Catching Liam (Good Girls Don't) (15 page)

“I never promised you forever, Jillian. I’m not asking you to promise me that either. I just want a chance—a real one.”

I melted under his eyes, trying to keep my hands from pulling him to me.

“I can’t give you that,” I whispered.

He dropped back, and I missed the heat of his body, the closeness of him, immediately.

“You want to know the truth? I knew the second I met you that I should walk away. I knew you’d shred me, but I couldn’t stay away. But if you can, maybe you’re stronger than me.” He paused and ran a hand through his hair. A memory of fisting my fingers through his hair flashed through my mind, and I grew warm, praying he would break me. Needing him to hold on.

“I don’t think you’re strong though. Not anymore,” he continued, his voice growing in strength. “I think you’re scared, and I deserve more than that and you do, too.”

Gravel crunched nearby, and we turned to see Jess approaching us cautiously. She held her phone in her hand and she looked to both of us, waiting for a signal to stop. I ducked away from Liam and ran to her.

“Ask her,” Liam called to me. “Ask her what she thinks of you running away from your problems.”

Jess caught me and held me close to her.

“Stop it, Liam,” she ordered, her eyes fierce. I knew Jess agreed with him, but some bonds couldn’t be broken. My best friend would never side with him, even if she knew he was right.

“I want to go home,” I told her in a quiet voice. She rubbed my arm and guided me away.

Liam didn’t follow us, but he called out as we walked away. “Good-bye, Jillian.”

My name died on his lips, and part of me died with it. I wanted a good-bye with Liam. I’d imagined it in the dark of the night. But in those fantasies, we made love and he got on a plane. In those dreams, there was laughter and teasing and kissing. That was how I wanted to remember him, but for the rest of my life all I would hear were those beaten, final words.

chapter twenty-two

The world was gray and it bore down on me, weighting me to the mistakes I’d made. I was bound to an onslaught of memories that I couldn’t erase. All the color was sucked from life as I stood in my room trying to sort my feelings into something I could understand. There were no boxes that fit the strange assortment of emotions waging a war in my head. Liam was the worst thing for me, because I didn’t want to feel this. Not when life was already too complicated. We were both better off. But even as I thought it, it didn’t make sense. I didn’t make sense without him. And yet, his life could never make sense with me in it.

That truth left me cold and desolate. At my center, a blackness crept through me, eating away at me and leaving me so hollow that I could barely stand.

My bed was empty and I couldn’t force myself into it. It sat staring me down like an abyss that would swallow me whole, as memories of skin and flesh blinked in and out of my mind. If I closed my eyes, I felt his lips on my neck and my stomach and my breasts, but when I opened them, I was alone, stripped to the soul.

I wanted to sleep and forget, hoping that in the morning the sun came out again. But I couldn’t count on that any more than I could expect the world to keep spinning. I could see the splinters growing all around me, threatening to collapse the comfortable lie I’d sold myself until they became real, shattering and cracking the walls I’d built to hide behind.

I slapped myself again and again and again, trying to concentrate on the sting left by the palm of my hand. I was stupid. I was worthless. Broken. Feeling the hate coursing through my veins like slow-burning poison was better than the numb chill that threatened to overpower me.

But there were things that I couldn’t run away from. I could run from Liam, but my own body was my worst enemy and it turned on me. The tingles started in my hands and stretched into my arms as I ran for the bathroom. I slowed with each step until I fell against the sink, reaching for a medication that could stop the paralysis spreading through my limbs. But I could barely pick them up, let alone open the childproof caps. I screamed and threw them against the wall as the trembling shook my body, and I dropped to the floor. I was an earthquake. Uncontrollable. Unstoppable.

“Jills!” Jess appeared in the door and knelt to hold me.

I heard a litany of curses bursting from me in my voice but I couldn’t stop them any more than I could control the episode taking over my body. My fingers hooked and stiffened. I was frozen, my limbs locked and gnarled like the branches of a dead tree. Jess pressed her fingers to my wrist and checked my eyes.

She leapt to her feet and started pulling medicine bottles from the shelf. She tried to force a pill into my mouth but I couldn’t swallow. My body was giving up. It was about damn time. I’d given up a long time ago.

“Jills, come on, you have to get this down,” she coaxed, but I couldn’t relax enough.

