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“You mean what happened tous.”
I shake my head. “It didn’t matter what happened to me when it wasbecause of me, Holden.” I suck in a ragged breath. “And so I left here. And I drove. And you don’t think about it as it’s happening, but twenty hours a day, on the road,alone, with nothing but your thoughts and your guilt—that fuckingguilt—and—” I break off to hold back a sob and try to regain my composure, but each shallow breath just takes from the next. “That’s when I started drinking. I’d find these random bars in the middle of nowhere where they didn’t check for ID, and I just… drank.A lot. And I’d crawl into my car and sleep it off and wake up the next day and do it all over again. I knew it was wrong—there were days I’d go without… but there were also days when I’d look in the mirror, and I’d see my mother staring back at me, and it was almost… almost comforting to know that I wasn’t alone….” I sniff back my pain, and as much as it hurts to simply breathe though the agony, I have to keep going. For Holden. And maybe even for me. “And then one day… I woke up in a random guy’s bed, and I had no idea how I got there. It was the first time it’d happened, and Ihatedmyself. I started seeing myself through the eyes of all the people around me. Then, and as a kid. I was dirty, filthy…useless.”
“Jamie…” Holden moves toward me, but I back away because it gets worse, and I can’t have him near me when I tell him.
“I drove to a cliff edge, and I got out of the car, and I looked down, and I thought… I could jump, and it would all be over, and no one would miss me, and I know… I know that isn’t the case, but that was my mindset. And it’s also what saved me. Becauseyouwould miss me, and as selfish as it was, I still wanted a lifetime with you. So, I got back in my car, and I drove to Gina’s house, and I asked for the one thing I should’ve asked for years ago. I asked for help.” I sniff once. “She got me into these group meetings and got me into therapy, and my therapist, she helped me overcome the guilt, encouraged me to reach out to Zeke to let him know I was safe. I wanted to reach out to you, too, but every time I tried, I just… I couldn’t have you see me the way I was. Because I was a fuckingmess,Holden. I lost myself in those few months, and I needed to get back to… to being someone good enough for you. And I thought… maybe once I have that then… then maybe one day I’ll come and find you, and I’ll tell you it’s because of you I’m still standing.”
“I would’ve loved and accepted any version of you, Jamie,” Holden murmurs. “Youknowthat.”
“But how is that fair to you?” I cry. “How is it fair that every version you know of me is broken?”
“That’s just who you are…”
I shake my head, my vision blurred by my withheld tears. “It’s not who I want to be.”
His exhale fills the void between us. “That explains what? The first few months? What happened in all the years after? When did you start seeing Dean?”
I take a calming breath. And then another. “My therapist convinced me that there are people who cared about me… that I couldn’t just disappear and it wouldn’t affect anyone. So once a month for the past few years, I would go back home. I’d see Gina, visit Zeke and stay with Esme for a few days. Once, when I was there, I ran into Dean, and we started talking. He became a good friend to me, Holden. Nothing more.” I pause a beat, trying to regain my thoughts. “I’ve been doing the same version of nothing for the past few years, but I was moving forward, and that was important to me. I stopped looking at the past and all the mistakes I’d made, and I was doing well. I was slowly climbing out of the darkness, and I thought…”Oh, god. “But then…”
“Then what?” Holden urges.
I finally turn to him, seeing the same tears in his eyes that are in mine. “Then Esme died.”
Holden’s breath leaves him in a rush.
“And Dean—he was there for me. He stood beside me as they wheeled her body away, and he helped me with her funeral arrangements and… it wasone night, and that night I had my first drop of alcohol since my breakdown. We both regretted it the next morning, and later that day, he drove me to the lawyer’s office where I saw you…” I smile, but it’s full of so much sadness that I can’t even comprehend how it comes across. “And that’s it. That’s where I’ve been the past five years, Holden.” I pull on the door handle and push it open. “Trying find a way to love myself the way you once loved me.”
25
Holden
There’s no answer when I knock on the RV around midday the next day, so I trail in back to the barn where I’d spotted Dad as I drove in. He’d given me a cursory nod and then asked what I was doing. I don’t usually work Saturdays, so it was odd I was here. I told him I was working in the office. Revealing the truth—that I was here to give Jamie the morning-after pill—would’ve earned me a few decent slaps upside the head.
The barn floor is covered with buckets of white roses and peonies in all different shades of pink. Such typical wedding flowers, if you ask me, but hey… it’s not my wedding. “You getting ready for tomorrow?” I ask Dad as he walks in with two more buckets. One of Maggie’s old college friends is getting married tomorrow evening, and we’re supplying the flowers atalmostcost.
“Yep,” Dad says. “We’re leaving first thing, and we’ll be staying at the hotel overnight, so no raging parties, okay?”
I narrow my eyes as I lean against the workbench. “You realize I’m twenty-three, not sixteen, right? My raging party days are over.”
Dad chuckles. “We’ll be back Monday around lunch.”
“Cool.” I shove my hands in my pockets, my fingertips grazing the small box housing a single pill. “Hey, you haven’t seen Jamie, have you? I knocked on her—”
“She and Mags went to Charlotte. They should be back in a couple of hours.”
“Charlotte?”
Dad nods.
“Are they just shopping, or…?” Jamie’s never really been the shopping-for-the-sake-of-shopping type. However, she did like to wander around thrift stores for hours looking for smelly old lady clothes.
“It was the closest place Jamie could find that had an Al-Anon meeting today, so—”
“Wait,” I cut in, trying to wrap my head around what he’s saying. “Jamie had a little too much to drink last night, but she’s far from an alcoholic.”
“No, the way Maggie explains it, it’s like a support group for family and friends of alcoholics.” He pauses his task to look up at me. “Her mom was an alcoholic, right?”
“Yeah,” I breathe out, my eyes frantic as I search for answers to questions I don’t even know yet.
