Partners

7.

The knock on the door interrupted our hug and I quickly got up to answer it. Casey still looked like a depressed loner and was too lazy to go and get the door.

We didn't hear anyone ringing the intercom, so ringing of the door was unusual. I opened the half of it and looked out of the door. It was Elyssa. Her clothes were dusty and she was out of breath. "What the hell happened?" asked, trying to keep my voice down.

She made a motion with her finger, telling me to wait a minute as he put her hands on her knees and tried to control her panting. I leaned on the doorway and looked at her.

After calming down a bit she looked up at me. I shot her a questioning look. Once again, Elyssa ignored it and opened the door further to walk inside.

"What is this place?" She asked as she took a turn and looked around the house. Casey's house was gorgeous with its high ceilings and abstract artworks hanging around everywhere.

"Get back here, you are going to get the house dirty." I whispered/yelled at Elyssa, who's shoes looked like they have just got out of WW2. Luckily, she didn't move further and came back to take her shoes off.

"Who is it, Olivia?"  Casey's voice made me panic as I walked inside and closed the door behind me. She doesn't know who Elyssa is. She literally can't know Elyssa.

I turned to Elyssa who raised her brow at me and asked. "Who is living here?"  I made a huge sigh and rolled my eyes.

"It's, um, my friend, from college. She just came by to say hi." I mustered out as Casey came towards us. She checked Elyssa up and down and then offered a small smile.

"Hey, I'm Casey, Liv's best friend." Casey always introduced her as my best friend, to 'show that you don't need another best friend.' As she liked to phrase it.

"Elyssa. I hope you don't mind me just randomly popping in, it is just the weather is so bad, and my ride just ditched me." Elyssa talked in a slightly clingy voice, and put her hand through her hair making it look like this helped her calm down.

"Your ride ditched you? You need to tell me about it in detail. Let's go I will make us tea." Casey said with soft smile and walked towards the kitchen.

"How did you even know that I was here?" I whispered after Casey was out of sight. "I put a tracker on your phone." She said and when I got angry about it, she just smiled.

"Come on, I have a ride ditching story to tell." Elyssa said and nudged me to go. "Oh really?" I said sarcastically and guided her to the kitchen. Elyssa sat down on the kitchen island and I made my way towards Casey. I looked at her in way of saying 'Are you ok?' She nodded and I relaxed a bit.

One problem down. I looked at Elyssa whose eyes were burning holes on the kitchen table. And one to go.

"So, Elyssa is it? Who the hell was your ride and why did they ditch you?" Casey said as she gave us the tea and sat down.

I am not going to bore anyone with the extremely long and extremely fake ride ditching story. But Elyssa's act through it all was funny, I nearly choked on my tea to stop myself from laughing. Twice.

Elyssa acted like some kind of noisy, a bit bitchy, side girl of some boy? At least that what I made of it. It was like her personality totally swapped and she was a different person. It was clear that she was doing it to keep Casey out of the whole gang war, need to hide thing.

Though she looked really roughed up. In her left hand her knuckles were red. She caught me looking at them, and moved the sleeve of her shirt down to cover it.