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No, this wasn’t awkward at all.
As Bailey marched from the living room, I glanced uneasily at the four people who remained. Her roommates. They all stared at me as if they expected me to tug a knife from my pocket and start slitting at my wrists. What’s worse, they were all strangers, well except for Designated Dave, who wasn’t really Dave after all—strange, that—and I barely knew him anyway. But he and the other three had now just seen me lose my shit all over the place. How was that for a first impression?
It was so nice to meet you too.
If I hadn’t wanted to die before, I kind of did now, from utter mortification.
“I’m…” I inched backward away from them and hooked my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m just, yeah, I’m gonna go. I’ll be in Bailey’s room.”
The short redhead grabbed her boyfriend’s arm and popped up onto her toes so she could hiss loudly enough into his ear for me to hear, “Should he be alone right now? I don’t think he should be alone right now.”
Oh, boy.
The big guy turned his gaze to me in a resigned but determined kind of way, like he really didn’t care what I did, but he was still fully prepared to physically strong-arm me into staying, even if it meant pinning me to the floor and sitting on me if necessary, just to make his girlfriend happy.
I lifted my hands, still creeping small steps backward, preparing to make a break for it if need be. “Look, I’m fine. Really. I’m not actually suicidal or anything. I just…” They were all three still staring at me as if I was totally suicidal. I jerked a hesitant glance toward the big guy—Jonah. “I’m really sorry I got into your pills. I had a headache.”
When I motioned to my bruised face in the hopes they would believe I honestly did feel like shit, no one’s expression lit with an ah, I get it nod. Bummer. I kept bumbling through my explanation.
“And Bailey didn’t have any aspirin in her bathroom. So I checked the one in the hall, where I saw all the bottles on the top shelf. I was just curious what they were for. But all the sudden, Bailey was there, screaming, and it made me jump. The bottles when flying, and…”
Yeah, my explanation started to run dry.
But Jonah nodded his forgiveness, which rocked. Truly. “I broke my femur,” he explained.
“Ah.” I nodded too. Then I winced; a broken femur probably hurt big time. I totally sympathized with any kind of pain right now.
“But when Bailey first confronted you about the pills,” the dark-headed girl—Paige—said, making my stomach pitch because, shit, she was really going to go there, wasn’t she? “You said…” She paused and swallowed audibly when I pierced her with a glance, begging her with my expression to please, God, shut up about that already. But she shared a look with Designated Dave—er, Logan—which seemed to bolster her resolve before she turned back to me. “You said there was nothing left for you. You seemed so broken. I mean, you really seemed—”
I lifted my hands and glanced away, still unable to deal with that moment of complete humiliation. “I’m fine,” I rasped. “Seriously. It was…” I shook my head, not sure how to explain it. “It was just a bad moment. You know those moments, when stray thoughts flit through your head, and then they’re gone and you’re like, weird. Why did I think that? Because, in all honestly, I would never do that. Th-that’s what that was. Just a small hiccup in my head. I’m really not like that.”
I shrugged helplessly. A week ago, I never would’ve thought I’d be trying to convince complete strangers I wasn’t going to kill myself. The bizarreness of it all suddenly left me too flabbergasted to continue. I just stared at the brunette, lost.
Unfortunately, she still looked concerned. “Regardless,” she said as kindly as possible, even sending me a bolstering smile before she glanced at her boyfriend and took his hand. “Logan and Jonah have a friend named Samantha. She’s not technically a psychiatrist, but she helps people all the same. And she’s really cool. She helped them both through some rough issues. If you’d like her number, I’m sure she’d be more than willing to talk with you, too.”
Yeah, until she found out I was the famous rapist of Granton University.
As if reading my mind, Paige more firmly said, “She would help you.”
For some reason, that just made me feel shittier though. I shouldn’t need help. I should be able to handle this and get my own shit together.
I blinked and then flushed hotly. “Okay, uh, well, thank you, but…” I glanced around, looking for Bailey, or someone, anyone to pop forward and tell these people I was fine. But dammit to hell, I wasn’t fine, was I? Clearing my throat, I gave Paige a humble kind of I give up nod before saying, “Thank you for the offer. I’ll keep it in mind.”
Bailey reentered the living room, clapping her hands. “Okay, food’s ready! Let’s eat.”
Jonah frowned. “But you left, like, only two minutes ago to go fix supper.”
She sent him a nasty smirk. “What can I say; I cook fast.”
“What the hell did you cook?”
“Hot dogs and cold baked beans from a can. Are you coming or not?”
“Jesus, I could’ve made that,” Jonah huffed but stomped toward the kitchen, clearly not about to turn down any kind of meal.
The others almost obediently filed after him until it was only me and Bailey left in the living room. She glanced at me and held out her hand, beckoning me forward. “Come on. Let’s eat.”
I shuffled a step back and shook my head. “I’m not very hungry.”
