“I’ve tried calling her back,” Jamie says, “but it’s gone through to voicemail each time.” He tucks the phone back in his pocket.
Knowing that Sybil has called Jamie is a huge relief and sparks a renewed sense of optimism. If she’s willing to reach out to Jamie, maybe she’ll be willing to reach out to us soon. And we can get this whole debacle sorted in plenty of time for the rehearsal dinner tomorrow. I just need to eke out a few more hours… “We’re supposed to meet up at a club to go dancing, but she might’ve already beat us there.” The lie comes out almost too easily, and the guilt follows almost immediately.
Jamie runs his hands through his hair. “I’m glad she’s getting a chance to blow off steam, but you know, usually when Sybil takes off to party like this, it’s because she’s upset about something.” I’m struck by how on the nose his statement is. Nikki and I both nod in unison, and I wonder if the guilt at lying to Jamie is eating at her the way it’s eating at me. Looking at Jamie’s face, I understand why Nikki wasn’t able to tell him the truth that likely Sybil has run off. There’s an earnestness in his dark eyes, concern in the slope of his brows. He runs a hand through his wavy hair, mussing it up in a way that makes him look a bit like an absent-minded professor, or an exasperated hot young dad. Which is just so classic Jamie. He is in every way a great guy, and Sybil deserves someone great. The full weight of what’s at stake bears down on me. Jamie truly loves Sybil, and I know Sybil loves him too. We have recorded proof in Jamie’s voicemailinbox. Two lives could be ruined if we don’t get this figured out.
“Let me tell Dan and Vittal that we’re going to a club,” Jamie says.
“Oh, you want to come?” Nikki’s voice is an octave higher than normal.
“Sybil is always saying I need to go out dancing more.”
“Um…” I look at Nikki, but twelve hours into our Sybil safari, we’ve finally run out of ways to divert Jamie.
“Why don’t we let the girls catch up, while you and I go to the Kuzmin-Ibarra fight? Can I have my tickets, Emma?” Finn’s hand is warm on my shoulder.
“Oh, yeah, of course.” I rummage through my bag and hand Finn two rumpled tickets for the fight tonight.
“Man, are you sure? I mean, I’d much rather go to that fight than a club.” Jamie turns to me. “You don’t think Sybil will mind?”
“Not at all!” I say too cheerfully. “I’ll let her know we’re meeting up later.”
Finn leans closer to me, his hand on the small of my back, and I shiver as his lips brush against my ear. “If there’s no sign of Sybil by the time the fight’s over, you’ve got to tell the guy the truth. Deal?”
I swallow and nod my head. “Deal.”
Finn and Jamie head back inside, and I text Willow an update so Sybil’s parents can relax.
“I’m so relieved Sybil’s okay,” I say.
“Okay-ish, I would say.” Nikki reapplies her lip gloss using the mirror of a Rolls-Royce Wraith that the casino valet has left parked front and center.
“I wish she would just talk to us.”
“Me too,” Nikki says, popping the tube back into her bag and scanning me from head to toe. “So. I see you’ve taken the opportunity of Sybil’s vanishing to go shopping?”
I laugh. “I had to. Finn made me spill coffee down my shirt.”
“Oh, I see. He has an awfully bad history with your shirts, doesn’t he?”
“Ha ha.” I start marching away from the casino and from the memory that comes rushing back. Finn and I pressed into a ratty old lounge chair on the rooftop of my New York City apartment. My legs parted around him, my shirt hanging open, missing a button from where it came undone just a little too hastily… Another moment that I’d only told Nikki about. I can’t seem to stop myself from trying to climb Finn like a tree.
She catches up with me and asks, “Seriously, how has today been? It seems like y’all were getting close to a happy ending.” Nikki waggles her eyebrows at me, but before I can respond, we’re briefly separated by a pack of tourists following a tour guide holding a polka-dot umbrella aloft as a beacon. When the stream of people has passed, Nikki links her arm with mine and continues her line of questioning. “I know this whole thing was your idea, but Ihadbeen worried about you—stuck in the car with Finn all day. Though from the look of things in the elevator, it seems like y’all have worked out your issues.”
“That was…” I pause. “I don’t know what that was,” I admit. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel…”Out of control. Happy. Obsessed. Confused.Like I always end up feeling when it comes to Finn.
A pang of longing for Sybil hits me. As much as I loveNikki, she’s an analyzer like me. She’s great when I want someone to parse indecipherable dating app communications with, or someone to help me break down every pro and con of getting balayage at my next hair appointment. But sometimes, I just need to get out of my own head. And Sybil has always been there to help me with that. “Come on, let’s go check at the MGM.”
Nikki looks like she wants to say something more, but she lets the Finn thing drop and allows me to guide us through the throngs of people.
We zigzag down the Strip, crossing occasionally to the other side of the street, trying to mimic the ping-ponging of Sybil’s earlier movements, but our journey is slow, the sidewalks packed with all manner of humanity—tourists, vendors hawking T-shirts, people dressed in character costumes, breakdancers performing right in the middle of the crowded pathway. We struggle to get a cell signal for Find My Friends, so instead we show Sybil’s picture to people as we pass, but no one seems to recognize her—not that I can blame them. Every face I’ve seen tonight has blended together from the sheer sensory overload that is Vegas. When we get service, we try her phone a couple of times each, but it just rings and rings before going to voicemail. After forty-five minutes of this, it’s becoming all too clear that trying to locate Sybil in this city is like trying to find a small blond needle in a Technicolor-neon haystack. Traffic is bumper to bumper, but the stream of taillights just adds to the cheerfulness of the lights flashing off buildings and billboards. One billboard announces a Miranda Lambert show, which reminds me—“Remember that year when Sybil disappeared at Stagecoach?”
“We finally tracked her down on a bus with half of the Turnpike Troubadours.” Nikki smiles and leans over the rail of the pedestrian bridge where we’ve stopped.
“The fun half.”
“Yeah,” Nikki agrees. “Sybil always knows where to find the fun.”
“Once, when we lived in New York together, she went out to pick up our falafel order and was gone for hours. I found her singing showtunes with the cast ofWickedat the piano bar next door.
