𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐓 | 𝐃𝐔𝐊𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐒

21

     On a typical Thursday night, at 2:00 in the morning, Kailani would be sound asleep, in her overly large bed. But tonight? She couldn't sleep. She had been tossing and turning in her bed for the last four hours, but nothing would work.

     No, she couldn't just take sleeping medicine, it never worked on her. She figured that out the summer going into freshman year. She never bothered to fix her sleep schedule from the summer, and when school was two days away, she tried to take sleeping medicine, and it didn't work.

     That first week of school, was very sleepless to say the least.

     She had to follow a semi-strict sleeping routine to be able to sleep at night, and she did have one. Just tonight, it wasn't any help.

     Her room was pitch black, un-including the ceiling to floor windows that over looked Atlanta and the tiny red dot from the TV. She had the white noise from her fan going, so she didn't understand why she couldn't fall asleep.

     Unbeknownst to Kailani, Duke was in the same position. Ever since Kailani had went to Charleston, to go visit her family, he hadn't gotten a lot of sleep.

He didn't know what he did before he met Kailani, it was never a problem to sleep for him, until after she went to Charleston.

     Duke sat in his thoughts for a couple of minutes, thinking about how ever since he had bought her the new car, they had became some-what friends again. They had talked every day, but Duke was aware that it wasn't the same, well, yet.

     He didn't care if it wasn't the same as it used to be, all he cared about was that they were friends again.

     Letting the thoughts over-take his mind, he thought fuck it, and he turned to his right and grabbed his phone off of his nightstand. He didn't know if she was awake, but it would never hurt to try.

     Typing in the four digits that were displayed on his lock-screen, he went to the green app, that had the white text bubble on it. He decided to go for a text at first, and if she was awake, then he would call her. He just wanted to see if he could come over and sleep, nothing more, nothing less.

     He clicked on the top contact, since they had been texting before they laid down in their own beds, and he sent a quick, 'Koko u up?' He closed out of the messages app, and went to Instagram.

     While Duke was scrolling on Instagram, waiting on a response from his favorite girl, Kailani had heard the ding of her phone. She was debating on picking her phone up, thinking about the possibilities of who it is. Her thoughts wandered from the thought of it being Meleya, and then it being something happened to Lola.

     Then she thought about it being Andaz or Alohi, and she thought about it being something wrong with them. But they would call her, she thought. But if it was a real emergency and they were in the car kidnapped from a random guy, they wouldn't be able to call and all they could've done is send a sneaky text.

     Or, maybe it was just a spam text from one of those scams that she always got. She had gotten three texts of the same one, in the past week, 'Hello again! You were recently contact to ask some questions about issues that concern members of your community-' and so on. She never answered them, but they still reached out continuously.

     Kailani sighed, realizing that either way, all of these possibilities weren't good, besides the scam. She leaned over to her left, which was quite a stretch, since she was sprawled out in the direct middle of her large bed like she was any other night. Stretching her right arm all of the way, she felt around her nightstand to find her phone. When she finally got a hold of it, she felt for the cord that was charging it, and unplugged her phone since she knew that it wouldn't reach to her spot.