In Hot Water

Prologue

Janet had been coy about why she wasn’t coming in to work that day, but Liz had a pretty good idea why both her best friend and her new lover didn’t show up to the office. Liz couldn’t help but smile when she thought about the cute couple.

Janet generally avoided turning work relationships into anything more, but that new hunky coworker of theirs had changed everything. Eric had swooped in and swept Janet off her feet, and now Janet was doing all sorts of uncharacteristic things.

Liz couldn’t remember the last time her best friend looked so in love, and she was seeing Janet less as Eric took up more and more of her time.

Liz felt her friend’s growing absence keenly, but she understood completely: who could resist that honeymoon phase of new love?

Thinking about Janet’s newfound happiness made Liz even more excited to get home to her own boyfriend, Jason, later that evening.

Liz had been with him since college—she’d met him over the summer before her junior year, a summer she spent with Janet, both of them working in the company they’d return to after graduating.

She and Janet had gone out to a club one night, and there he was.

It was love at first sight for her, and after dating the rest of the summer, Liz was head over heels. She didn’t want to hear it when he expected their affair to end since she was returning to school, and they’d ended up pulling off a long-distance relationship most people had no faith in.

She was true to him the whole time, and she assumed he was true to her—especially since they saw each other on all the school breaks: Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring, summer. The longest they went without seeing each other was about a month and a half, and during that time, they Skyped, texted, and called.

Although Liz had worked that summer job with Janet, she didn’t plan to return to the company as Janet did. Then Jason happened. Since he lived in California with no plans to move, she knew where she had to be too, and happily accepted her friend’s full-time employment offer.

She felt so lucky to still be with Jason after all this time—a rocky but overall comfortable seven years. Not many people her age had been blessed with a relationship that long, and Liz still felt honored that Jason had chosen her instead of the type he usually went for.

Liz had seen photos of a few of his exes and wondered at the fact that they were all lighter-skinned. Sometimes, she wondered why he had switched to her when she was so clearly the opposite of the string of ladies he’d had on his arm.

But she always recognized how ridiculous she was being a few moments after the insecurity crept up—‘type’ didn’t matter when true love came along, and Liz had no doubt that Jason loved her as she loved him. Besides, those girls were from long ago—he was so young back then, and she also probably hadn’t seen all of his exes. It was probably just a coincidence that the few she had gotten a glimpse of had those features in common—lighter-skinned girls with straightened hair. Like her best friend, Janet.

Liz liked to think of her own skin as being like dark chocolate—delicious and smooth.

Like a soaked tree trunk, her mom had described it once, and Liz had chalked it up to her mother being a Northwest woman through and through. Her mother was dark like her, and her dad a mahogany brown like Jason.

Liz knew shade prejudice existed amongst people of various colors, but Jason never spoke about her skin or short natural hair in any derogatory way, except when joking around, of course.

You’re cute, you know—I mean, for a dark-skinned girl, he said every now and then, smiling whenever he said it, but she was never really sure he didn’t mean it. Either way, she liked the sly way he looked at her as he said the words and the fact that he was stating out loud that he found her attractive, cute.

She even considered wearing a wig for him tonight and surprising him with a dinner date. Maybe they could check out that new hip French place downtown.

Liz got buzzed out of her daydreaming when she heard her cell phone vibrate.

What time do you think you’ll make it home? the text from Janet read.

Liz thought it was a strange question at first, but then she figured Janet was considering hanging out with her that evening.

Same as usual—around six. Why?

Oh. I’ll catch up with you later, I promise. Maybe not today, but I’ll make up for missing all those lunches! :) Love you.

Liz smiled, despite an unsettling feeling coming over her. Although Janet’s words made sense, Liz couldn’t shake the feeling that something felt strange but could come up with no explanation. She put the whole thing out of her head and ran over outfit options for her possible dinner date with Jason instead.

Don’t eat too close to dinnertime, she texted him before putting her phone away again. I’m making special plans.

She simply assumed he received it since he rarely texted her back; he wasn’t one to engage in back-and-forth texts unless checking in on her whereabouts.

When Liz pulled up to her apartment, she immediately sensed that something was wrong. She looked around and took in her surroundings to see if she could find a physical sign to validate her gut feeling, but everything looked perfectly fine and normal.

Earthquake weather? she wondered. Southern California hadn’t had a big one in a while—just a few between four and seven on the Richter scale here and there.

Was it just that Jason wasn’t home? She felt a keen emptiness she couldn’t quite explain otherwise.

A horrible thought hit her and her heartbeat sped up—perhaps something had happened to him and he needed her at that moment, needed someone to call 911! He hung out with some shady folks, after all.

She started hurrying and was practically running by the time she reached her door. She fumbled with the key a while with shaking hands before getting it to work and letting herself inside the nearly one thousand square feet of her two-bedroom apartment.

Jason’s absence hit her almost physically as soon as she stepped in. She’d come home to an empty home before with Jason out somewhere with a friend or buying a snack, but the place felt different—especially when she realized the telltale signs of his presence were gone: no carelessly flung shoe here, no smelly T-shirt crumpled in the corner there. Not even his bong was in sight.

Jason? she called out, not expecting him to answer while her eyes kept searching the room.

She noticed a pizza box on the coffee table—presumably from earlier that afternoon since it hadn’t been there last night—and a white piece of paper next to it.

She ran to it, hoping he’d left details of his whereabouts and when to expect him back, but instead, it said: Relized you deserved better. Don’t bother looking for me—ran away with someone else.—Jason.

Liz read the note over and over again in disbelief—and not because he had misspelled a word, leaving out the ‘a’ in ‘realized.’

Once her eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t see the words anymore, she ran through the apartment, looking for signs of Jason’s possible return, but only discovering all of his belongings gone.

1

Carrying a Torch

The annual Cooper Investment office Christmas party provided Liz with many welcome distractions.

It’d been three weeks since Jason’s disappearance, and Janet had helped her through by joining her on her lunch break every other day, and they had a girls’ night out once a week at a movie or fancy restaurant.

They used to hang out a little more often before Janet’s new lover came along, but Liz couldn’t begrudge her best friend handing the bulk of her time over to her handsome new beau.

Liz watched Janet’s face as she danced with Eric to a slow song. Janet always had a way of focusing, of concentrating on what was in front of her intently, and here she was, looking completely unaware of anything else at the holiday company party but Eric. She looked like she was in a state of complete euphoria, and even missed the moment when drunken Leroy from Receivables miscalculated a move and fell over a chair to the ground just a few feet away.

Liz turned her attention to the face of the man Janet was dancing with and studied it. Eric certainly didn’t look as serene as Janet as he held her close to him; in fact, he looked very much distracted by something. Liz wondered what could be rattling him on the inside so. As far as she could tell, everything he needed was encapsulated in the soft beauty of her best friend blissfully dancing with him.

Liz’s breath caught as realization hit her. Her suspicion deepened as she watched Eric start leading Janet toward the head of the room where live musicians