by Kyra Lennon
“Ellie, I’m so sorry.”
Words lodged in my throat as I tried to tell him never to scare us like that again. He seemed to understand. I felt his tears falling on me. Eventually, I straightened up so I could look at him.
“I’m supposed to yell at you.”
Jason nodded, his eyes lacking their usual sparkle. In fact, looking at him closely, everything about him was missing its shine. His purple streaked hair was lifeless and faded. On a normal day, he oozed charisma, but this was far from an ordinary day. It was as if a switch had flicked off, snuffing out his drive to succeed. A broken soul.
“You should yell at me, I deserve it. What I did last night was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
“So why did you do it? And where did you get the drugs?”
He shuffled awkwardly in his bed. “I called the bloke from the club and got him to meet me before we left London.”
My eyebrows shot upwards. “You kept his number?”
A small nod answered my question and I stood up, head pounding from dehydration after all the tears I cried. “You said you had no intention of using again! Why would you keep a dealer’s number if you weren’t planning to use? Was everything you told me a load of crap?” I asked, pacing the room.
“No.” He lowered his eyes. “When I told you I wasn’t planning to use, I meant it.”
“But you still had his number! If you’d wanted my help, you’d have let me delete it at the same time I flushed the drugs he gave you!”
“I thought I could do it myself, okay? I thought once the coke was gone, I could take the next step alone. But then... after arguing with Drew and being at your parents’ house...” he trailed off.
I clenched my jaw. If he’d dared to lay the blame for his slip-up at Drew’s feet, I would have swung for him.
“Why didn’t you ring me?”
“Why do you think? Drew was already pissed off with me. I didn’t want to-”
“He’s not an ogre! If you’d told him what was going on-”
“He’d have had me back in rehab before I’d finished getting the words out!”
“Well you’re going back now anyway, so what bloody difference does it make? I lied for you, Jason! I risked everything because I trusted you, and look where we are!”
Another stream of tears fell from Jason’s eyes, and the throbbing in my head intensified. How did he not understand? How could he think Drew would ever want to see him suffer?
The same way Drew thinks Jason doesn’t respect him.
They were so close once. When they were kids, through their teen years, right up to the day Jason started lying about his drug use. They patched up the damage afterwards, but it all came back when the stupid feud dredged up whatever unresolved feelings lurked under the surface, and tore open old wounds, making them bleed out onto everyone around them.
Mostly onto me.
“I miss her too, you know?”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“My mum,” he whispered. “I miss her.”
Deep inside my chest, my heart quivered, shooting out waves of grief for him that surged through my veins, making me clutch at my stomach.
As if that would make it stop.
I knew it. I knew that was the comment that tipped Jason over the edge. Any reference to their mother was extremely rare because the whole family was always so concerned they might upset each other. It wasn’t like she never existed, but it certainly wasn’t a topic they approached without a reason. Didn’t other families occasionally mention the person they missed, reminiscing about old times and keeping the memories alive?
“Drew said Dad blamed himself for not doing enough for me after Mum died. So, I went to Dad’s after I left your parents’ house and waited for him to come home. I wanted to tell him he did. He did more than enough. It wasn’t his fault I turned out this way. It was all me.”
“Did you tell him?”
Jason nodded. “Yeah. And it was the first time I felt as though I’d spoken to him properly in years. We talked about Mum, and... I told him I can’t remember her. Not clearly. All I have are these stupid snippets of events that might never have happened. The memory of her teaching me and Drew to ride our bikes in the back garden. Consoling me after Dad told me off for messing around in his shed. Seeing her lying in her hospital bed, too weak to talk, but still managing to smile when me and Drew went to visit her.”
I stepped towards him again as he paused, drawing in a shuddering breath.
“All that stuff happened. I didn’t make any of it up, but I missed out on so much. She wasn’t here the first time I got an A at school. She wasn’t around to give me a lecture about not breaking girls’ hearts. Didn’t see our first gig. So, last night, I went up to my old room at Dad’s house so I could think about everything. Mum, Drew, you.” He shook his head. “I never dealt with any of that stuff properly. Not even in rehab. I sound like a fucking cliché, because you know what? My life didn’t turn out so bad. But I hid behind drugs, and last night, just for once, I used the coke knowing I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. Not Mum for dying when I was young, not Dad for not being enough, not Drew for always being on my case, and not you for being so damn reasonable all the time.”
“Jason,” I whispered. “Did you overdose on purpose?”
His eyes widened. “What? God, Ellie, no. No. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to... I don’t know... escape.”
It wasn’t a good enough excuse. Nothing justified him using cocaine again, but how could I be angry with him? Seeing him in so much pain made me ache. For what he’d lost and for all the issues he’d kept inside for way too long. He hadn’t gotten low enough to want to end it all, but if he’d continued feeling like he had nowhere to turn? What then?
My head gave another painful throb, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
Just a bit longer, Ellie. Then you can go get some air. And painkillers.
I didn’t want to leave until Drew arrived, and I’d ensured there was no danger of them fighting again. They’d both been hurt enough.
“I want to go to rehab,” Jason said, surprising me.
