CALEB
I woke up to a knocking at my front door. In a one-bedroom like mine, it was easy to hear every sound in the house. The old townhouse split was well-priced and cozy, but in moments like this, the walls felt paper thin. Grumbling, I peeled back the covers, threw on a robe, and went to the door. Warren stood there in his familiar tweed blazer with his messenger bag and a curious expression. Still, it didn’t keep me from being annoyed.
“It’s six-thirty in the morning,” I pointed out. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you got up at six,” he told me.
“Only on days when I’m going to swim, but that’s Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesday, today, I’m supposed to be sleeping until seven.”
“Well, my bad,” he said, owning up to his mistake. “I thought we could carpool in together this morning, like old times.”
We hadn’t done that in years. Back when we were training for our last triathlon, Warren and I would head out before dawn to work out before going into school. We would bike the waterfront trails together before heading to the university gym. It was a solid routine, and Warren had a bike rack for the back of his car. I liked it back then, but I wasn’t interested in getting into another training session just yet.
Looking at Warren, I realized that wasn’t what brought him here.
“Why?” I asked as I let him inside.
“There was something I wanted to talk about,” he replied, tapping his keys against his hand. “I texted you about it. Maybe I should’ve taken the hint when you didn’t text back.”
“When?”
“Last night, around nine, I guess.”
I crossed the apartment to check my bedroom. Looking on the bedside table, I didn’t see it. It wasn’t messed up in the bedsheets or on the floor around the bed itself. I checked the bathroom in case I was scrolling by the sink and left it there. No luck. I checked the laundry hamper thinking maybe I tossed last night’s clothing along with the phone. No dice.
I rejoined Warren in the kitchen.
“Did you find it?” he asked, chewing on an apple from my kitchen table’s bowl.
“No.” I shook my head.
“Maybe you left it at work?”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “What do you do if you really lose your phone?”
“I think you have to buy another,” he replied.
“But what about all my photos and my contacts and everything?”
“It’s on the cloud.”
“This is just what I need,” I mumbled.
“It’s not the worst thing that could happen,” Warren reminded me. “Retrace your steps. When did you see it last?”
“When it was in my hand,” I answered too honestly.
“Okay, where were you standing?”
“I was sitting, Jamie’s medical staff were calling,” I admitted.
Warren knew all about Jamie and how difficult it was for me to maintain my relationship with him. He knew that I reached out every week, but that Jamie was often sullen or angry. Warren too talked about his parents, and how his father was aging. Besides, Jamie wasn’t exactly a skeleton in my closet. He just wasn’t someone I liked to bring up at cocktail parties or in mixed company. It was hard to explain that my brother was a recovering alcoholic. I didn’t like justifying with his mental health struggles either.
Keeping him in a separate corner of my life just made things… easier to handle, but Warren, knowing the full story, got a grave look on his face.
“Was it bad?”
I sighed. At the very least, talking about it reminded me the phone was buried in my couch cushions. I checked the time. I wasn’t running late, but I certainly didn’t have time to kick back and shoot the breeze.