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When I get there, it looks the same from the street. The wooden steps on the worn-out porch creak under my boots when I take them two at a time. For one stupid second, relief loosens my chest. Then I get close enough to see the real estate agent’s lockbox hanging off the front door handle, and that relief drains right back out of me.

I knock anyway, hard enough to rattle the frame, and wait a good minute before I accept nobody's coming to answer it. The porch light's off. There's no wreath on the door anymore, no welcome mat, none of the little touches Carla always had scattered around this place every time I swung by to grab Mason or attended a party.

I cup my hands against the front window and look inside. It's empty and the carpet is freshly vacuumed in the kind of neat rows that only happen right before somebody hands the keys over.

"Fuck!"

I back down the steps and stand in the driveway, staring at the house like it's going to rearrange itself back to normal. I imagine Carla's truck crooked across both spots because she never could be bothered to straighten it out. But even that is empty now. The concrete's clean without so much as an oil stain.

None of this makes sense. Carla was here yesterday. She was here last night, dancing with Troy, hollering about the new year, and blowing kisses at Lainey from across the bar. A woman doesn't empty out a house overnight. She doesn't disconnect her phone number on New Year's Day.

Unless she wasn't planning on being here past last night at all.

I pull my phone back out and stare at the disconnected number still sitting in my call log, like staring hard enough will change what it says. Somewhere between that bar and this empty driveway, Carla packed up an entire house, and Lainey walked out of my apartment without leaving a single word behind. Two things like those can't happen at once. Not in a town this size and not on the same morning.

But they did.

My gut drops further.

Why did nobody think I deserved to know a damn thing about it?

CHAPTER FIVE

Lainey

Earlier at Noon

Sunlight cuts through a gap in the blinds and lands right across my eyes. I groan, rolling away from it, reaching out of habit for the warm body that was wrapped around me for most of the night.

My hand lands on cold sheets.

I crack one eye open, taking stock of the empty space beside me, the dented pillow, and the tangle of blankets. Smiling, I sit up, dragging a hand through hair that's seen better nights, and squint at the clock on the nightstand.

Noon.

Noon? I haven't slept in until noon since college, and even then, only after finals week destroyed me. I sit frozen for a moment, taking in the empty apartment, and an uncomfortable gnawing settles low in my stomach that has nothing to do with hunger.

He's gone.

I shouldn't be surprised.

I glance around the room for some sign, a jacket still slung over a chair, boots by the door, anything that says he stepped out for coffee and he's coming right back. But the room looks exactly the way it did last night, minus one cowboy and every single article of his clothing that had ended up scattered across the floor.

I pull the sheet up around myself and sit straighter, feeling more foolish by the second. Of course he's gone. Men like Jagger don't stick around come morning. I knew that going in, or I should have known it, considering Carla warned me herself he'd flirted with half the county before I ever met him.

My brain went to mush after that midnight kiss.

My throat tightens in embarrassment, but I try to recategorize it. Embarrassment would mean admitting I expected a different scenario from a man I met a few hours before I let him take my dress off against his own front door.

I climb out of bed, pulling the sheet tighter around me. I scan the floor for my clothes, but all I see near the bed is a crumpled receipt.

Probably from takeout he ordered with whoever else was in this bed.

Angry, embarrassed, and disappointed, I kick it farther under the bed and search for my bra. It's near the kitchen, so I put it on. Then I reach for the black dress still pooled by the wall where it landed last night.

Great. Now I get to do the walk of shame.

In the light of the strange apartment, yesterday's outfit makes me feel a little more like a cautionary tale Carla would tell some other friend a few years down the road.