The text came through right after Meredith finished her round of hugs. We were in VIP seats at the bar, ready for the surprise drinks she was mixing up for us.
Meredith’s bar was the perfect spot to wind down our night, because I could tell that Wes and Claudia were barely holding on thanks to the jet lag. We’d enjoyed amazing food and easy conversation. Ending up in the bar’s soft-focus mood lighting felt right.
My phone danced across the tile surface. It was late enough in the evening that ithadto be Kai. My hands went sweaty as I glanced over at Owen. His eyes flicked to me quickly like he could feel it too, then refocused on Claudia as she described her meet-cute with Wes.
I grabbed my phone and flipped it over. Would Wes and Kai get along? Would Owen leave the moment he heard Kai was coming? What would Claudia think about me once I introduced a guy who was definitely not a part of a love triangle?
I shook my head. No. Inviting Kai to join our perfect little foursome felt wrong on so many levels. Even though it was what I’d wanted, it wasn’t what I wanted inthismoment.
I was so busy trying to pre-navigate how I was going to respond without burning bridges that it took me a few seconds to see that the message was from building management, not Kai.
Hold on. There’d been afire?
A window air-conditioning unit had malfunctioned and sparked into a fire on the floor below us. More specifically, theapartmentbelow us, the complainers, and thanks to themand “an abundance of caution,” we weren’t allowed back in our apartment until they tested the structural integrity of their ceiling and our floor.
“Mere,fuck!” I frowned at her, holding up my phone. “There was a fire at our place! Check your phone; they said we can’t go back to the building tonight.”
Wes and Owen stopped talking abruptly, and Meredith fished her phone out of her back pocket.
“No,” she moaned. “Notnow. I don’t want to have to move right as I’m about to sign a lease for my studio.”
She wasn’t quite at that stage yet, but she was speaking it into existence.
“How bad is it?” Owen asked, sounding worried.
I reread the text. “There’s not much detail. It sounds like they evacuated the building in time and no one was hurt. Let me jump on the building message board for the real story.”
Meredith was called away to serve a group of girls dressed as Guy Fieri, something that would normally crack her up, but she barely managed a smile.
I navigated to the world’s most passive-aggressive message board, where people with too much time on their hands complained about everything from the mail delivery to tenants who had the nerve to fry food in the privacy of their apartment.
“So?” Wes asked, his brow furrowed.
“Someone posted photos. It’s not incinerated or anything, but I’m sure it reeks of smoke.”
The blurry picture was taken from the hallway and showed the blackened wall and ceiling across from the open front door.
I handed Wes my phone, and after he frowned at the image, he handed it to Owen, who then passed it to Claudia.
“This absolutely fuckingsucks,” Meredith said as she came back to our end of the bar. “It better not be major damage.”
My phone chimed again.
This time it was Kai.
Hey, where are you? We just finished dinner.
It was after ten, and thanks to the fire, I was in no mind to even think about trying to meet.
“I can stay at Colton’s, but what about you guys?” Meredith asked.
I tried catching her eye, to let her know that fate had the worst timing ever, but she was rightfully caught up trying to figure out how to deal with being temporarily homeless.
I placed my phone face down on the bar. He’d waited until late to reach out; he could wait a few more minutes as we figured out what the hell we were going to do.
Suddenly, connecting with Kai didn’t matter.
“I guess we can get a hotel?” I offered.
