers up I’m sure he’ll GPS his way home.” It had just better be in time for the ceremony tomorrow.
Tarek doesn’t laugh.
The worry starts gnawing again.
“Tarek?”
“I’m here.”
I shake my head at whatever he’s not saying and a strand of hair falls over my eyes. I tuck it behind my ear. “Just how did Liam get lost? What aren’t you telling me? Was he kidnapped?” I pause, thinking. Will I have to come up with ransom money? I do the math between my checking and savings accounts and what Liam has put away that he thinks I don’t know about.
“Not…really.” I can picture the grimace on his face—an expression I’ve seen every time he’s had to do something he doesn’t want to do since he was eleven years old.
I grit my teeth and grind out some words. “Tarek. Tell me right now what the hell is going on with my fiancé.”
“Rissa…he…” Tarek swallows, and I swear to myself the next time I see him I’m going to wring his neck for keeping me in suspense. “He ran away with a stripper.”
I laugh, my worries popping and disappearing like soda bubbles. “Very funny, Tarek. Since when do they have strippers at Topgolf?”
“We didn’t go to Topgolf. We went to a strip club.”
My gut freezes. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not joking, Duchess. I wish I were.” There’s a plaintive quality to his tone that reaches through the phone and grabs me by the throat, convincing me Tarek’s telling the truth. He sounds like he did the day he broke his arm riding his skateboard and I stayed with him while Kya ran to get my mom. He was so hurt, he could only be real. He’s like that now, only at this moment, he’s hurting for me.