Let Me Be Your Missing Puzzle Piece

Chapter 6

Nick awoke the next morning to the sun gleaming in to the shaded room, its rays shining down brightly on to the brunette, catching his eyes and making it impossible to continue his slumber. He tried turning over to block out the annoying light but eventually gave up and declared the sun victory as he sat himself upright and rubbed his eyes.

He began to take in his surroundings, realising he was back in the comfort of his dorm room.

That's strange he thought, pinching himself to make sure this was indeed reality, I don''t remember coming back to the room last night.

The brunette furrowed his eyebrows as he began to recall the events from the previous night, still trying to figure out how he had managed to get back up to the dorm without even remembering.

Okay so I cleaned the masks for Porter, gave him a whole stack of them, then was dismissed. Erm..oh then I came back up here, talked to Trent, went to look for Jeff...JEFF!

Nick immediately snapped his head up and began searching the room for his blonde room-mate. The bed opposite him was neatly made and it looked as if Jeff's uniform and belongings were missing, that could only mean two things; either the boy had came back last night and had gotten dressed and left for breakfast before Nick had woken up; or, he hadn't came back at all and was still out roaming Westerville somewhere.

Nick quickly jumped out of bed and began frantically searching for his cell phone, quickly unlocking it and checking for any updated messages upon retrieving it. Apart from the text from Sebastian reminding him they had an after school study session today and the one from his mother telling him that her and his father were heading to Chicago for the weekend, there were none from Jeff.

Nick was starting to feel a sense of worry building up inside of him again, where was Jeff? He needed to know, he needed to know his best friend was safe, he needed him back here, inside the safe gates of Dalton, with Nick.

The brunette startled slightly and focused his mind back to reality when he heard a loud knock on the door.

"Ni-cho-las" a sing-song voice said that could be recognised as the sassy warbler Trent's.

Nick put down his iPhone on the desk and began making his way over to the door, opening it and immediately pulling the warbler inside.

"Have you seen Jeff? He's not here. What if he didn't come back last night? What if he's still out there? Maybe he ran out of gas and is stuck? He isn't answering my calls, what if his phones dead? He could be stranded.." Nick began, his sense of worry slowly building into a panic as he continued his apprehensive rambling.

"Good morning to you too" Trent said, gripping Nick on the shoulders in an attempt to restore the brunette's concentration

"Look Nick, Jeff's fine, I've just been talking to him. He came back late last night, just before curfew...he went to visit Blaine"

Nick let out a sigh of relief upon hearing that Jeff was safe and was back at the school. Although he pretty much had a good idea of why the blonde had decided to unexpectedly pay a visit to the ex-warbler's house. Jeff and Blaine had always been pretty close; well all the warblers were really, so whenever there was a problem, after consulting about it with Nick first, Jeff would often call up the curly-haired boy and discuss with him whatever was on his mind. This time though, Nick suspected that whatever Jeff was feeling couldn't really be expressed through a simple phone call.

"He got back before curfew? But I waited for him, how come I didn't see him come back?" Nick said as he shot a look of confusion up at the round-faced warbler.