Common Ground (The Common Ground Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

Simi took one final gulp of her juice and threw it into the empty donut bag. She leaned back and put her hands on top of her head, one over the other. Her eyes closed while she breathed deeply, reminding me of an advanced Yoga student. For a moment she appeared to be sleeping, as her shoulders and head were slumped down. Just as I was about to shake her awake, her eyes slowly opened.

“When was the last time you saw her? Did you guys talk at all?”

“I saw her three times this week in Perspectives class, but she didn’t even acknowledge my existence.”

“Okay, what about her parents? Have you thought about calling them?”

“Uh, no,” I said flatly. “That would make things even worse than they are now, trust me.”

Simi tapped the side of her temple impatiently, but a calm look was present in her face. She seemed completely relaxed, but extremely focused. She seemed to anticipate my sadness and wanted to do anything to help figure it out. I couldn’t tell if she was doing it more for me than to help Annie, but she seemed genuinely concerned for Annie’s well being.

“What does she do for fun?”

“Lots of things, it’s hard to pick just one.”

“If you two were to hang out together for a night, what would she want to do with you?”

Every hobby of Annie’s ran through my mind in an instant as I tried to find her favorite. It was like trying to pick out a single dollar bill in a suitcase full of twenties. There were so many ideas that it took me minutes just to think of the main ones. As I sat there thinking, the answer seemed to sneak up on me without warning.

“She’d want to go out for a night on the town,” I said more to myself than Simi.

“That’s a start,” she replied. “Where would she want to go?”

“That’s easy; she’d go to the Strip again in a heartbeat. She loves that place.”

“And do you think if you asked her out for a night on the town to talk about things, she’d say yes? Or are things that bad where she’d deny you the chance to just talk about what’s going on?”

“I’m not sure, she’s pretty pissed off right now,” I chuckled nervously. “But, maybe, if I asked her in the right way, she’d say yes.”

‘No time like the present,” Simi said.

Being put on the spot and coming through in the clutch were not my strengths by any means. But, Simi seemed to think that it would work and I couldn’t help but wonder what really was the worst that could happen. I reached down into my pocket and pulled out my phone, ready to do whatever it took to get Annie back.

“What do you want Zoe?” Annie moaned from the other end of the phone.

“Look, all I ask is that you hear me out. If you don’t like what you hear, you can hang up and I’ll understand. But please, just give me one chance to speak. Okay?”

The silence on the other end was enough of an answer for me to continue. “I know you’re upset and angry, I am too. But you’re my best friend and it’d be ridiculous to let it all go over something that we haven’t even sat down and talked about. That’s why I was thinking we should go out tonight, just the two of us. We’ll head over to Atlantis, get some dinner and maybe walk the Strip? What do you think? Hello?” 

I pulled the phone away from my ear in frustration. It was still lit up and connected, but I couldn’t hear any sound on the other end.

“I’ll see you at 6:00,” she finally said blankly and hung up the phone.

Simi, who had stood up and started pacing around the room, stopped the moment I closed my phone. “So, what’d she say?”

“It’s a date,” I smiled, feeling relieved for the first time in weeks. “Thanks so much Simi, you’re a lifesaver. How can I ever repay you?”

“Just make sure you take care of Annie and watch her back. She’s going to need you sooner than later and I’d hate to see you two still at odds with each other when she’ll need you the most.”

“I can handle that.”

“Good. Now I hate to do this but there’s a sorority meeting I’ve got across campus that totally skipped my mind. If you’re alright, would you mind if I took off?”

“No, I’m good. I owe you big time,” I said, standing up.

Simi stood too and we walked to the front door together. She reciprocated my goodbye wave as she walked down the apartment stairs and out of sight. The easy part was over and the true challenge was about to begin.

**************************************

After an entire day of studying, cleaning and worrying about Annie, the thought of going out for a night on the town seemed daunting. A few minutes before six, I walked onto the balcony of our apartment, rested my arms on the cool iron protective bars, and gazed out at the familiar campus buildings across the street. Clumps of students were out and about, but it was about as dead as it could be for a Saturday night. It was a cooler than normal evening, which led me to put on a pair of silky black slacks for the first time in months. My cream colored, silky beige blouse swayed softly in the wind while a tranquil quiet surrounded the apartment. The earlier conversation with Simi still weighed heavily on my mind and there was little doubt that the trip out with Annie was going to determine a lot about where our friendship was heading.

A vicious battle was going on in my head while the time inched closer to six. My thoughts pulled me in different directions. The loving side was telling me to do whatever it took to get Annie back. If that meant never insulting Liam again in front of her, it would be done. On the other side, she was being blind and stupid and needed to be put in her place. After what had happened over the course of a month, I pushed the darker side out of my thoughts and focused on getting her back without confrontation. She had showed such a mean streak when it came to bad mouthing Liam that being confrontational would just push her away even more.

While my mind tried to assemble a game plan for the evening, the door to the apartment closed behind me. Inhaling deeply, I turned and headed back into the house where Annie appeared around the corner of the TV room with her school bag draped over her shoulder.

“Wow, you dressed up,” she sounded surprised. “I wasn’t really planning for that. You should have told me.”

“I wanted you to know how important this is to me,” I said, sliding the cheap screen door shut behind me.

“Okay, well I guess I’ll have to change too,” she moaned lazily as she continued down the hall. A few seconds later, the door to the bathroom slammed shut, leaving me alone again.

It wasn’t the start I’d been expecting for the night. For the first time ever, there had been a massive elephant in the room between the two of us and neither was willing to address it. The whole idea of going out appeared to be a chore to Annie, something she had to do out of obligation. For me, it was a matter of life and death, with the future of our friendship hanging in the balance.

