While You Were Away

Emily groaned and I watched as she rolled onto her side, bringing her knees up to her chest. Her eyes closed, but that didn’t stop the tears from slipping through. I couldn’t stand seeing my sister like this.

“Come on, get up,” I said, walking over to her bag. I heard her turn over in the bed to watch me as I began to dig through it.

“What are you doing?” She asked quietly as I searched for the item I was looking for.

“Just get up,” I said as I found the sweatpants I knew I had packed. I stood up and tossed them to her. “Put those on and meet me downstairs when you’re ready. Grab a hoodie too, it’s windy.”

With that I made my way out of the room. My phone vibrated in my pocket as I approached the stairs.

“Hello?”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Val’s accented voice brought me a little comfort.

“Uh…about to go search for Jack,” I said honestly with a sigh.

“What do you mean search for him? What happened?”

“Him and Emily got into a fight earlier. My mom called me and asked me to check on here and she was a wreck. I went to find him and bitched him out basically.” I heard Val sigh from the other end of the phone.

“Was that really necessary?”

“Yes Val, it actually was. He had no right to treat Emily the way he did. I don’t know what his problem was, but now he just disappeared. One of the Kings just called Em to see if she knew where he was since he’s nowhere to be found and not answering his phone.”

“So you’re going to go find him? Is Emily going with your or not?”

“She’s going with me. I wouldn’t know the first place to search. He’s not in his usual haunts, so it’s going to be difficult.”

“Maybe check places him and Emily have gone together. Not the usual places, you know? Like, I would go to one of the places we always go, not a place I normally go…maybe that’s just me though.”

“Val, you’re awesome. I gotta go though, I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you!” I hung up the phone right as Emily was walking downstairs, a hoodie in her hand, giving me an expectant look.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re going to go find Jack. Come on,” I grabbed her keys and led her out to the car before driving off.

-

“Now make a left,” Emily instructed. I followed the directions that led us to a small, little known beach a few miles from their apartment. I pulled into the parking lot and shut the car off. Emily sat in the car, gazing out at the beach not even ten feet from the car.

“Do you want me to go with you?” I asked quietly, hoping for her sake that he would be here. We had gone to three other places she guessed he might have been, and all three times came up with nothing.

“Yeah…if you want to,” She said, looking over at me. I nodded and got out of the car, walking around to meet her at her door. We made our way down the beach, keeping our eyes peeled.

“How big is this beach?” I asked after we hadn’t seen anything for a minute or two.

“Not very big at all. We’ll be able to cover it before we get tired of walking.”

“So, what are you going to say when we find him?” I decided it was better to say when as opposed to if when I was trying to keep her calm.

“I don’t really know. I just know we have to find him. Once we do, I’m just going to have him sit and talk with me. We can’t just ignore this happening, you know?” She asked, kicking a small rock that was in her path.

“That’s good.” I glanced over at the water and the lights reflecting on it before returning my gaze forward.

“I don’t think he’s here,” Emily said, sounding a bit dejected. I groaned, silently cursing Jack in my head. First he gets into a dumb argument with Emily about the most trivial thing, and now he does this. I was more worried about Emily and the baby than I was about Jack, if I was going to be honest. I didn’t want Emily stressing out and ending up in the hospital again.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing ahead of us as I saw a light shine on for a split second then disappear near a black mass in the sand.

“I think that might be him…”