Friday Fiction – A Man and His Phone

Welcome to A Man and His Phone – a weekly series of relationship mishaps!

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Chris stood in the lobby and watched Jane march towards the stairwell. Was that dramatic flip of her long blonde hair as she chattered into her phone directed at him? And if so, what on earth was she telling him? He felt a little stung that she’d seemed to have won their confrontation. He had every right to ask her what she was doing in the lobby of his apartment building, just hours after he’d told her he didn’t want her to come over. Could she possibly have a friend who lived in this same building? Chris thought that was highly unlikely. She would have mentioned it, wouldn’t she? Oh what did he care anyway! Chris wasn’t down in the lobby to worry about Jane. She could do what she wanted. He remembered his purpose. Now, where would that mysterious and oh so intriguing girl he’d met on the eighth floor be? If she’d taken the stairs, surely she’d be down by now…

____

Adrienne sat at the bottom of the third floor steps, away from the door to the second floor hallway. She had righted herself enough to fish out her phone and call Jane, but she could tell she’d need help to get on her feet. She looked down at her ankle. Not pretty, but it didn’t look broken. She’d seen plenty of injuries on the lacrosse field and had suffered a few of her own, though never a broken bone. She was no doctor, but since her ankle looked swollen but otherwise together, with nothing sticking out, she guessed that it was just a bad sprain. I can hope, can’t I? she asked herself. But her back was another issue. Her tailbone was not singing a happy tune. So much for hitting the dance floor at Karma tonight. Adrienne’s frustration was beginning to build. She’d conspired with Jane on a few of her own goose chases, but they’d never resulted in injury. This was ridiculous!

Jane exploded through the bottom of the lobby stairwell door and tore up the one flight to the second floor. “Adrienne!” she exclaimed. “What on earth happened?”

“What do you think happened, Jane? I was racing down the stairs to get to you before Chris reached the lobby, but I slipped.”

“You didn’t try to run down these stairs in those outrageous shoes, did you?”

Jane was looking a little too much like a scolding parent right now and that’s the last look Adrienne had expected. She wasn’t about to admit that she’d tried her old trick of skipping down multiple steps. This was hands down Jane’s fault. And like an unannounced tsunami, a wave of ferocious anger overtook Adrienne. Forget the fact that she was kind of intrigued herself by Chris, and that she never would have met him alone like that or had the chance to flirt, yes, she could admit to herself, flirt with him. Now she was stuck at the bottom of the stairwell with a fat ankle and a backbone that had bounced along too many hard metal steps. “Do you think I’m stupid? Of course not! You’re a crazy person, Jane. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this asinine plan. Get me up and let’s get out of here before Chris finds us.”

Adrienne’s voice echoed through the stairwell and was replaced by the heavy clank and bang of the lobby entrance door opening wide and slamming shut. No time to tell Adrienne that Jane had already seen Chris in the lobby. The sound of climbing footsteps made their own echo as he approached…

Thank you for reading – come back next week!

Click here to catch up with all the episodes of A Man and His Phone.

Copyright © 2018 by Book Club Mom

All rights reserved.  All material on this blog is the property of Book Club Mom. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.