Page 115 of Xander

After Jasper discovered that I had dropped the conservatorship application, he seemed marginally more willing to help with my cause. He promised to go through his previous exchanges with Jordan to see if anything sparked a flicker of where she might’ve gone.

His only other suggestion was to call Jordan’s ex-best friend Piya.

It was good advice.

The Maxwells used to have a longstanding rivalry with Piya’s family, which recently ended after her daughter, Poppy, got together with my cousin, Damon. The news of their union broke the barrier, and I knew, at the very least, she’d be willing to hear me out.

Damon reluctantly passed me Piya’s number, but otherwise, didn’t want to be involved. Don’t fuck with Poppy’s family, were his exact instructions.

I tried the number immediately.

“Hello.”

“Piya Trimalchio?”

“Yes? Who is this?”

“This is Xander. Xander Maxwell.” The line went so quiet that I wondered whether the call had dropped. “Hello?”

“Yes, I’m here,” she said. “How can I help you?”

The coolness in her voice confirmed it. Piya had been in contact with Jordan but had been instructed not to inform any of the Maxwells of her whereabouts.

I didn’t want to force Jordan’s hand through Piya. It was something Henry would’ve done. If Jasper were right, repeating history would only make Jordan hate me more.

Instead, I talked to her. I told Piya the gist of our story—Jordan left my father, we fell in love, I repeated the same mistakes as Henry, and Jordan ran from me. I omitted some things that felt like it would betray Jordan if I revealed them without her permission. Mostly, I owned up to my mistakes.

After all these days without Jordan, I realized how differently I could have handled things. She ran away because of me, and if she never returned, it’d be my doing.

I was shocked when my honesty was met with understanding rather than the vitriol I deserved. It was almost as if she’d had experience of her own with morally gray behavior. Or perhaps she empathized with the misery in my voice.

After the initial phone call, I spoke to her almost daily in my desperate attempt to feel closer to Jordan through her best friend. Piya was also my last resort. Without Jordan, my life had narrowed down to missing her, thinking of her and searching for her. And I knew Piya was the key to finding Jordan.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked her one day.

“My answer is the same as yesterday, Xander,” Piya said indignantly. “I haven’t spoken to Jordan, nor do I know where she is.”

I expected her to say as much. Of course she was lying. I had my PI look through Piya’s phone records, and there were text exchanges with Henry’s phone, though none were useful. Since then, I was positive Piya had been using a burner phone to communicate with Jordan.

“Then, will you tell me something else about her?” I was grasping at straws for any contact with my girl, and chatting with her best friend made me feel like I had access to Jordan. Every day, I asked Piya to tell me something new about my girl, anything I could hold on to, to feel a little closer to her.

Piya sighed. “What do you want to know today?”

“How did Jordan get that scar above her lips?” For all the time I knew her, I never asked her about something so simple. Why didn’t I?

Piya laughed at my question. “Oh, that. I had this shitty ex-boyfriend in college, Michael, who took my car on a joy ride, then crashed it. Jordan was pissed and called him a dingus, and he threw the car keys at her. It hit her on the lips, and she ended up needing stitches. But the first thing Jordan did after we got out of the hospital was to flood his social media accounts with the comment dingus, then she got all of our friends to do the same and even paid students on campus to call him dingus to his face. By the end of the year, even the teachers thought his name was dingus. God, she was such a badass,” she spoke with pride, trudging up fond, nostalgic memories.

Meanwhile, I could barely suppress the urge to track down the fucker and kill him. I kept my voice perfectly normal as I asked, “Interesting. What did you say your ex’s full name was?”

I nearly heard Piya roll her eyes. “Yeah, I’m not falling for that. You’re not tracking him down and killing him.”

“How did you know⁠—”

“I’m not stupid, Xander. I have a little bit of experience with men like you. Right now, I’m talking to you from my bathroom, and there’s a reason for it.”

I was quiet for a moment.

She heaved another heavy sigh as if struggling with herself.