Prologue
Andrew
All that remainedat the party were Elise’s friends. I was polite and stayed outside with the women and laughed along at the funny parts of their stories. I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket and was eager to step inside and take the call.
“Excuse me,” I quietly announced while holding my phone up. I thought it was polite to show them why I was quickly leaving the roundtable discussion of handbag quality and duster bags; whatever the fuck those were.
As I rounded the scattered seats, I glanced down at my phone and saw it was James calling. I hoped everything was okay, but I was worried about Bran when they left a while ago.
“Babe, who is it?” Elise turned and glared at me.
“James.” I held my phone up for her to see and then pulled the sliding glass door open.
“Didn’t he just leave?” Elise snapped.
No. He left over two hours ago, but you were too involved in the conversation about sunglasses to notice.
“I’ll be right back,” I said loud enough for her to hear me. As soon as I stepped inside the quiet house and closed the sliding door, I answered the phone. “Hello.”
“Andrew, I apologize for calling during your housewarming party,” James began.
“No, it’s okay. What’s up? How is Brandon?”
“Well, it appears he bolted on me.”
“What? He ran away? As in, literally on foot?”
“Unfortunately, it would seem so.”
I hurried to our room and put my wallet in my back pocket while I told James that I was going to help him look for Brandon. We went back and forth a little bit, but I told him like it or not, I was coming to help. I felt like Brandon and I had become good friends, and I had taken him under my wing like a little brother. Whether James was ready to admit it or not, it was obvious he loved Brandon. Of course I was going to help James look for him.
I ended the call with James, grabbed my car key, and headed out to the patio. I saw Elise coming toward the sliding glass door with a bowl in her hand, and I jogged over to open the door for her.
“Thank you,” she huffed and brushed by me.
“Hey, so Brandon is missing, and I’m going to go help—”
“What do you mean he’s missing?” Elise let the bowl drop loudly on the counter. Her hands were in loose fists on the counter as her eyes burned into mine.
“They got home, James went to change, and Brandon left,” I explained. “Anyhow, I’m going to—”
“What a fucked-up kid. He’s a whack,” she mumbled and turned her back on me to reach into the fridge to get another bowl of fruit salad.
“Brandon’s not a whack, Elise.”
She turned around and tossed the bowl onto the counter. Her eyebrows were raised as if she wholeheartedly disagreed with my comment about Brandon, which pissed me off.
“The jury is still out on that one, Andrew. There’s something wrong with that guy if he’s running away like a juvenile.”
“Elise, have a little sympathy and try to understand—”
“What, Andrew? Here’s what I understand—you want to leave our housewarming party to go help James make little ‘have you seen me’ posters out of construction paper and markers. All the way up to snob-ville Malibu.”
“Elise—”
“Whatever, Andrew. Go pin posters on streetlights.”
I took a deep breath and walked toward her.
