by Lisa Suzanne
Old emotions fire up in my chest—feelings I long buried with the death of what we had. Feelings I left on a rooftop in Chicago. Feelings that belong between Mark and me.
But then his eyes slide to the man beside me—the man whose arm is slung around me, and Mark’s eyes darken. He focuses on everything and everyone around me after that, purposely avoiding my eyes.
He introduces a new song, one I’ve never heard before.
“This is from our upcoming album. It’s called ‘Until You.’”
He strums his guitar, a single light on the stage only on him, just like when the concert began. He bellows out the first few bars, and then his eyes meet mine again. I hang onto every single syllable as his voice fills with pent-up emotions he never shares with anyone yet somehow shares with everyone through his music.
I didn't know what love was, didn't know what pain was
Until you
I didn't know what love was, didn't know what hate was
Until you
He glances away from me after he repeats the refrain. His words claw at me as I know without a doubt he’s talking about me.
I gave you a part of me, showed you what no one else could see
I let you in and held you tight, loved you all throughout the night
I handed you my trust, and it left me feeling crushed
I didn't know what love was, didn't know what pain was
Until you
I didn't know what love was, didn't know what hate was
Until you
I didn't deserve you anyway, told you that one fated day
Now I know why I never do this, and even though I still feel your kiss
I can't think of you anymore, it's the one thing I know for sure
I don’t know if there are more lyrics because my instinct is to flee. I can’t listen to more of his words, not when I know who they’re about. Not when I know he wrote them thinking of me—hating me or loving me or something in between.
I wind up in the bathroom, Jill close on my tail as sobs erupt out of my chest. I can’t think of you anymore.
He can’t even bear to think of me anymore. What does that say about the hope I allowed myself to feel for a few glorious moments? I’m a fucking idiot, that’s what it says.
Jill rubs my back, but it does nothing to comfort me. I just want to be alone. I push her away from me. “I need to get out of here,” I manage to say between the sobs that rack my body.
“Stay,” she says. “It’ll be okay.”
“Stay? Are you kidding me? Did you fucking hear what he just said?” My voice is hysterical and loud and women are looking at us with curiosity but I couldn’t give a fuck.
“I heard,” Jill says softly, soothingly. “It just means he isn’t over you.”
“He said he hates me. He said he didn’t know what hate was until me.” Those loud words draw a few more curious glances.
She puts her hands on my biceps to try to steady me, but it doesn’t work.
“Maybe he didn’t mean you,” she says. “Maybe he meant his brother.”
“Bullshit. He meant me. I can’t be here, Jill. He wrote an entire song about how I fucked him up. Stay if you want, but I’m done here.”
I head out of the bathroom. I hear cheering as I make my way up some stairs and find myself out in the casino. Justin and Alex are waiting near the theater’s entrance.
“I’m so sorry,” Alex says. She pulls me into a hug. “I had no idea.”
I shake my head. “You couldn’t have known. I never told either of you.”
Justin ducks his head sheepishly. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I shrug.
“I’m so sorry. I thought seeing your favorite band would be fun,” he says.
I press my lips together. “It would’ve been back before I met him.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex asks.
I shake my head. “I’d just like to go home.”
fourteen
Justin pulls into Tess’s apartment complex and drops Jill and me off.
“I know we haven’t had much time to chat lately, and I’m sorry for that,” Jill says as we stand outside the door and I fumble for my keys. I’m reminded of the time I fumbled through my purse for my sunglasses then quite literally bumped into Brian Fox. “I’ll make time. I love you and I miss you.”
I hug my best friend. “I love you, too. Thank you for coming tonight.” I slide the key into the door, and when I open it, I find my roommate on the couch.
With a guy.
Nearly naked.
Having what sounds like pretty good sex.
Oh, and it’s not Jason.
They don’t seem disturbed at all by the fact that the door has opened. I look at Jill and roll my eyes, and she just shakes her head. I close the door and back away. I have no idea how long Tess’s fuck fest is going to last, but I don’t want to sit inside while I wait for it to end. We walk over to the stairs leading up to the second floor apartments and sit next to each other on the third step.
“Come stay with Beck and me.”
I shake my head. “You don’t want me there. It might actually keep you from banging on your couch whenever you want.”
She laughs. “You need to move.”
“I know. I hardly ever see her, but when I do, she’s either having sex or just finished having it. You don’t really know someone until you live with them, you know?”
“Poor Jason.”
I rest my elbows on my knees and rub my forehead with both palms. “How long do you think we need to wait out here?”
“She sounded like she was getting close.”
“She always sounds like that.” I just want to crawl into bed after the fucked up night I’ve had.
Jill chuckles. “How’d it feel to see him?” she asks softly after a few quiet beats.
I glance over at her then turn my gaze down to the ground. “It felt...” I shake my head. “It felt good to see him, to know he’s okay. I had a minute there where I felt all this hope for us, but then...” I trail off as I remember the words and the emotion he poured into them. I lift a shoulder. “He wrote an entire song about how much I fucked him up.”