He hated that place.
“You know that decision’s already been made?”
He gave a small laugh through his tears. “I know. But I want to go. Ellie, you have to understand, if I hadn’t used, I’d still have had that need in me. If you’d told Drew, or if you’d checked me into rehab yourself, I would have gone in, listened without hearing, and come straight back out and done what I intended to do all along. Rehab takes work. You know who I am, you’ve always known. I’m an addict, and we can be as devious we need to be until we get what we want. I never meant for you to get involved, and I’m sorry you did. But maybe this had to happen, to scare me into getting clean for good.”
His words did nothing to ease my guilt, even though a part of me knew he was right. It would have taken more than a few rounds of pyschobabble to make Jason stop when he’d set his mind on something. I’d seen him steal from his family, from my family, heard him tell lie after lie just so he could get a fix. Even now, with so much conviction in his voice, there were no guarantees he would never relapse.
“I want my life back, Ellie. I want to get back with the band and-”
“Slow down.” I sat beside him again. “There’s a long way to go yet. A lot of recovery. And...while we’re being honest, Jason, I have to tell Drew the truth. That I knew you had cocaine on you yesterday.”
“Ellie, no. I’m not saying this for me, I’m saying it for you. He won’t understand what you did. You can’t tell him.”
“I have to. How are we supposed to fix everything if there’s a huge lie in the way?”
“What lie?”
Jason’s face paled, his gaze focusing over my shoulder.
This is fine; you were going to tell him anyway, weren’t you?
That didn’t stop my heart from forgetting to beat at the sound of Drew’s voice. I was going to tell him, but away fr
om the hospital to limit the amount of people who’d hear the fallout.
I rose from the bed, already knowing what I’d see. Drew’s jaw clenched, his chest rising and falling faster than normal, and his eyes flicking from me to Jason.
“It’s nothing. Right, Ellie?”
Wrong.
“What do you need to tell me the truth about, Ellie?”
The feeling of weight pressing down on me, stealing my breath bore down on me again, and mixing in with my hammering head, I could easily have sunk to my knees, crying because I didn’t know what to do.
You know what to do.
“There’s something I should have told you yesterday.”
“Ellie,” Jason said. “Don’t. Please.”
We both knew what would happen when the words came out, and again, my chest ached, my insides shrivelling away to nothing. Bits of me seemed to be slowly dying, like petals falling from a wilting flower. There was only one way Drew would see this.
“Yesterday morning, when you left me and Jason to talk, he had cocaine in his pocket.”
For the briefest second, Drew’s jaw relaxed, his eyes softening. It passed in a flash, though. When my words filtered through to his brain, he tilted his head to one side. “What?”
What did he think I was going to say? Jason and I had decided to take a trip back to the days of our beer-goggled kisses, and spent the morning dry humping in my hotel room?
Actually, that was probably it, which would have infuriated me under different circumstances. Pretty hard to be angry with someone when you’ve played right into their insecurities.
“He had cocaine on him, and you knew?”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Jason said, and I turned to him. “I asked her to help me, and she flushed it but I made her promise not to tell you. I didn’t plan to use again, and Ellie-”
“Jason, stop,” I interrupted, turning back to Drew. “That is what happened, but I should have let you know.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked, his voice frighteningly stoic.
“Because I-” I paused, taking a careful step closer to him. “I believed him when he told me it was a one-off. He hadn’t used any, and I thought once I got rid of what he had, it would be over. I realise it was stupid of me, but yesterday was such a huge mess, and I wanted-”
“To lie to me, and risk Jason getting hooked on that crap again?”
“No! I didn’t want to lie to you, but I didn’t want to make things worse between you two, either. I was scared one more thing would make everything blow up again and I couldn’t stand the thought of you reaching a point where you might not… you might not ever be able to fix your relationship.”
It sounded like such a flimsy reason, since we were all in the local hospital after a near-death situation. The reality slammed into me, reinforcing what a complete idiot I was to think Jason could have handled what he was going through alone. I’d made a decision in the moment, knowing the risks and landed us right in “worst case scenario” territory.
“I didn’t plan to use, but you-”
“Don’t!” Drew snapped, his eyes igniting with fire – and not the good kind. “Don’t you dare blame me for this!”
“I wasn’t going to. But yeah, having you remind me what a fuck up I am didn’t make my day any easier. I’m saying Ellie believed me because I told her the truth at the time.”
“You both should have known better! You should have admitted you needed help, and Ellie should have come to me if you were too stubborn to do it yourself!”
“Stop!” I shouted. “Both of you stop!”
I couldn’t take another round of them tearing strips off each other. Not when my heart was already cracking apart in my chest. Drew’s refusal to look at me was torture. I needed him to acknowledge me, to hear me, to understand I didn’t make my decision lightly. It hurt, and I hated it but at the time, it seemed like the best thing to do.
He was right there. My man. Then tears prickled my eyes because maybe he wasn’t mine anymore. The lips I’d kissed, the hands that knew every curve of my body, the soft stomach I’d snuggled into, and the warmth of him when he pressed up against me. I was losing it all.
