Intoxicated (41 page)

Without thinking, I merged onto the
interstate, no plan of action in mind. With the inclement weather
and the late hour, traffic was light but the roads weren’t that
bad. I just had to be careful and not speed, and I would be fine.
Driving always helped to clear my head, and lord knew I needed
that.

Before long, I was headed along the same
route that Matthew and I had taken in the Mustang on that fateful
night in November, albeit much more slowly. The mile markers slid
past me, meaning nothing and everything all at once. The last time
I had taken this stretch had been under much happier circumstances,
in a way. That night had been deep in its own regard, though my
torment had been pointed in the opposite direction.

For weeks I had been traveling the same
circuitous path, bouncing between hostility and love toward the
only man I had ever truly known. Sure, he had his faults, but he
was consistent. He hadn’t acted out of character until yesterday
when he had gotten down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. It
had taken some time, but he had eventually offered me the
commitment I thought I desired.

All along Eric had been wary of my decision
to move up here, to get so involved with someone I barely knew. In
the end he had been right. He knew me well enough to see I had
fallen for Matthew, even before I was willing to admit it myself.
When he had called me out, it pissed me off. Yet he hadn’t given up
on me.

I wondered if he would be willing to hold me
while I cried over his arch nemesis. Something told me that he
would allow me a few moments of sorrow if it meant that Matthew
would be out of my life forever.

Blake’s words echoed in my head as I drove:
don’t hurt him. Like his feelings had ever been in question. As
conflicted as he had appeared the night of his birthday, he had
certainly regained enough composure to brush me off tonight.
Whatever trace of friendship I had been cultivating with him had
been trampled over in mere hours. She really needed to stop
handling him with the kid gloves; he didn’t need it anymore. I
hadn’t hurt him. I, however, was a completely different story.

I didn’t know if I would ever be the
same.

However stupid the kiss had been, I couldn’t
pretend that it hadn’t happened. I still felt the burn of his lips
against mine, the rush of adrenaline that had surged through me. So
what if it had meant nothing to him? To me, it had meant the world.
I had always thought that Eric and I were explosive together; now
that I had something to compare it with, I was proven wrong.

Eric was my safety net. The one thing I could
always count on. Familiar, comfortable, frustrating. But he had
been by my side for as long as I could remember. He had shared all
these ups and downs with me. Never before had his position in my
life been in question. As soon as he had seen the signs that it
was, he had worked on stepping up his game.

I jumped slightly as my cell phone chirped in
the passenger seat beside me. Keeping my eyes on the road, I
reached over and grabbed it blindly. When my fingers wrapped around
the plastic case, I glanced over briefly enough to realize it was a
text. From Matthew. I threw the offending piece of technology back
where it came from without checking the message.

“What do you care?” I asked no one in
particular. “What’s the matter? Didn’t twist the knife deep enough
in person?”

The new tears that slid down my cheeks
betrayed my harsh words. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than
to hear his apologies. In my fairytale world, I wanted him to chase
after me, to speed up behind me and make me hear him out. He had
begged for me not to leave but whatever he’d wanted to say hadn’t
been important enough to really stop me.

He had given up on me just when I had needed
him most.

My downward spiral continued as I drove on,
the miles slipping past me until I realized that I had spent hours
circling Fort Wayne. If I’d really wanted to, I could have driven
to Indy instead, but I doubted I would have found any more clarity
there. My life was nothing more than a series of questions needing
answers I wasn’t ready to come up with yet. Only when I completely
cleared my mind of everything other than the action of driving did
I reach my epiphany.

At the next exit, I pulled off of the
interstate and changed direction. It was as if a weight had been
lifted off of my shoulders. I still wasn’t ready to jump for joy;
the next few days would be hard for me, but if I could manage them,
I could deal with anything.

I knew exactly what I had to do.

The alarm on his cell pierced the early
morning silence of the darkened bedroom. It rang incessantly, the
volume increasing as he untangled an arm from the comforter and set
about slapping at the nightstand in the direction of the noise.
After a couple of failed attempts, his fingers found the phone and
clasped around the still chirping item, dragging it back under the
blanket with him. With his other hand, he removed the pillow from
over his head and pried open his eyelids.

Five-thirty came early. Especially when he
had rung in all the hours prior by staring at the ceiling before
finally, blissfully being taken over by sheer exhaustion an hour
before. For a split second, he contemplated faking illness and
calling in to work, but that wouldn’t solve anything. It would make
things worse; leave him alone with all of those unpleasant thoughts
that he couldn’t escape. At least with a job to do, with a shift to
manage, he could try to lose himself in the mundane. Thank goodness
there would be no major decisions on the docket for today. He was
spent.

The deafening alarm still pounded in his ears
even after he turned it off. Desperately, he checked the phone for
missed calls, new messages that he knew wouldn’t be there. Of
course, there were none. Only the reminder that she hadn’t answered
him.

Are you okay?

Those inadequate words were the last that
appeared on his screen, typed by his finger in an attempt to try to
undo some of the damage that he had undoubtedly inflicted the night
before. There was no response. Just the cursor flashing
expectantly, waiting for him to try something else. He was all out
of ideas.

With a heavy sigh, he lifted himself out of
bed, replacing the phone on the nightstand as he made his way into
the master bath to shower and get ready. One look in the mirror at
his bloodshot eyes confirmed that today would be a glasses kind of
day. There was no way his contacts would feel comfortable in eyes
that were more red than blue.

If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn
he was reliving one of his mornings after from college. The
trappings of a massive hangover were all there, but this one wasn’t
alcohol-induced. He almost wished it had been. He could deal with
the headache, the vomiting, even another arrest better than what he
was left with now.

The regret was suffocating.