“Where’s your injectable?”

I answered her but my words were a slur of consonants and vowels.

Jess had been trained to give me a shot when we moved into together. My doctor told us it was only a precaution, but one Tara insisted on. There was no way she would let me live on my own if there wasn’t someone there to handle a worst case scenario, so Jess had been tapped. Because she was good and dependable and everything I wasn’t.

But she wasn’t ever supposed to do this, because twenty-one-year-olds didn’t have off episodes like this. It was Tara’s paranoia, not my reality. I wished Liam was here so that he could see me like this, because then there would be no chance that he’d promise me anything afterwards. And as my body broke down, it reminded me of one thing, I was saving him from this.

I clung to that as I willed my arms to move. I tried to remember how to stretch my fingers or push myself onto my feet, but my brain fought against me, pinning me to the ground.

“I’m going to give you a shot, because I can’t leave you like this,” Jess said in a soft, reassuring tone, but I heard a tremor hiding in her voice. She blinked back a tear as an impassive calm stole over her face. This was Dr. Jess, the girl who had a future I would never have, and she deserved it, because there was no one else that I would trust to see me like this and still love me. It was the blessing of our friendship, and our biggest curse. I wondered for a moment if she would even be studying pre-med if she hadn’t been forced into it, but I couldn’t feel sorry for her. She was alive and empowered.

When the syringe appeared in her hand, a siren blared in my head. She dropped beside me and tapped the syringe with her finger. Jess blinked back another tear and brought the needle to my arm. Neither my mouth or my body were working, but my mind was, and I knew that Jess had to be seriously worried if she was taking it to this extreme. I tried to push her hand away, but I couldn’t force my arms to move. An injection was a last resort, because we both knew it would interact with my current meds. I screamed again as she carefully injected the medication into my vein and then everything went black.

chapter twenty-three

A persistent beep edged into my dreams, awakening me to drab green walls. I blinked as a whiteboard swam into view listing a schedule of care. I tried to sit up, but I found a collection of IVs had me tangled in my bed. It took a second longer than it should have for me to realize I was in a hospital room. Jess was curled into a ball, asleep on the couch next to me. I opened my mouth to discover it was cotton-dry, and that I was too parched to speak. Fumbling, I hit the red call button attached to the side of my bed and waited.

A nurse bustled into the room a few minutes later in Hello Kitty scrubs. She didn’t look much older than me, but as she leaned over me to to turn off the call button, I got a whiff of stale coffee and cigarettes that matched the circles under her eyes.

“Miss Nichols, how are you feeling?” She flipped through my chart, casting a few glances toward me.

Jess stirred at her words and sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. It only took her a few seconds before she was fully alert and hovering by my bedside.

“Are you okay, Jills?” Jess brushed my hair off my face and peered down at me with concern.

“Water,” I mouthed.

“I’ll bring in a pitcher,” the nurse said absently as she checked off something on my chart.

Jess disappeared and reemerged a second later with a cup. The nurse frowned at her but continued her assessment of my vital signs while Jess held the cup to my lips. The water swept away the dry feeling in my throat.

“Help me sit up?” I asked Jess.

“Of course.” She maneuvered an arm under my back and shoved a pillow in the gap she created.

“How long was I out?”

“Only a few hours,” Jess reassured me, adding another pillow under my head.

I didn’t have to ask why I was here. The events of last night—while hazy as fog on the sound—were clear enough. I remembered the crippling pain spreading throughout my body and locking down my limbs. The lead-up to Jess’s injection were vivid, while the most concrete memory I had from the previous evening was the magnetic force between Liam and me when he confronted me. But I couldn’t remember anything after the shot Jess administered.

“Please tell me that you didn’t call Tara.”

“I didn’t.” Jess paused and bit her lip like she always did when she was about to spill bad news. “But the hospital called when they were admitting you.”

The nurse took the opportunity to slip in her explanation as she handed me a Dixie cup full of pills. There were a lot more in here than normal.

“We need you to take those,” the nurse instructed me

“What are they?” I wasn’t keen on taking any more pills than I already was, but I also wasn’t excited at the idea of staying plugged into a hospital bed.

“The on-call doctor is adding an anxiety medication immediately,” the nurse told me.

