Wow. That was the first time someone had listened to me. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and tried not to fall further apart. I’d cried so much already, been in so much pain, but this, this was the worst.
This was what was below rock bottom, whatever they called that. They probably didn’t have a name for it.
* * *
The next few hours involved me crying more tears than I knew were possible and going through an entire box of tissues as I sat on the floor of my bedroom and wondered what the f**k I was going to do. I went through several options, but none of them seemed viable.
What I wanted, what I really wanted, was to go to a new place. Just cut my losses and pick up and leave. Everything, including my family. Invent a new person to be, a new person that people wouldn’t ask questions about. It’s what a girl in a movie would do. I’d have to cut and/or dye my hair, though, and get completely different clothes for it to work.
I was delusional. I couldn’t start over, because they wouldn’t let me. Hannah had said she was jealous of how many people cared about me, but I’d willingly hand them over to her. She needed it more than I did. How horrible it was, what had happened to her.
When I was finally able to get myself to move, I went to my computer and put Coldplay’s “The Scientist” on repeat. My below-rock-bottom moment needed a sound track. I really had to pee, which was insane, given how much water I’d already let out of my body through my tears, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t someone camped outside my door. After listening for a little while for the smallest sound, I unlocked the door and poked my head out.
Empty. I breathed a tiny sigh of relief and scurried to the bathroom in case they were listening and waiting for me to emerge from my room to attack me. I wasn’t going to take any chances. I thought I was home free when I opened the door of the bathroom, but someone got up from the couch. He’d been so freaking quiet I had no idea how long he’d been there.
“Dusty.” I breathed his name and it was both a blessing and a curse at the same time.
“Hey, Red. We need to talk. I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but I think I can change your mind.”
“Did Renee send you down here to drag me out so they can do whatever they’re plotting to do with me?” The mind reeled with possibilities. I bet she wouldn’t be above forcing me to go to a facility. I’d been threatened with that more times than I could count, but this time they might actually be able to do it, even though I was of age.
“No, I came on my own. She wasn’t going to let me in the house, but Hunter convinced her that I was the only one who could get through to you. Would you just listen? You don’t have to do anything else. Just listen.”
“Dusty—”
He put up his hands, like I was holding him at gunpoint.
“Just wait here. I have to get something. I swear, I’ll be right back. Yes, you could just go in your room and lock the door and I will respect that, this time, but I beg you. Please, Joscelyn.” He was brave to come near the house, what with Renee on the warpath and a target on his back.
“Okay.” Moving slowly from behind the couch, he kept facing me, probably so I didn’t make any sudden movements. He even walked up the stairs backward and had to grope for the door handle. If I wasn’t so far from laughing, I might have found it funny.
For a split second, I considered going into my room and locking the door, just to get this over with, but something told me he’d be back and he wouldn’t give up.
I heard voices, and I wondered for a moment if he’d set me up, and they were going to come storming down the stairs, all dressed in riot gear. My suspicions turned out to be nothing more than that when Dusty slowly opened the door and came back down the stairs, cradling something to his chest with one hand. A tiny sound told me that it was Napoleon.
“So you think you’re going to use your adorable kitten to get me to listen to you, huh?” Napoleon poked his sleepy head out from the folds of Dusty’s sleeve. Why did he have to be so freaking sweet?
“I play dirty. Here.” He held Napoleon out to me, and Napoleon protested at being moved. “It was a job to get him away from the ladies upstairs, I’ll tell you that much. I’m pretty sure this house is going to be full of kittens next week.” I had no choice but to take hold of Napoleon. I put him up to my face and he snuggled under my chin and started purring. This was the key to world peace, I swear. Kittens. Start dropping those in the Middle East and problems solved.
“Would you like to sit?” Dusty gestured to the couch as if he was an old-time gentleman inviting me into his parlor for tea. I nodded and went to sit on the couch, still holding the sweet Napoleon, who was playing with my hair.
“Don’t eat that,” I said, taking some of it out of his mouth.
Dusty made sure he had quite a bit of distance between us, but I remembered how that had gone last time we’d been on this couch. This time, though, there would be no kissing, even if I wanted to.
“Joscelyn?”
I looked up from the adorable kitten to meet Dusty’s hypnotic eyes. Two very different things, but equally captivating.
“Hannah shared with me what you told her earlier. About...about Nate.” His voice broke a little on Nathan’s name. “And it’s just not true, Jos. It’s not.”
“I can’t believe she told you,” I said, looking back at the kitten because it didn’t hurt as much as looking at Dusty.
“Don’t be mad at her.”
“I’m not mad at her.” I wasn’t really mad anymore. I’d gotten to that place where you just don’t feel anything. It was kind of nice. Emotional purgatory. “So go ahead—talk.”
“It’s not your fault that Nate died. It’s mine.”
“Yeah, you said that.” I looked up from the kitten and wished I hadn’t. Dusty was crying, and in the second it took for me to realize he was crying, I snapped out of my emotional purgatory from a moment earlier.
“Yes, I did. He was coming to get me from my parents’, and I was on the phone with him just before it happened. If he wouldn’t have brought me to Maine from the concert, he wouldn’t have been on that highway.”
With that, I went back to petting the kitten as tears rolled down Dusty’s face and splashed on his shirt. He didn’t bother to wipe them, which made it worse, somehow.
“Joscelyn. He was coming to get me. I’d gotten arrested, again, for drinking underage. The charges were later dropped, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I asked him to come and bail me out, and that’s why he was on that highway. To save my stupid ass, again. I can’t count how many times he drove home for me, and...” The tears finally became too much and he sobbed, leaning toward me.