Pidge shrugs. Rolling my eyes, I wander into the kitchen and raid the cupboards. Powdered eggs, frozen potato waffles, a tin of beans, and a can of SPAM are enough for breakfast.
The toilet flushes in the distance and the apartment creaks. By the time I’ve thinly sliced the spam, found an old spray bottle of oil in the cupboard, and warmed the oven for the potato waffles, Rex is back.
“Still clear,” he says as he walks in, speaking loud enough for his voice to reach Pidge in the loud. “Thank god, I’m starving.” As his eyes roam the food I’m preparing to the best of my ability, feet stomp loudly behind him and Aerin appears.
“Are you kidding me?” she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest. “What kind of shitty place did you bring me to this time? I had to pump the toilet twice for it to flush. Ridiculous…” She trails off and stares at Rex with wide eyes, tightening her arms across her chest. “Who are you?”
Rex stares at her, then at me. “Uh…”
“Aerin,” I say carefully, surprised to hear her talking, never mind anything else. “How are you feeling?”
“How am I feeling? Pissed off is how I’m feeling. I mean, what the hell is this?” She plucks at the nightshirt. “I wouldn’t be seen dead in something like this, so why am I wearing it? Did I throw up on my clothes or something because that blouse was expensive and Mom will kill me.”
Confusion mingles through me. She’s the polar opposite to how she was last night. In fact, this is more like the Aerin she was before she left the bar. Rex and I exchange a glance.
“You don’t remember what happened last night?”
She frowns then smirks. “No. I must have had a lot to drink, right? I knew something like this would happen. Giacomo always brags about how Paramattis can hold their drink, and I knew he was lying. Has he passed out somewhere else?”
Aerin doesn’t remember a thing.
17
AERIN
“Why are you staring at me like that?” As I speak, a throbbing pain ignites through my jaw and I wince. “And what happened to my face?” Glancing down at my bare feet, I wiggle my toes while trying to retrace where I could have left my shoes. “Did I fall?”
“Aerin.” Falco’s voice is deeply serious. “What’s the last thing you remember about last night?”
“I…” Casting my mind back, there’s nothing but an empty darkness. Something stirs in my chest, like the last tendrils of a dream fading from thought after waking abruptly.
As hard as I try though, there isn’t anything I remember about last night beyond the bar, and the look on Falco’s face is worrying. “I don’t know.”
“Think.” Falco suddenly steps forward, abandoning the meat sizzling in the pan behind him. “What do you remember?”
“I don’t know… I…did something happen?” My eyes dart between Falco and the stranger who mirrors the worry on Falco’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Think,” Falco insists as he stops in front of me, staring down with dark eyes. “Tell me the last thing you remember.”
“Uh… being at the bar, I think. With you and my brother. And then…” It’s there, hiding just out of sight in my mind, but no matter how I focus I can’t catch any other thoughts in my mind. A pulse of frustration wells in my chest and I shake my head. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“Sit.” Falco takes me by the elbow and guides me into the chair at the kitchen table while the stranger moves to the stove and takes over cooking.
“Falco, you’re scaring me and I don’t like it. Will you just tell me?”
“That’s Rex.” He points to the man by the stove. “He’s a friend of Pidge’s. There’s another man here too, Bullet.”
“What? What kind of name is Bullet?”
“It’s a callsign,” comes a voice from the doorway. The stranger who must be Bullet.
“You’re a soldier? Like Falco?”
“I was,” he replies. “We both were.”
“Wow. I didn’t know you had friends,” I murmur to Falco, who narrows his eyes.
“They’re Pidge’s friends,” he replies.
