God, it hurt as much now as it did then. The day my life changed forever.
“I found her you know? My mom. Trina Maguire,” I whispered her name as if it was forbidden. In a way, I supposed it was. Something I barely let myself think about. Because remembering that night, letting myself go there… it resurfaced too many feelings, too many memories. Feelings and memories that had almost destroyed me.
“I found her cold and dead in her room and the first person I screamed for was Nix. I think I was still screaming when the police arrived and wrestled me into the back of their cruiser while they wheeled my mom’s lifeless body to the ambulance.”
“Jesus, Harleigh… I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t—”
Of course she didn’t know. Michael had made it clear the details of that night were to stay under wraps, even from his own family. I suspected Sabrina knew, but if she did, she’d never tried to talk to me about it.
“It’s okay.”
It wasn’t something I’d ever talked about. Not with my father or Celeste. Definitely not with Max or Sabrina. My therapist had tried to broach the subject more than once, to encourage me to explore my feelings around my mom’s ravaging alcohol dependency and her subsequent overdose. But every time I’d tried, it was like a switch inside me flipped and I shut down.
“It doesn’t sound okay,” Celeste whispered. “No wonder you were…” She trailed off.
“Messed up?” I glanced over at her, smiling.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
“No, it isn’t. But sometimes smiling or laughing is the only way to deal with emotions so intense they paralyze you. Like if I don’t smile or laugh or tell myself it’s okay, everything will collapse and I’ll—” I inhaled deeply, the shuddering breath rolling through me like thunder in the distance.
“What happened with Phoenix?”
“It was last Halloween. We’d been to some stupid party… He took me home and when I found my mom, I texted him right away. But he never replied. When Michael showed up at the police station, I begged Nix to come and get me. But I never heard from him again.”
“That doesn’t sound right. Why wouldn’t he reply? I mean, you were friends, right?”
“Best friends,” I confirmed despite the pain it caused.
“What about his friends? Didn’t you call them?”
“I did, at first. But when no one replied, I stopped… and well, you know what happened after that.”
I’d been a mess.
As the days went by and I didn’t hear from Nix or the guys, I withdrew until I wouldn’t leave my room. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t interacting with anyone in the house. My grief was a living, breathing thing inside of me, except I wasn’t only grieving the death of my mom, I was grieving the death of my friendship with Nix.
Celeste was right. It didn’t make sense. None of it did. But I’d been too numb and anguished to step back and be rational about things at the time. And the more time passed, the more my heart withered and died in my chest. Because Nix didn’t come for me. The only person I’d ever trusted, left me. Whatever his reasons were, he’d abandoned me when I’d needed him most, and it was unforgivable.
It’s why seeing him earlier had been such a shock.
Nine months.
Almost forty weeks had passed since I’d last seen him.
It might as well have been a lifetime.
I wasn’t the same person anymore. And I very much doubted he was.
So why had he come?
Five little words that had haunted me since we left Strike One and I’d desperately searched the parking lot for any signs of his car.
“There must be more to it,” Celeste said. “He wouldn’t abandon you, only to turn up all these months later and—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. You’re in love with him—”