Another 15 minutes had passed before she finally came back. She had put on a pair of tight fitting khaki pants and a black knit shirt. Her hair was put up in a pony tail and the makeup was kept unusually light. I noticed a brand new, cream colored leather handbag dangling off her elbow.

“Is that new?” I asked. “It’s beautiful!”

“Yeah, Liam gave it to me,” she said shortly. “So, Atlantis right? I’m guessing you need me to drive too?”

The abrupt change in topic stung a bit. There was a lot of animosity behind her words and any hopes for a resolution to our problems that evening quickly burned away. It appeared that she wasn’t looking forward to going and wanted nothing more than to get back to Liam.

“Look, if you don’t want to go, we don’t have to,” I muttered. “I thought it’d be nice if just the two of us went out and talked this out. But, if you want to back out, I understand.”

She stopped in front of me, right as her hand was twisting the doorknob to the front door open. Her head lowered in defeat while her hand remained frozen on the knob. At that point, I braced myself not really sure what to expect.

“No, we really should do this,” she spoke almost inaudibly. “I’m sorry for being so bitchy; I’ll try to keep it under control.”

For the first time, there was a glimmer of hope. I couldn’t tell what words had gotten through the rough exterior, but something appeared to hit her hard as she finally showed signs of the old Annie. We both exited the apartment and piled into the heap of junk we called Annie’s car. She turned the key and the engine hiccupped to life, sending us on our way.

It took a few minutes to find the public parking garage at the hotel, which was inconveniently located behind the main building. Once we finally parked, it took another five minutes to walk over to the hotel. When we arrived at the entrance to the casino, Annie put her arm out and stopped me.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she said, glaring at a poster against the wall advertising for Cristos.

“Sure, where are you thinking?”

“I don’t know, anywhere but here.”

“Alright,” I slowly replied. “How about we just walk up the Strip and wait for something to catch our eye?”

She nodded without taking her eyes off the poster. I literally had to tug her arm to pull her away from it. The idea of going as far away from anything reminding us of Liam was like music to my ears. Anything that would remotely remind her of him during our time together would unquestionably ruin any chance of reconciliation.

As we gradually left Atlantis behind us, and passed a small stretch of sketchy looking convenience stores, a new and curious feeling swept over me. It was the first time either of us had made our way deeper into the heart of the Strip. Our first trip gave me a slight taste of what the iconic street was all about. Atlantis lined the southern edge of the Strip and even though it was beautiful in its own right, a big part of me wanted to see the rest of it. Annie and I were finally going to get the full Vegas experience, something she had been waiting on for a long time.

The slight breeze that had been blowing softly at the apartment had turned into a full out gust while we walked. An unfamiliar, but fresh scent wafted through my nostrils which made me instantly think of thunderstorms. My eyes gazed up to the sky and saw gloomy, threatening storm clouds building along the slowly darkening horizon. Rays of sunlight were still fighting their way through scattered clouds, but daytime was quickly dying away.

“There’s a storm coming,” Annie said, as her hair flew parallel to her shoulders.

“Yeah, let’s hope it stays away until we get inside for dinner,” I replied uneasily. It was ironic that the one time I needed an evening to go perfectly was the same night that Vegas would get hit by a very rare thunderstorm.

“But I love that smell,” she added, inhaling a massive gulp of air through her nose.

“So do I. Too bad it doesn’t smell like this when it rains in Seattle.”

Annie sniggered briefly. “True, maybe if it did, I wouldn’t want to leave it all the time.”

“I’ve heard that desert storms can be pretty strong though. We should probably find a place soon, just in case of lightning.”

The problem was that there was a vast stretch of land that separated Atlantis from the rest of the Strip. Tall fences with white tarps and barbed wire extended from the end of the convenience stores all the way up to the next closest hotel, which still lingered slightly off in the distance. We picked up the pace as the daylight began to fade quickly on the horizon.

Although Atlantis was magnificent in its own right, the rest of the Strip measured up nicely. The biggest light I’d ever seen shot up into the night sky far down the Strip at the Luxor. The Bellagio’s dazzling fountains glittered across the street while we walked and we even passed a replica of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel. Throngs of people were littered along the sidewalks in front of every building, staring at the immense elegance that was on display in all directions. Because the hotels were built a few hundred feet away from the main street, massive entryways had been designed to give visitors access.

Hordes of taxis, limos and regular cars were stuck on the street, honking at one another in an endless traffic jam. We had been walking for over thirty minutes before my stomach started to grumble. The glamour of the Strip had captivated me so much that dinner had become an afterthought.

“So, what do you want to eat?” I asked, rubbing my stomach.

“I don’t really care, whatever you want,” she said, not taking her eyes off of the lavish hotels around us. “But I don’t have a lot of cash so let’s make it something simple.”

It was difficult to pull my eyes away from all the glitz. I swiftly studied the buildings around us and noticed a tiny strip mall that had been built across the street from a hotel that had a water fountain wider than a football field lined along its front. Glowing “open” signs were perched on top of it. I tugged on Annie’s elbow and pointed over to it.

“Looks like they’ve got some stuff that falls into our price range in there, what’d you think?”

She nodded quickly as we approached the traffic signal that would take us across the street to the restaurants. We waited forever with at least two hundred other people on both sides of the street. After the light finally changed and we crossed the street, the names of the restaurants in the strip mall came into view. Many of the restaurants were fast food chains that we could have gotten in Seattle, so we agreed to try the informal, but nice Mexican grill.