She slings her arm around my shoulders in a side hug. “I’m sorry, Reese. I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you through this.”
I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have pushed you away, but you were moving and it was easier to deal with it by being mad.”
“You’re welcome at our place,” she says.
“I appreciate that. I’ll figure something out.”
We’re quiet for a minute, and then she stands. “Come with me.”
“It’s okay, Jill.”
“We’re not going to my house. I have somewhere special I’m taking you.”
I follow wordlessly to her car since my other option is walking past my roommate having sex on the couch. She drives for a few minutes and then we end up at the International House of Pancakes.
“IHOP!” I exclaim once we get there.
Pancakes were our thing back in high school. We’d go almost every Friday night, sit in a booth with pancakes and coffee, and chat. Sometimes it was just the two of us, and other times we had a big group of friends. We haven’t done this in ages, and the memories of a simpler time bring an immediate smile to my face.
She grins at me and gets out of the car. I scramble to follow her inside, glad to have my best friend back.
* * *
When Monday rolls around, I’m hoping for work to be a distraction.
It’s not.
Thoughts of Mark on that stage haunt me as my seniors work on a timed essay during the last period of the day. I don’t even care about what happened with Justin—it’s Mark that I can’t seem to get out of my head.
My phone starts vibrating in my pocket when there’s just a few minutes left in class. Who would be calling me during school hours? I leave my phone in my pocket, hating the impatience I feel at not knowing who
it is. The buzzing stops, and there’s no follow-up buzz, so whoever called didn’t leave a message.
When the bell rings and the last student leaves the room, I finally slip my phone out of my pocket to see who the missed call is from.
Brian Fox.
Why the hell would Brian Fox be calling me?
There’s no voicemail, no text message. There’s just one random missed phone call from Brian Fox sitting on my screen. He might think I ignored the call, might think I purposely didn’t answer when I saw it was him. Good—I hope he does think that. If I would’ve seen his name flash across my screen and been able to get to it in time to answer, I wouldn’t have picked up his call anyway.
A tremor of fear darts through my belly. What if something’s wrong?
That tremor follows me as I go through my end of the day routine. I pick up bits of paper kids dropped on the floor, gather a stray pencil and stick it in the box in the front of my room. I erase my white board in the silence of an empty classroom. I finalize my slides for tomorrow’s lecture.
The whole time, that tremor sits in the pit of my stomach as it spreads like an infection to my bloodstream. By the time I’ve finished paperclipping today’s essays together and dreading the scoring process, my entire body is tense with anxiety and I’m almost convinced I should call him back.
Why the hell did Brian Fox call me? Why didn’t he leave a message?
I begin drafting a text message.
Saw your call.
I backspace and start over.
Did you mean to call me?
That doesn’t work either.
Is something wrong?
Maybe he’s just looking for Jason and since I live with Tess, he tried me. That doesn’t even make sense, and besides, if he was just looking for Jason, he’d have texted. If he needed the shirt he left behind that I threw away when I moved out of the house I shared with Jill, he’d have texted. If he had some other trivial question, he’d have texted.
He didn’t text. This isn’t something trivial.
Something’s wrong. It’s the only explanation. It’s the only reason he’d pick up a phone and purposely dial my number after what he did to me.
It’s Mark. I feel it in my bones. Something’s wrong with Mark. Something bad happened.
I always used to think bad things only happened in the middle of the night.
My mom used to worry about me when I was in college and told her we’d left our apartment at ten or eleven the night before to go out. She’d always tell me, “Bad things happen in the middle of the night.”
I ignored her at the time, but she wasn’t wrong.
I think back to those simple college days, when the biggest decision of my day was whether I wanted to drink rum or vodka that night.
When Shelby Anderson drank too much and had to have her stomach pumped, guess what time it was? It certainly wasn’t noon. When Johnny Bates was arrested for getting into a fight at a bar, guess what time it was? It wasn’t dinnertime.
But right now, it’s not the middle of the night. I hold onto the false sense of security in the daylight as I look out the window for a beat at the cloudless sky and the palm trees just outside.
I avert my eyes from the window and open a browser on my phone. I search Mark Ashton and click the news button.
I read the headline from the first article—it’s from this morning: Bad Boy Mark Ashton Hospitalized with Exhaustion.
My chest tightens with a sob so thick I can’t even get it out. I choke on something in the back of my throat.
Exhaustion.
I know what that means. It wasn’t exhaustion last time, and I’m terrified it isn’t this time, either.
I push my pride aside. Brian Fox called me after everything that happened between the three of us, and I can’t think of a single good reason he’d do that—especially considering that article. I scroll desperately through the headlines to find some update that says he’s released or doing better, but everything I find is vague and says the same goddamn thing.
Exhaustion.
