Page 43 of The Tenant
Perfect fiancé. You can do this.
Krista enters the brownstone, her strawberry-blond hair pinned on top of her head, smelling vaguely of dry-cleaning chemicals. She looks great though. The smile that spreads across her face when she sees me makes me realize that we are going to be okay as a couple. Whitney will not rip us apart.
“You don’t have to stand on my account,” Krista teases me.
“Of course I do.” I cross the room to take her warm body into my arms. “I missed you.”
She giggles. “I haven’t been gone very long.”
“Yet I still missed you.”
She tilts her head to smile up at me. I love it when she looks up at me like that. “I’m sorry I was late. You got my text?”
I didn’t. Usually, my phone dinging with a text message wakes me when I have drifted off. I pat my pockets, feeling for my phone, and it’s not there. I glance over at the coffee table, where I often leave it when I’m watching television, but it’s not there either.
“Shit.” I dig deeper in my pockets. “Where’s my phone?”
“In the bedroom?”
“Probably.” Except I’m sure I had it downstairs. I remember checking the reviews of a few restaurants for tonight. “Let me go check. But after I find it, we’re going out to dinner.”
Her eyes light up. “I was hoping you would say that. Anywhere special?”
I grin at her. “Make sure you dress up.”
She loves to dress up. Krista and I are going to be okay. That fish ordeal was just a blip.
I go upstairs to look for my phone, and Krista follows me to change into something nice (and hopefully sheer and sexy) for dinner. When I reach the bedroom, my phone isn’t readily visible. I usually keep it on the nightstand, which is where I keep my charger, but it’s not there. It’s not on my dresser either. I even yank the blankets off the bed, searching the sheets, but there’s no sign of my phone.
“What the hell?” I mutter. “Where did it go?”
Krista whips out her own phone. “Do you want me to call it?”
“Yeah, you better.”
I’m the first listed contact on Krista’s phone. She hits the button to dial my number, and after a second, I hear ringing. At least my phone is definitely in the house.
But the ringing is distant. Is it coming from downstairs? Maybe I left it in the kitchen, which would make sense since I’m certain I used it downstairs.
Except when I get out of the bedroom, following the sound of my ringtone, it’s clear the sound is not coming from downstairs. I raise my eyes to look skyward.
It’s coming from upstairs. The third floor.
27
The ringing continuesfor another second before the phone goes to voicemail. But it’s obvious to both of us where the sound was coming from.
Krista stares at me. “Why is your phoneupstairs?”
“I…I don’t know.”
I stride down the hallway and up the narrow flight of stairs to get to the third floor. The light isn’t on under Whitney’s door, which means she’s out, although I’m certain she was still here when I went downstairs earlier. I grab the doorknob.
“We shouldn’t go in there without her permission,” Krista says anxiously.
“Screw that,” I say. “What’s my phone doing in there?”
Before Krista can protest again, I turn the knob and shove the door open hard enough that the door slams against the wall. The room looks about the same as it did last time I was here, when I impulsively threw the rotting fruit onto her bed. The only difference is that this time, the bed isn’t made.
