Chapter 18 Naomi #2
“That’s good. Now, what do we do if she doesn’t answer? Do you know where she is? Is she reachable, or do you have the contact info of someone who can reach her?”
“I have her address. She’s a twenty-minute drive from me.”
“So would you want to go to her?”
I chewed my lip for a moment, debating, but it was an admittedly short debate. “Yeah. Five minutes, then call, and if she doesn’t answer, we go check on her in person.”
“Sounds like a plan. Do you want me to come with you? Or is this something private?”
“No, no, come with me, please. Honestly, it’ll be good to have someone else there just in case—” I cut myself off, the fear of jinxing the situation combined with the worry of being overdramatic mixing together to form an entirely new insecurity I had to kick to the curb.
“In case you need me,” Rowan finished gently before coaxing me into a hug. “Being prepared isn’t the same as wishing it into existence. I understand. Let’s hope this conversation is all for nothing, but if it’s not, at least we’ll be prepared to help your friend no matter what.”
“Yeah, at least that.”
Rowan did his best to distract me for the five minutes, which were excruciating. But when no text message came in, my finger was ready on the call button at four minutes, fifty-nine seconds.
I chewed my lips as the phone took forever to connect the call, but when it did, it went straight to voicemail, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
Well, shit.
“Are we going?” Rowan asked, his pale eyebrows raised in concern.
“We’re going,” I confirmed.
“All right.”
I allowed myself one more split second to feel relief that I had such an understanding boyfriend, but then I focused, and we were out the door.
For the second time in a very short span, I was rushing to rescue someone who was incredibly important to me.
Well, maybe rushing to rescue. Although I was very focused on driving safely, considering I was pushing it with my speed, I couldn’t help but think about how unsafe it was that both Rowan and Tweety’s only real lifeline in emergency situations was me.
And while my boyfriend did have his incredibly close relationship with Iko, I imagined a blind cyclops couldn’t exactly rush there with a car, and he didn’t seem to have much of a support system either.
That simply wasn’t safe. What if I was hurt when they needed me? Or not available for some reason? Everyone deserved to know that they had at least a handful of people they could count on to come swinging in to help during an emergency.
And how many other folks like us had no one? Not a Naomi, not a Rowan, not a Carolina or Iko. How many were so utterly alone that when life got hard, they just got… gone?
A sobering thought, and one I lingered on right until I peeled into a parking spot in front of Tweety’s apartment building. From then on, my entire mind was focused on getting to her apartment.
“It’s going to be okay,” Rowan soothed from beside me, step in lock with mine. “You’re here now, and even if it’s just a silly miscommunication, we can take her out to dinner to make up for it.”
I didn’t know how to tell him that in all of our years of being friends, I’d never once seen Tweety outside of video calls. Wasn’t the time. I punched in the code she’d given me for the front hall, then made a beeline for the elevator.
After about one lifetime of waiting for the rickety thing to arrive, and then another very fraught lifetime of standing in it while it rose with far too many shuddering protests, we were finally on Tweety’s floor.
And, well, it wasn’t what I was expecting.
I knew from our handful of calls over the years that Tweety’s place was modest. A one-bedroom instead of a two-bed like mine, and her dining room was more of a little bit of extra space in the kitchen for a breakfast nook than anything else, but it came with a balcony, which was pretty important for a grounded harpy who needed mental and physical stimulation from the high air.
But for as lovely as Tweety had made the inside, the outside was kind of a dump.
Not that I was judging, I just wish I’d known.
The hallway floor had carpet that once might have been a stunning red and blue, but now was either a faded salmon, a washed-out gray, with many stains that occupied the entire gross-rainbow.
As if that wasn’t enough, there were sunken parts in some areas and enough bumps that if I looked down the corridor and squinted, the floor made a wave.
The walls weren’t much better. There was wallpaper, but it was so aged that it was mostly yellow, and whatever pattern it had once had was so faded and sun-bleached, you could barely see it.
Some sections looked like someone had started to paint over it only to give up after a few feet of wall, and that paint was both chipping and cracking, leaving the entire place looking very, very worn.
