Know You Again

(11)

Chapter 11:

Chloe tapped her foot against the porch's old wooden floor as she waited for Mindy to answer the door. Her blue gaze drifted to Hadley, who was looking through the contents of her messenger bag.

"Did you even tell Mindy that we were coming?" Chloe asked, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice. She hated waiting, and Mindy didn't exactly have a great track record answering the door. One time, they even had to call her phone for her to notice, and she didn't usually keep her phone on her.

Hadley's gray eyes flickered to Chloe's face before returning to her bag. "Yes, I did. Aha!" Hadley suddenly yells triumphantly and raised the hand that was in the bag to show the cell phone in her grasp.

She quickly taps on her phone before putting it against her ear.

"Mindy? Hey, we're right outside of your house and we've been ringing the doorbell-wait what?" Hadley's perfectly plucked eyebrows knitted together in confusion as she turned to face Chloe fully.

Chloe watched the way Hadley's tongue darted onto her lower lip and found herself biting her own in resistance. She was easily losing her grip of herself whenever she was alone with the beautiful blonde, momentarily forgetting that the feelings were impossible and sinful. She was raised and taught that it was evil, that it was unnatural. But after they cleared the tension between them, she found herself craving her again.

"She's in Alfie's house." Her velvety voice snagged her out of her thoughts. Chloe's eyebrows raised in confusion.

"Alfie?"

Hadley nodded slowly, carelessly dropping her phone into her bag.

"She's still staying there? I thought it was like for a night" Chloe was utterly confused.

"We better head there if we want to find out."

They cross the street to the weary looking house, looking even older and more washed out than the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, including Mindy's. Not that Chloe was being a critical snoot, but Mindy lived in the more financially struggling part of town. It wasn't a secret that Mindy wasn't as well off as her friends, especially Sebastian who was considered to be an elite. Her mother always worked hard for her and Lana, Mindy's gorgeous aunt who Chloe had always been jealous of.

Chloe raps the screen door quickly when they arrive on the Emerson's porch. She heard Mindy's familiar voice yelling for them to go inside, and so she pulled the screen door open and twisted on the doorknob.

In her peripheral vision, she could see Hadley's jaw going slack just like her own.

Because just how close had they become in the few weeks he was back?

Chloe had seen Alfie and Mindy interact with each other during the past few weeks he had been in town. She was surprised when she saw them talking to each other when they went to the beach just weeks ago and knew that Mindy must have been glad that after four years of silence between the two of them he's finally not giving her the cold shoulder, although they never really talked about it. And surely within those weeks, it was most likely that they would become closer to each other.

But seeing the scene in front of her was one she still couldn't wrap her head around.

Because Mindy was laughing. And it wasn't the shy, awkward laugh thing she does when she's out of her comfort zone, but her crazy, rocking back and forth, eyes closed and mouth wide open laugh that was reserved for only her, Hadley and Sebastian besides her family, probably. And it's been a while since she's laughed like that. In fact, it was probably the first time since she woke up in the hospital that she heard of something other than a lifeless tone and forced laughter from the girl's lips.