“Is that safe?” I blurted out. There had been numerous times when I wanted medication to help me deal with the stress of controlling my anxiety levels, a feat which usually ended poorly. I was still an amateur when it came to compartmentalizing emotions, my own and those around me.

“It’s safer than another one of these off episodes,” the nurse said.

I swallowed the pills one by one with long swigs of water. It had been so long since I drank anything with my meds that I almost spit a couple back up. The nurse, appeased by my willingness to take the medication, disappeared into the hallway, leaving Jess and I alone.

Jess held out my cell phone. “Call him.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to be that girl. The one that called her ex at the first sign of trouble. It was too relationship-y.

“He’s going to find out, Jills. He should find out from you.” Jess sat on the edge of my bed, her arm still extending the cell phone to me.

“How would he find out? This is hardly Facebook status news.” There was no way I was going to call him, and Jess couldn’t make me.

“Because I will tell him if you don’t,” Jess said in measured tones.

I balked at her. Jess was my best friend. We were practically sisters. “You have no right to tell him.”

“Liam is in love with you, and he is scared. You can’t keep pretending like he doesn’t matter. Look where it’s gotten you.”

“This didn’t happen because of Liam.” I knew it was a lie as much as Jess did. “Besides, he’s over me.”

“I saw you two last night. He’s not over you,” Jess said. She slid the lock screen off and started paging through my contacts.

“Don’t tell him,” I said. “Maybe you’re right, but I can’t face him right now.”

“You can’t run away from life.” Jess’s sentiment echoed Liam’s argument from last night. Why couldn’t they see that I wasn’t running, I was protecting myself? I was protecting them.

“I don’t want him here.” My words were full of fire, sparking Jess to look up at me in surprise.

“Maybe you’re right. You clearly don’t trust him,” Jess said. “Maybe Liam deserves more.”

She could have punched me and it would have hurt less. I tried to keep my face impassive, but I knew I was failing. Hot tears were burning at the edge of my eyes, and I blinked against them.

“Not now,” I said finally.

“For what it’s worth, Cassie agrees with me.”

I groaned. “You told Cassie I was here.”

“How do you think I got you to the hospital? You were out, Jills.”

“By the way, worst girls’ night ever,” I said, switching the topic before more panic could build in my chest.

“Not by a long shot,” Jess disagreed. “Don’t you remember the devil tequila?”

We both fell into laughter, remembering the night freshman year when Cassie and I had split an entire bottle of Jose Cuervo. Poor Jess had spent the whole night holding our heads over the toilet and rubbing our backs. For the rest of the year, the bottle sat with “666 DEVIL BOTTLE” scrawled across the label. I was pretty sure I still had it somewhere. It was probably the only night worse than this one in our entire shared history.

“You hungry?” Jess asked me. “You should probably eat something with those meds.”

As soon as she said it, I became aware of the gnawing pit where my stomach once was. I nodded emphatically.

“I’ll sneak down to the cafeteria and bring you something.” Jess leaned over and kissed my forehead.

“Bring pudding. But not the sucky kind.”

Jess paused in the doorway. “Oh, and if anyone asks, we’re sisters. That’s why they’re letting me stay with you. Visiting time was over hours ago.”

“Got it.” Whoever bought that slender, super-blonde Jess and I were sisters must be blind, but I was grateful. I couldn’t think of anyone else I wanted here with me. In fact, there was no one else I’d ever want to see me right now. Jess had seen me in much worse situations.

It seemed like she returned in record time, but when I looked up, Tara was standing there. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and she wore no cosmetics. She looked unusually casual in jeans and sweatshirt, not at all like the Tara that showed up to my apartment ready to stay. But then I realized that my aunt’s house in Spokane was over three hours away. She must have jumped in the car immediately. A rush of guilt waved over me. First, Jess had to deal with this, and now my mom. She stopped at the foot of my bed and regarded me with what looked like tears in her eyes, which wasn’t possible. Tara was not a cryer. Then she rushed me, pulling at the IVs, as she hugged me.

“Ouch!” I yelped.

Tara pulled back and disentangled herself from the tubes. “I knew I shouldn’t have left.”

“It’s not your job to stick around babysitting me,” I said in a sour voice.