“Landlord should be doing some work here,” Rowan remarked without any judgment.
And I couldn’t help but agree. When I’d first moved out of my family home into a room for rent—AKA someone’s basement—it was a dump, but I’d been so glad to be free that it was worth it.
But the idea of Carolina and so many others paying the highest rent that they could afford only for their slumlords to let the building fall into such disrepair…
Well, another reason having community could help Tweety.
If she could find another magical roommate, or even one of the few magically inclined rental owners in the city, I was sure her situation would improve.
All in good time, however. Right now, I was just focused on making sure she was okay.
Because she had to be okay.
There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. My circle was so small, I wasn’t willing to lose a single person out of it.
Striding right up to her door, I gave what I hoped was a reasonable knock. Loud enough that she could hear me if she had fallen or was trapped on the other side of her apartment, but hopefully not too loud to be disturbing if she was indeed there and just had a cracked phone screen or something.
My heart matched the rhythm of my fist, and relief filled me when I heard footsteps inside.
She was alive! It didn’t matter if she was mad at me or whatever. The only thing I felt was immense relief as I heard her approach the door.
However, that relief was short-lived, as the closer those footsteps became, the more I became aware of her scent.
Even though we’d never met in person before, I could identify the sharp scent of anxiety and stress, and the sulfuric twang of old tears.
Not to mention some regular BO. People could have all sorts of hygiene online and no one would be aware, but I knew for a fact that Tweety was fastidious to the point of being a germophobe.
She showered two to three times a day, although it was more akin to preening than traditional human showers, and she soaked in a bath with Epsom salts for her pain every other day.
That, combined with the plethora of hand sanitizers in the background of every video call, told me that body odor strong enough to make it all the way through her door to my barely enhanced senses meant something was seriously wrong.
“Hello?” she asked. Although her voice was different in real life than it was over our calls, it was still her, and I could tell that she was a mess. “Maintenance? You’re supposed to call ahead.”
“Hey girlie,” I said as softly as I could, not wanting her to feel like her neighbors were listening in. “Would you mind if we came in?”
“Naomi?”
“Yup! It’s me. And, uh, Rowan is here too.”
“What are you doing here?”
“If it’s a bad time, I can go, but when you weren’t answering messages, I got a bit worried. Not like you, ya know? Are you okay, Carolina? You can tell me, honestly. It’s okay to not be.”
There was a long silence, and I grew even more concerned as I heard her heartbeat increase in rhythm rather than slow down.
“Carolina,” I said, using her real name again because Tweety didn’t feel right in this situation. “Are you safe? Is someone in there with you?”
“I, uh, no… I’m…” She heaved a sigh that was so heavy that I felt its weight through the door. “It’s embarrassing.”
I put my hand against the plywood separating us as if she could feel it. “Hey, that’s okay. Whatever’s going on, we’re here to help. And if you don’t want Rowan to come in, he’ll wait in the car. You’re my best friend in the world, Carolina, so whatever is going on, I wanna help you.”
“It’s stupid.”
God, she sounded miserable and angry with herself. I wasn’t used to my friend talking like that, and it made my need to get in all the more urgent.
I wasn’t an alpha, what with being a latent shifter and all, but maybe I should have been, because when it came to protecting my people, there was nothing I wouldn’t do, no line I wouldn’t cross, no door I wouldn’t kick down.
If Carolina needed me to scrub her entire place with a toothbrush because she was having some sort of germophobic crisis, I would.
I’d also help her find a professional who could help her with everything else.
“I’m sure it’s not. And even if it is, can it be any more stupid than the time I mixed up those dachshunds during my first month going independent and the clients had to call me only to find out the other clients hadn’t noticed yet and were on the way to the airport with their dog, so you had to navigate over the phone for me while I used an electric scooter to catch them? ”
“I… okay, that was pretty stupid. They weren’t even the right color.”
“Exactly. And you helped me through that. So it’s only fair I help you now on whatever is going on.”
“O-okay,” she agreed shakily, but the door still didn’t open. “It’s bad in here.”