Bile rises in the back of my throat as I sit at my desk and stare at Brian’s contact in my phone. I dialed this number so easily so many times in the past, but now I can’t bring myself to click the button. I can’t bring myself back into their fold. I want Mark to be okay with everything in my being. Not knowing is torture, but I’m terrified that knowing could be even worse.
I glance at the clock on the top of my phone. Forty-six minutes have passed since he called.
My phone starts buzzing in my palm, and I nearly drop it as it startles me. My heart races as it takes me a second to put together the fact that I’m receiving an incoming call. I stare at the name on my screen.
Brian Fox.
I accept the call with a deep breath.
“Hello?”
“Reese, hi. It’s, uh, Brian Fox.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t sure if you deleted my number.”
I don’t respond. I can’t talk around the lump in my throat, and my heart’s still racing. It won’t slow down, and I’m scared as we make small talk.
He sighs heavily. “I’m calling because of Mark.”
“Is he okay?” I whisper.
“No.” His voice breaks on the single word, and I’m not sure I’m equipped to handle this conversation. My breath falls out of me like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
I can’t deal with this.
He’s not okay? I just saw him on Friday. He didn’t look great, but he looked okay at least.
What happened since then? I’m so stunned at that single word that I can’t even cry, not yet.
“But I think he will be,” Brian says. His voice is full of emotion that shocks me into needing to keep him on the line.
I swallow, try to clear my throat, but nothing helps to dislodge the lump back there. I finally manage to ask, “What happened?”
Brian clears his throat, too, as he tries to talk around his emotions. “He mixed some things last night that caused him to black out. They’re calling it an overdose.”
“What did he mix?”
“Weed, scotch, and morphine.”
“God.” I blow out a breath. “Why are you telling me this?”
He doesn’t answer my question. “He’s in Chicago and I think you need to go see him.”
“Why?” I whisper.
“He’s on a path of destruction, and it’s because of me and what I did to you.” His voice breaks again. “I know I fucked up, okay? I know I took it too far. I think you might be the only one who can get through to him.”
“He won’t want me there.”
His voice is low and comforting when he speaks. “Of course he will. He combined enough drugs to black out, but he could’ve taken enough to kill himself. He didn’t. He’s still breathing, and where there’s breath, there’s hope.”
Tears fill my eyes as he recites the very words that were in my own mind not all that long ago. “How do I get in to see him?”
“You’ll need to go in with someone on his approved visitor list.”
“Are you on it?” I ask.
He clears his throat. “No.” His voice is distant. I can’t tell if he’s angry about that or not, but I don’t believe he has any right to feel anger over it.
“Who is?”
“Ethan, Steve, James, Vick, Vinny, and Penny.”
“Not Liz?”
“No family. I’m sure he doesn’t want us to know the truth.”
“But you know?”
“Yeah.”
I don’t ask how because it doesn’t seem important. The only thing that does seem important is getting to Mark as quickly as I can. I need to see him with my own two eyes. I need to watch the rise and fall of his chest and know he’s still here—even if it doesn’t mean we ever have the chance to be together. “I don’t know how to get in touch with any of them.”
“It’s a good thing I do, then.”
* * *
&
nbsp; I speed home to pack a bag with enough of my belongings to get me through two nights and then I speed to the airport and book a seat on the first flight to Chicago.
I busy myself on the flight with lesson plans for the next two days. I don’t know if I’ll need more time beyond that—hell, I don’t even know if I’ll need to stay in Chicago for two whole days. All I know is I need to get to him.
There’s a car waiting for me at the airport. Brian told me he’d arrange it for me, and—surprisingly—he didn’t let me down. I stare out the window at the scenery as the car takes me from the airport to the hospital. I focus on emailing my lesson plans from my phone and putting in for a substitute for the next two days so it’ll be off my plate.
When we finally arrive at the same hospital where Pops passed away not so long ago, I text Vinny. Brian gave me his number, and he’s the one who’ll get me in to see Mark.
Vinny meets me at the entrance with a nod. “Ms. Brady.”
It’s the second time Vinny has ever spoken to me, but for some reason, it fills me with a well of relief. I throw my arms around him. “It’s so good to see you, Vinny.”
He huffs out a breath, not really a chuckle, but not really not one, either, then turns to walk into the building. He leads me toward Mark’s room.
I just saw him a few nights ago when he performed on a stage in front of me, but I didn’t really see him.
I’m scared. I don’t know what I’m walking into, don’t know what to expect.
“How’s he doing?” I ask.
“Exhausted,” Vinny says pointedly.
I nod, desperate for more—desperate for the truth. But I understand his meaning: we shouldn’t talk out here.
We wind through a series of hallways until we find his floor. Each step matches the pounding echo of my heart.
We walk all the way down to the very last door where a uniformed police officer sits. He eyes me shrewdly and nods to Vinny, who reaches for the doorknob.