“I’m your mother. That’s actually exactly what my job is.” Tara sat next to me and picked my hand up in hers. “What happened, Jills?”

“Just a bad reaction to some medications.” I purposefully left out the fight with Liam and the tequila shots and the general sense of hopelessness weighting me down even now.

“You should come home. Your father will call the school and set it up. You can transfer to San Diego. It’s only ten minutes—”

I held my hand up to stop her. “My life is here.”

“What life?” It was a characteristically Tara thing to say, but even she looked abashed at the thoughtless remark. But instead of back-peddling, she kept going. “You have no major. You broke up with that boy. You’re barely attending classes. You have no job.”

Well, when she put it like that, I did sound aimless, and yet, I didn’t feel that way. Being forced to confront reality, I realized I had a life.

“I have friends, Mom,” I said. “I like the college even if I’ve been bad about classes. But once they get my medications figured out, I’ll get serious about coursework. I even picked out a major.”

Tara raised an eyebrow. “Which is?”

The problem was that this was as much news to me as it was to Tara. “Psychology. I figure I can work with kids coping with a serious illness.”

The answer flew out of my mouth, surprising me. Had I really been thinking about that? It was not only a perfect answer, it was actually the perfect major for me. I just wasn’t sure when I had come up with the idea.

“That’s awesome, honey,” Tara said. There was actually something that sounded like pride in her voice, but I couldn’t be sure since I’d never heard it before.

Tara hesitated, picking at a piece of string on my hospital gown.

“Spit it out,” I urged her.

“And that boy?”

“Liam?” I prompted. “What about him?”

“Where does he fit in this picture?” she asked.

“He doesn’t,” I said in a firm voice. “You don’t have to worry about him.”

“Actually, I’m more worried about you. I was really angry over that incident in the bathroom, but your father made me see that he’s good for you. Ambitious, polite.”

“Two things I am not,” I said in a flat voice. First Jess had betrayed me, and now even Tara was siding with Liam.

“I’m not saying that, Jillian,” Tara said. “You’ve gone through boys like tissues since you got to school. It’s not healthy.”

I stared at my mother. How would she know about my boy catching proclivities?

“You left your Facebook account up at the house last spring. I peeked,” she admitted.

I should be mad. In fact, I should be livid. But it was my own damn fault, I’d caught Tara reading my diary when I was eleven. I’d managed to devise a system that included hollowed out books for parental contraband like condoms, and I’d stopped writing things down on paper, favoring an anonymous blog throughout high school. When I set up my account, I’d been so careful to set perimeters as to what my parents could see on Facebook, but she’d been able to see my life for months. I winced, thinking of the things she’d seen over the course of last summer.

“You should really close that account before you look for a job next year,” she advised me.

And now my mom was giving me social media advice.

“I’ll do that,” I promised her. “But I want to stay at Olympic State.”

Jess skipped into the room, pudding cups held triumphantly over her head, but she skidded to a stop when she saw Tara.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Tara said softly.

“Mrs. Nichols, it’s good to see you,” Jess said. “I can go back for more pudding cups.”

“Not necessary.” Tara said with a wave of the hand. “Thank you for calling me, Jessica.”

I shot Jess a betrayed look and mouthed
what-the-fuck
behind my mom’s head. Jess bit her lip and shrugged a shoulder. Apparently, she wasn’t going to apologize. She sat the pudding cups on the rolling overbed table next to me.

“I should get home. Class tomorrow,” she said, excusing herself from further hospital duty.

“Make sure you update your Facebook status so the whole world knows I’m in here,” I said.

“Jills.” Jess said my name with a sigh.

I tried to stay angry, but as chocolate pudding cups awaited me and because Jess was the one person I could count on to save me from Tara during my hospital stay, I decided to let it go. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“‘Course,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulders and grabbing her bag.

“Are you okay to drive, Jessica?” Tara asked her. “You’ve been here all night.”

“I slept on the couch. I got some sleep in exchange for a stiff neck.” Jess rubbed it for emphasis.

“Maybe they can pull another bed in here?” Tara said after Jess took off. “It will be like a slumber party!”

“Great!” I tried to sound enthusiastic, and to my surprise, I did. The thought of having Tara around while I was stuck in here wasn’t so bad. Maybe Jess was onto something. I could never tell her that though.