AS MUCH FUN AS IT WAS to have all her model friends around Vegas for the days that Damon was gone, it was also exhausting with all the work Trihn had to do. She had stayed up late into the night and gotten up early every morning just to try to finish her papers while working on this project.
It hadn’t hurt that Damon called every morning and every night before she went to bed to fill her in on what was happening. It’d sounded like a long, tedious process, but he’d said, other than one hiccup, everything had been running smoothly, as planned.
He was supposed to come home in the morning, and she was all jittery ready to see him. She knew he finished in the studio around ten at night on a late day, so she was sitting around the house working on one of her papers and waiting for his call.
Bryna and Stacia were wandering around the house in short cut dresses and dancing to a playlist Stacia had put together on Spotify.
“Trihn,” Stacia cried, “come on! Dance party!”
Trihn looked up at them over the top of her MacBook. “As much as I’d love to, I have work to do.”
“All work and no play makes you as bitchy as Bryna,” Stacia said.
“Hey, I’m queen bitch. Trihn is just a moody, angsty, serious bitch. There’s a big difference. I was born this fabulous,” Bryna said.
“I’m not bitchy. I’m just the only person in this house who cares about my education.”
Stacia laughed. “We all care…sort of.”
Bryna cracked up. “Come on. It’s Friday. Let’s go to Posse and have a drink. Maya is working, and you could probably stand to get out of the house.”
“I’d love to, but I’m going to pass.”
“You can’t just sit around and wait for Damon to call,” Bryna said. She crossed her arms over her chest and fixed her quintessential stare on Trihn. “And don’t try to deny that’s what you’re doing.”
“Fine. That’s what I’m doing. I’m that girl. But he’ll be coming home tomorrow, and then I won’t be freaking out anymore.”
“Or you could just trust him,” Bryna said.
Trihn closed her eyes and counted to ten. “I do trust him. I just miss him.”
“We both know you well enough to know that you’re worried,” Stacia said, taking the seat next to Trihn.
“And we think it’s in your best interests to get out of the house. Damon isn’t Neal,” Bryna said. “There’s really no reason for you to be so stressed.”
“I don’t think he’s like Neal,” she said. “In fact, maybe he’s the opposite of Neal. I just want Damon to be home.”
“Well, he won’t be home until the morning. So, a party it is,” Stacia said. “Plus, everyone is going out tonight—the whole football team and all the cheerleaders. We only have a week until nationals, and the guys are playing their spring game the weekend we get back.”
“So, you want me to go and hang out with your boyfriends—”
“Whoa! I don’t have a boyfriend,” Stacia said automatically.
“And, well, Eric is worried about you moping around here,” Bryna added.
“No,” Trihn said. “Maybe I’ll go out after Damon’s call, but I have to pick him up early in the morning, so I wouldn’t want to be out late anyway.”
Bryna sighed. “Fine. He’d better call soon then.”
They walked back to their rooms to finish getting ready.
Trihn whispered under her breath, “Yeah, he’d better.”
It was one o’clock in the morning when Trihn’s phone rang.
She had given up on even the semblance of getting work done. Her computer was sitting half-open with Facebook winking up at her. Her design notebook was flipped to a blank page. Her imagination had run away with her but not toward her creative endeavors.
All she had thought about was the time she had waited up all day and night for Preston to call her back and how she had so easily swallowed his bullshit the next day. He’d been at work. He’d been so busy. He’d fallen asleep at his desk.
Yeah, right.
She should have seen it then. He’d been with someone else. The devastating part, of course, was that the someone else had been Lydia, but it would have been just as hard if it were anyone else.
As she reached for her phone, she had a horrible sinking feeling of déjà vu.
“Hello?” Trihn said.
“Trihn!” Damon called into the phone.
She yanked the phone back from her ear. It was insanely loud on the other end of the phone. Music slammed into her ear, and Damon was practically yelling to be heard over the noise.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, love. I’m out at a nightclub with Chloe and some of the production crew. They wanted to celebrate finishing up the album. I was going to call you when I got back to the hotel, but then time just ran away from me.”
“It’s almost one in the morning,” she said.
“I know. I looked down at my phone, saw the time, and freaked out. I hope you weren’t worried.”