I throw the pen across the room and ball my hands into fists. Breathe in. Breathe out. That’s what Charles had me do when I was first in rehab and I was coming off the meds that weaned me from my heroin and meth addictions. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Let it pass. But it’s not passing. I need something else. A hit. Yeah, that’s the easy solution, but the harder one has fewer long-term consequences.
I need someone to talk to. Greg. Wilson. It’s after eight and I don’t want to bother them. I immediately reach for my phone and call the one person I know I can talk to and the only person I really want to talk to. The one person I know can distract me enough to calm me the f**k down.
I drum my fingers on my knee as I dial Nova’s number and then listen to the line ring. As it gets to the fourth one, I think she’s not going to answer, and I’m about ready to hang up and go over to Marcus’s house and buy whatever I can off him. Get a hit. Feel the rush. Then the numbing. Thankfully Nova picks up right as her voice mail clicks on and I exhale a breath of relief, realizing how weak I still am—how much help I still need.
“Hey,” I say after she answers, instantly settling down, my pulse calming.
“Hey.” She sounds breathless. “I was hoping it was you calling.”
Her response makes me smile, but of course it also confounds me that she’d be that happy to hear from me. “Yeah, I just wanted to talk to you… but if you can’t talk, then it’s okay.”
“Why couldn’t I talk?”
“Because… I don’t know. You sound sort of breathless.”
She laughs and I close my eyes, relishing the tranquil sound of it. “That’s because I was playing Twister with Lea and Tristan and I had to run to get the phone.”
I lean back against the wall, my eyes opening. “Twister? Was that Tristan’s idea?” I loathe that I sound jealous, but I can’t help how I feel. That I wish I were the one living with her, playing games where I get to tangle our bodies together in awkward positions.
“No, it was actually Lea’s,” she says, and I distinctively hear a door close. “She said she was bored and that she needed to do something other than sit on the couch and watch reruns of Vampire Diaries.”
“And Twister was that thing?”
“Yeah, it was the only game we had in the closet, and just in case you’re wondering, it did belong to Tristan.”
“I knew he had something to do with it.” I remember all the times he wanted me to hook up with girls. Tristan always wanted to hook up with any girl he came across. God, it feels like years ago when it was only months. A whole different world, full of cracks, temptations, and unsteady footsteps. That’s what life feels like when you’ve been on drugs for years and then suddenly you’re sober.
“Yeah, I guess he’s kind of a perv, isn’t he?”
“Sometimes,” I say, then decide I need a subject change because talking about Tristan’s pervertedness isn’t helping me calm down. “So I was thinking that you could put on the song first tonight and then we could talk.”
“Yeah, I could do that.” She sounds confused. “But can I ask you why?”
“I’m just having a rough day,” I tell her, being more honest than I usually am. “And waiting to hear what song you’re going to pick out for me always cheers me up.”
“Okay, what kind of song do you want tonight?” There’s cheeriness in her tone and I can feel my heart rate calming from it.
“How about a hopeful one?” I ask, unsure if she’ll get what I mean.
But I quickly learn that I should never question Nova when it comes to music, because a few minutes later “Rise” by Eddie Vedder comes on. It’s probably not what most people would have picked for a hopeful song, but leave it to Nova to pick something different that still gets the point across. She found me a song that’s not talking about rainbows and sunshine, but that gives enough hope that it makes me feel better.
“So what do you think?” she wonders, getting back on the phone with the music playing in the background.
“I think it’s good.” I relax in my bed and shut my eyes. Breathing seems a little bit easier, just like thinking. In fact, everything seems easier at the moment.
“Does it give you hope?” she asks, and I can hear the expectation in her voice.
I keep my eyes shut, but a trace of a smile graces my lips. “You know what? It does. It really, really does.” I pause, knowing that what I say next is going to be huge for me, but for some reason I want to do it, want to talk with her, because it always seems to make life just the tiniest bit easier. “Can I talk to you about why I was upset tonight?”
“Of course,” she says, although she does seem nervous. “I told you that you can talk to me about anything.”
I take a deep breath, then another, preparing myself to crack open a door. “It’s about my future and how much it scares me.”
“I get that,” she says, and my eyelids flutter open. “But I promise that it’ll get better—that moving forward will get better.”
“I know.” I stare at a photo of Lexi on the wall. She’s laughing at something… I honestly can’t even remember what it was. Something I said, I think. She looks so happy. So alive. Eyes bright. Heart beating. Happy. “But it’s hard to think about a future when it feels like every time I do, I’m leaving someone behind.”
I hear her breath hitch in her throat, but Nova being Nova, she sounds calm when she speaks. “I actually get that really well. That’s the way I felt about Landon.”
I swallow hard. “Did you love him?”
“Yes,” she utters softly. “He was actually my friend for a few years before we got together, but that helped me get to know him more.” She sucks in a breath and releases it gradually, like she’s on the brink of tears. “I thought I was going to marry him.”
I can feel tears prickling at my eyes as I realize what I’m about to say. “I thought I was going to marry Lexi, too… although I’m not sure she was on the same page as me. She was cryptic like that. And restless. And she didn’t like the idea of settling down.” And when she died, I saw our future together slipping away, but I was okay with it because I was dying, too, but then I came back without her and that future was gone forever.
“Landon didn’t like talking about the future at all,” Nova says sorrowfully. “Sometimes I think it’s because he knew he was… well, you know… and he either didn’t let himself talk about it, didn’t want to make any empty promises to me, or just didn’t ever think about it.”