What's a Girl to Do?

Chapter Two: Unanswered Questions

I felt the wry smile I frequently had for any given situation form upon my lips as I stepped into my apartment, an unfamiliar number with a Chicago area code appearing upon the caller ID upon my phone's screen. Swiping the green phone icon, I brought it up to my ear, hesitating for a moment, even though I knew perfectly well who was waiting on the other end. Finally, I inhaled and permitted myself to break the ice.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's me, Lip," said the voice on the other end.

"Hey, Lip. Long time," I joked, reaching down and taking off the ankle boots that Kevin had insisted I wear, based on their description alone. "What brings you to my phone?"

"Well, you did just give me your number," Lip replied as I bent to pick up my boots and walked down the hallway of my unit with them. "I mean, if it's a bad time..."

"No," I interrupted him, shaking my head, and inwardly cursing myself because I soon realized he wouldn't be able to see that. "It's fine, really," I told him, placing my shoes in the rack I'd positioned on the back of my door. "How are you?"

"Still walking home," he told me as I put him on speaker so that I could get out of my outfit and into a tank top and shorts to sleep in. "But I do want to ask you something..."

"Oh, yeah?" I asked, finding the sleep outfit I wanted and tossing my work clothes into the hamper at the base of my bed. "Ask me what?"

"Do you maybe want to get dinner or lunch or something sometime?" he asked.

I covered my mouth to keep from laughing at his informality of it all, although I could detect the fear of rejection behind his voice—minor in psychology, don't judge. "As a matter of fact, I just so happen to love getting dinner, lunch, or something," I tell him.

Lip laughs on the other end of the phone; I finish changing and take him off of speaker, plugging it into the charger upon my nightstand, maneuvering myself onto my stomach so as my phone could charge adequately. "So, I take it that's a 'yes'?" he asked.

I nodded, hissing, Dammit Davies, under my breath at my nodding. "I'd love to, Lip," I told him, knowing that it was likely that he could tell I was smiling from the tone of my voice. "I'm singing at The Alibi again tomorrow night—got to make some extra cash before my day job starts up officially..."

"Do you know when you start?" Lip wants to know.

"About a month," I reply. "Originally, I wasn't due here for another two weeks, so there was a bit of scrambling on the landlord's end—he's not too happy with me at the moment, me getting here several days early. But, I told you what happened between me and my mom, and, well, I just had to get out of there..."

"I get it," Lip tells me. "At least I had an older sister to step in and take all of us. Our mom left us and our dad... Well, he preferred the inside of a beer bottle than to any of us."

"That's terrible," I found myself saying. "But, I mean, Fiona sounds great. Always wished I had an older sibling, but it was just me. After my dad left, and my mom got remarried pretty quickly, her new husband worked all the time and she was always with the boys... She even enrolled me in summer school so that she, her husband, and the boys could take family vacations," I told him, and Lip made a noise of disgust on the other end of the phone. "But I did manage to skip three grades because of it, and by the time I turned thirteen, my mother couldn't be bothered to arrange summer plans for me. Had I been older, I would've likely started drinking or smoking pot or throwing wild parties. But I just sat there, surrounded by books...or with Jessica."