Zalea nods and thanks her quickly before rushing out of the room, her iron grip clamping down on my arm as she drags me behind her. I let her pull me all the way out of the gallery, down the cobblestone road, and into an empty narrow alley.
“What in the world are you doing here?” she hisses, finally releasing me.
“I came to find you,” I slide my hands into my pants pockets as I lean forward slowly so that we’re eye level, “little mouse.”
A red flush creeps up her neck to her cheeks as she stares back at me, and I’m flooded with relief to see that nothing has changed with our physical connection.
“One, don’t call me that.” She holds up a finger and jabs it into my chest angrily. “And two, I meant why are you here, in Rome, instead of on the world surf tour with Koa and Maliah?”
“Like I said,” I stand upright, “I came to find you.”
“If I wanted to be found, Gabriel, I would have answered your hundreds of calls and texts,” she seethes. “I don’t want you here.”
The words hurt more than they should, considering it’s not the first time I’ve heard Zalea say them to me.
“Well, tough shit, Red. You decided to disappear without a word to anyone about where you were going, and you don’t even have the decency to answer anyone’s calls or texts.”
“I don’t owe anyone?—”
“Yes, you do,” I interrupt, feeling my grip on my anger slipping. “You do owe us, Zalea. The people that care about you? The ones that worry the most when you disappear and ignore our calls? You owe it to us to let us know you’re okay, at the bare minimum.”
She scoffs, taking a step back from me as she crosses her arms and narrows her eyes angrily. “Well, Gabriel, you’ve seen for yourself that I’m fine. You can relay the message to everyone else for me, but I still don’t want you here.”
“I’m not your messenger.”
“No,” she spits, “you’re just my stalker.”
She spins on her heel and stomps off, leaving me feeling like I’ve just been slapped. Zalea has always had a vipers tongue when she’s gotten angry, but it’s been so long since she’s used it on me that I’d forgotten how jarring it can be.
Before I can follow after her, my phone pings with the Surf Tour ringtone and I pull it out to see what Koa and Maliah placed. I’m horrified to see that they dropped from first place to sixth. I pull up the recorded stream of their heats, seeing that it’s Maliah that screwed them over today.
I video call Koa immediately, getting more pissed by the second until he answers.
“Are you guys fucking kidding me?” I yell, running my hand through my hair for the hundredth time since stepping out of my ice cold shower without being able to wash my hair. “From first to sixth? That must be a record place drop.”
Koa looks on edge as he looks at Maliah who’s tensed next to him, avoiding looking at the phone.
“The waves were really tough today, Gabriel,” Koa says, and maybe on a normal day I’d let the excuse slide, but after getting chewed up by Zalea only moments ago I’m not in the mood to hear anything other than the facts.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” I shout. “I watched Maliah miss key sections in waves which could have been a huge opportunity to rack up points with a solid maneuver. She even lost her balance during a crucial cutback; she threw the whole thing.”
Maliah lowers her head even more, and she’s almost completely out of frame at this point, but she stays quiet, which pisses me off even more.
“I don’t know why you tried so hard to make it into this championship tour if you’re just going to throw it away like it doesn’t matter,” I spit.
“It does matter,” she shouts back at me, her voice cracking.
I’m left speechless when I see her face crumple and tears begin trickling down her face. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Maliah cry, and now I feel like an absolute dick for taking out my frustrations from my conversation with Zalea out on her.
“We’ll talk later,” Koa says abruptly, hanging up on me without so much as a bye, and I don’t blame him.
I took it too far. I’ll have to apologize to her when we talk next and make up for it somehow. With a heavy sigh, I leave the alley and look around to see if Zalea is still here, but she’s long gone.
“Ah, theproblemman,” a voice says behind me, and when I turn around I find the woman she was speaking with earlier. She holds out her hand to me. “Giovanna Colonna.”
I take it, surprised by her strong grip as we shake hands. “Gabriel Matthews.”
“Your friend left in quite a hurry a moment ago,” she says, releasing her grip on me. “I hope everything is alright.”