He showered quickly as always, not feeling
the water against his skin. Honestly, he had no idea whether the
spray had been scalding hot or ice cold. His body was numb; it
didn’t matter. The cleanliness was just a courtesy for those who
had the bad luck to be around him. No amount of soap could scrub
away the dirtiness that lingered in his soul.

“Don’t hurt her,” Blake had warned him more
than once. He had tried not to, damn it, even falling upon his own
sword in an attempt to keep her from harm. But last night had been
an epic failure. He had watched her shatter into a million pieces
before him, even as his own heart broke right along with hers.

As he walked out into the living room,
returning to the scene of the crime so to speak, he was overcome
with a pang of guilt like no other. Never would he forget the look
on her face when he had pulled away from her kiss. The shock, the
confusion that washed over her features was brutal. It had been all
he could do to steel himself against the desire to lift her up and
take her back to his bed. She had wanted that, too. Or at least she
thought she did.

But he couldn’t be that guy. Not the one who
led her into temptation just as her boyfriend was trying to do
right by her. Eric had been slow in coming to the right conclusion,
but he was there now and he deserved his chance. And Lauren wasn’t
going to cheat on him with her roommate’s brother, no matter how
conflicted she seemed to be. If she wasn’t strong enough to stop
herself, he would have to be strong enough for the both of
them.

She had had every right to be mad at him. He
had never before witnessed someone that small filled with such
rage. Her words had lashed out at him, her growl practically primal
as she had fought against the hysteria that was so close to the
surface. Behind those incensed eyes he had recognized how
frightened she was, just on the verge of tears. He imagined it had
taken all of her will to slam the door behind her. She had probably
collapsed into tears the second she hit the porch.

If he had been a better man, he would have
thrown open the door and gone out into the cold after her. He would
have grabbed her in his arms and held her close and told her how
much he loved her. He would have made her listen. But there were
too many parallels to the night at the party where he had gotten
drunk and stolen Chris’s car to chase after someone who ended up
meaning nothing to him. For his troubles he had ended up losing his
parents and his freedom for the next six months. Obviously Lauren
meant so much more to him than his college flavor of the month, but
the sheer déjà vu factor had frozen him in place.

His hand had slid from the doorknob in
defeat. Spineless, he had sunk to the floor, the wind knocked out
of him. His body shook with dry sobs.

That had been how Chris had found him, curled
up practically in the fetal position. With all the drama going on,
he had completely spaced the fact that his best friend had planned
to come over after his shift on the ambulance. He had entered
through the garage like usual with his own key, no formalities
necessary. If Matthew hadn’t been so distraught, he would have
found his friend’s reaction to the scene amusing. Chris had been
just about to employ his paramedical training when he had sat up
and assured him that nothing was wrong other than he was the
world’s biggest idiot.

They had sat and talked for hours. Chris was
exactly the right person to confide in, given his own experience
with unrequited love. Nothing said “expert at relationship torment”
like holding on to the engagement ring you had intended to give
someone just in case they ever decided to come back to you. The
situations were entirely different, as Blake and Chris had actually
had a relationship implode, whereas Lauren and he had done little
more than flirt with one another. The pain that Chris had
experienced had been years ago; Matthew’s wound was still raw and
fresh.

Eventually, Chris had yawned one too many
times, and Matthew realized he was speaking in circles, rehashing
the same things over and over again. He had pretended to be tired
himself and had put on a brave face so his friend would leave.
Chris had virtually made him promise not to do anything drastic
before heading home to his own loneliness.

On his way out, Chris had commented about how
slick the roads were. This passing remark had set Matthew off into
another tailspin. With the way Lauren had fled earlier, this news
chilled him to the bone. He envisioned her navigating the highway
in her altered state, sliding off into a ditch somewhere. This was
when he had sent the text. Of course she hadn’t answered it, but he
wasn’t certain if it was out of spite or due to the fact that she
was in trouble.

He had almost called Blake just to make sure
she had arrived home okay, but he thought better of it. His sister
would put two and two together easily, and he wasn’t ready to have
that lecture yet. If Lauren had come home all out of sorts, she
either hadn’t told Blake the reasoning behind it or his sibling was
still nursing her wounds. And if she hadn’t made it home the night
before without at least a phone call in explanation, Blake would
have surely called her brother for advice.

That line of thinking had been enough to
convince him to try to go to sleep. Rather than shut his mind off,
however, the darkness had only reminded him how alone he was. How
alone he was always going to be.

His stomach too sour for breakfast, he
grabbed his coat and headed for the garage. As the overhead door
creaked open sleepily, he was greeted with the vision of several
inches of new snowfall. Damn. The Mustang would have been better
suited to his mood, loud and angry and dangerous, but the Camry
would have to do. Even in dry pavement, he wouldn’t have trusted
himself to drive the convertible. He likely would have killed
himself doing so.

Safely at work, he pocketed his cell as he
went out on the floor. He never, ever, did that since his employees
couldn’t have their phones during work hours, but today he allowed
himself the luxury. If Lauren did break down and call him he sure
as hell wasn’t about to miss it. She would never leave a voice
mail, and seeing her number in his missed call log would haunt him
forever. He had the sinking feeling that she wouldn’t reach out to
him ever again, but it was worth a shot to keep hope alive.

He was stalking back to his office when it
rang, the vibration against his leg startling him. He held his
breath and fished it out of his pocket, praying for it to be her.
Instead, it was Blake. He swallowed hard, realizing it was time to
take his medicine. They would have to have this conversation
sometime. It might as well be now.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he said with as
much enthusiasm as he could muster. It sounded hollow even to his
own ears. Self-preservation was a funny thing. Maybe if he
pretended that nothing was wrong, his sister wouldn’t jump down his
throat no matter how much he deserved it. He closed his eyes and
waited for her wrath on the other end of the line.