“Drew. I didn’t... I didn’t-”
“I don’t want to hear it, Ellie. You made your choice. Looks like I was right all along.”
Some kind of spasm erupted in my chest as he walked away, and I wanted to scream. At the pain. The unfairness of his last words. Because, dammit, hadn’t I showed him he was everything? Hadn’t I laid everything out there, and been patient while he tried to work through his own feelings? I’d listened without judging, my heart aching anytime he was in pain, and he was tossing it all aside.
My mistake wasn’t small, I understood that. It symbolised every fear he had that somewhere deep inside, Jason was who I really wanted. That Jason and I would always have memories he wasn’t a part of. But it was a mistake, one I’d do everything to fix if he’d only listen.
“Ellie. If you’ve got a chance to make this right, it’s now. Before he overthinks it and turns it into something way more meaningful than it is.”
I whipped my head around to look at him, and on seeing the sparkle of tears in his eyes, my own spilled. I covered my eyes with my forearm, as if the action would block everything out.
It still hurt just the same.
“Ellie, come on,” Jason urged. “Go now. I know I acted like a dick about it yesterday, but this, you and Drew, it’s right.”
“He isn’t going to get over this.”
“He won’t get over it if you don’t try.”
I threw my head back, wishing I knew the magic words to make Drew hear me. Instead, frustration filled me because the right words didn’t exist. Jason was right, though. If I didn’t try to fight for him, for us, he’d keep on thinking he was right. The part of his head that couldn’t let go of anything, ever, would get the best of him.
Charging out of Jason’s room, I hoped Drew hadn’t gotten too far. My legs felt like noodles, unstable and barely able to carry my weight as I hurried down the corridors, twisting my neck left and right, blindly searching for him through blurry eyes.
There.
The back view of him disappeared into the cafeteria, and I picked up my speed, hoping my legs would hold out a little longer.
I didn’t want a showdown in a public place; I’d been a victim of camera-happy observers more than enough times over the past couple of weeks. Thankfully, there weren’t too many people in the canteen besides a few exhausted-looking visitors, and a couple of nurses grabbing coffee.
“Drew,” I said, gasping for breath.
I didn’t dare touch him, even though every part of me screamed out to circle my arms around him in the hope it would ease his pain a little.
When he turned to me, I was looking at the Drew from a few weeks ago. The one who could shut off his emotions at the snap of his fingers, and not only deny any feelings for me, but stare at me as if I was a stranger.
I blinked, trying to get rid of the tears. “Drew, I’m so sorry. Please, can we talk?”
“I’ve already heard everything I need to. You lied to me. You covered for Jason, and he nearly died.”
It really was that simple for him. He could pick and choose which parts he wanted to listen to, neatly lock them away in compartments in his brain to stew over later. Okay, when it came down to it, that was the truth. I didn’t need any reminders of how stupid I was, because he was right. I should never have kept the truth from him. But my reasons? They weren’t selfish. I didn’t do it for me, or for Jason, but for the brothers. To stop them ruining all they’d worked for.
I wanted to say it out loud, but I couldn’t get more than a squeak to leave my lips.
Drew started to walk away, and I reached out with trembling hands to pull him back, my fingers closing around his wrist. His gaze focused on the point where I touched him, but he didn’t pull away. He didn’t move at all.
“Please, don’t do this. Don�
��t shut me out. I need you to listen to me.”
“I needed you to tell me the truth but you didn’t!”
“I tried to tell you last night.”
“Last night was too late!” he snapped, and I started to feel the now familiar sensation of people turning to stare. His voice lowered. “Let go of me.”
I shook my head, staring up at him, willing him to look at me. My breath came out in small, ragged gasps as I fought to keep from breaking down. I was losing him, but if I kept my hand on his wrist, he was still there, still mine. He had to tell me it was okay.
Had to.
The man I’d waited so long for couldn’t leave me this way. Hanging on, needing to hear him say he understood.
“Ellie.”
One word. That was all it took to break my heart. His eyes locked onto mine.
“You need to go now.”
“No.” I gripped his arm tighter, desperately shaking my head. “Drew.”
“Ellie, stop.”
His hand covered mine, and for a second, he gently squeezed. It was only for a moment, but it filled me with warmth, like always.
Don’t move. Please. Let me have this moment to fool myself we’re going to be okay. Please.
His eyes closed, then prised my fingers from him. “I’ll see you around.”
As he walked away, he heaved a sigh and quickly brushed his hand across his face while I stood, frozen.
I was aware of the people around me, whispering, watching and that was enough to make me will my feet to move, even though all I wanted was to stay close to Drew. Walking out meant admitting it was over. I knew it was over, but I wasn’t ready to leave him behind.
See you around. Like we were friends. Less than friends. Just two people who grew up beside each other, but hadn’t shared anything. Not secrets, not worries, not even a damn cup of sugar.
And certainly not love.
My knees buckled, but I made myself walk faster through the corridors with my head down. The press were still outside the hospital entrance, but I pushed through them, hardly feeling or hearing them this time, and ran to my car, locking myself inside.
