A desperate escape

Melanie is finally able to escape the rather unsettling situation with Alex, and on getting to the bathroom, her hands tremble as she dials Shirley’s number but it goes straight to voice mail.

“There is no reason to be worried yet” Melanie tries to calm herself, knowing that Shirley barely has the normal phone etiquette that a normal human being should have, and her lackadaisical attitude towards her phone usage is just Shirley being Shirley and she will call her back when she gets her voice mail.

“I need to know that you are alright, so I need you to call me once you see this,” Melanie sends Shirley a text on W******p before redialing her number just in case she picks it up, but the call goes to voicemail once again.

Melanie tries calling again so that if the issue of her not picking up is as a result of her phone being on DND (do not disturb) her falls will override the DND, but the result is the same.

Panic creeps in, and her heart sinks because even though she always blamed the poor girl for her lackadaisical attitude towards her phone usage, she still always answered or texted back immediately, but it has been like 15 minutes of radio silence from her end.

Minutes tick by, and Melanie’s anxiety grows with the lack of response so she sends her another text message, but in this case, she doesn't text her on W******p, she uses her ‘messages app’ to send the text.

“Shirley, where are you? I need to talk to you ASAP” she texts her and gives her a few minutes for the message to marinate, but she still doesn’t reply.

She thinks back to Alex’s sudden appearance at Bistro Bliss of all places that he could stop by to grab something to eat, and now it becomes a question of what he wants, how he found her, and why Shirley is unreachable.

“Had Alex harmed Shirley to get to me?” Melanie’s thoughts spiral into worst-case scenarios, so she exits the bathroom, walks toward where Caleb is seated, and picks up her purse.

“I am sorry, but I have to go” She apologizes as she sprints away from Caleb and he immediately follows her.

“What do you mean by that” He asks her, his voice laced with utter confusion.

“Something came up…it is an emergency…more like a life or death situation” she explains as she walks towards Karen’s office because she is not Mobile, and she knows that Ryan will be there.

“Can you just calm down and talk to me?” Caleb says as he holds her back from moving an inch.

“Where are you going and what is the emergency?” He asks, starting to get impatient.

“I can’t tell you what the emergency is about because I don’t know if I can trust you yet,” Melanie refuses to divulge the details of her movement to him after she saw how cool he was with Alex before she went into the bathroom.

“That is understandable, but can you tell me where you are going right now, because the last time I checked, this is the way downstairs and also the way out of here but you are going in the opposite direction…why is that?” he questions her as he points in the opposite direction of where she was going.

“Ryan brought me here with his car, so I want to call on him to drop me at my sister’s house so that I can pick up my passport and a few documents then I can be on the next flight to Pearl Coast,” she breathes out in one sentence.

“Can you let me go now? Because the more you hold me down, Shirley will be in more danger” she says, her voice laced with urgency as she tries to get away from him.

“I have a private jet,” He starts and Melanie stops struggling and she listens to what he has to say.

“I can make some calls and get everything ready within one hour so that we can go to Pearl Coast,” He tells her.

“We?” Melanie asks, blinking back in shock.

“I don’t know if you know, but Pearl Coast is over six hours from here and there. No way in hell I am going to allow you to chest that stress alone” He says with finality in his voice.

“Fine…” She immediately agrees because it is going to be way easier for her to travel in his private jet than to go through stressful airport procedures.

“… I still need to go to Ryan’s office and inform him that I am leaving so that he won’t be worried that I left without a word,” Melanie hesitates as she informs him.

“You can just call him,” Caleb tells her impatiently as he starts to pull her in the direction that leads to the ground floor and outside Bistro Bliss.

“Your jolly good friend broke my phone…Remember?” she reminds him and he sighs

“You are still going home to pack your things and I am very sure that you will want to fill your sister in on the emergency that cropped up, so Ryan should be the least of your problems right now,” He answers her impatiently.

“But if Ryan was the one in my shoes, he would have still found a way to leave the information for me because he knows how much I value communication,” Melanie shrugs.

“When I go to bring my car over, just drop a message with one of the waiters so that they can relay the message to Ryan,” He suggests and Melanie agrees with his decision so she stops struggling with Caleb and she starts acting demure and mindful.

She does as she is told, gets a sticky note and a pen from her purse, scribbles the message to Ryan down quickly because she can’t trust anybody to relay her information word for word, then she hands it over in time. She then goes out to join Caleb and they are on their way to Kalinin’s house with Melanie giving Caleb directions.