Perfect Regret ( BOOK 2) (23 page)

“Why would Gracie care?” he asked. God, men were so clueless sometimes.

“Probably because she’s been wanting to get in your pants for months now. She’s already angry with me. I don’t want to hurt her,” I said, feeling a sudden wash of misery. So much for finally letting my heart do the talking. What was the point when I would never willingly hurt Gracie like that again?

Garrett’s fingers combed through my hair until they laced at the nape of my neck. He touched his forehead to mine our noses brushing against each other. “Gracie is a confused, bitter and extremely sick girl. She doesn’t want me anymore than I want her,” he said with conviction.

His words bewildered me. “What do you mean? She’s always talking about wanting to hook up with you,” I said, backing away slightly.

Garrett shook his head, looking suddenly irritated. “It’s not like that between Gracie and me. I’m just…helping her out. Or at least trying to. Trust me, she does not feel that way about me. She’s just very confused right now. She’s all over the place.” He pulled me back against him and kissed me soundly.

“Your loyalty is one of the things I love about you. But in this case it’s not needed. Though she will need you. More than she realizes,” he said cryptically.

“What are you talking about? You act as though Gracie has cancer. Is something wrong with her?” I asked, feeling the twinges of worry overtake the lust that had so recently flooded my brain.

Garrett wrapped my hands between his and cradled them to his chest. “Gracie has a serious substance abuse problem. Maysie, Vivian, and I have been trying to get her to go get help for a while now. She’s spiraling fast. I’ve been there, I know what it looks like to fall off the edge and Gracie is really close, Ri,” he said and I felt like even more of an ass.

“I knew she was drinking and partying too much. I thought Vivian had contacted her sister and they were handling it,” I said stupidly, realizing that so much was going on while I was completely oblivious.

“Yeah, that didn’t go so well. And she’s been getting steadily worse. After you and I fought before I left Maryland, I realized you were right about my partying. Sure I wasn’t where I used to be, but it wouldn’t take much for me to find myself right back on the edge. And then I saw Gracie and I saw in her the person I used to be. The person I was afraid I would become again. So I stopped. All of it. The smoking, the drinking. I haven’t had a joint or a beer since Maryland. I started going to AA meetings. I tried taking Gracie with me a few times but it didn’t pan out. She’s in serious denial right now. It sucks watching someone you care about lose it like that,” Garrett’s tone implied he felt his own guilt.

I was in a state of shock. Garrett had quit smoking. Quit drinking. He was on the straight and narrow. Because of what I said.

And during his own struggles with sobriety he had been looking after my friend. He had been doing something, I should have been. I really was a shitty friend and overall human being.

“Stop it, Riley. I know you’re hating on yourself right now. But you were dealing with your own shit. Just stop, please,” he pleaded softly and then I stopped thinking again.

“Riley!” Maysie’s panicked call pulled me out of my Garrett induced haze and out of his arms. Maysie pushed through the kitchen door and I knew instantly something was very, very wrong. Her face was a scary shade of white and she looked…stricken. That was the only word that came to mind when I saw her.

She didn’t even register that I was standing with Garrett, our mouths bruised and red, and my eyes glassy from desire. Maysie grabbed me and I felt her terror.

“It’s Gracie! She stopped breathing!” she cried, pulling me after her into the restaurant. Garrett immediately moved into action and pushed past us to run through the kitchen and into the front of the bar. Maysie and I ran after him and the place was in complete chaos.

Moore was trying to corral people off to the side but it was still bedlam. Maysie’s grip on my hand was painful as she dragged me to the front doors. There was a ring of people around a spot on the sidewalk. I recognized Vivian sobbing into Cole’s chest. There was Jaz and Dina as well as a few people from the kitchen crew.

I pushed through them and thought I was going to throw up. Jordan had his phone out and was obviously talking to a dispatcher. Mitch was knelt beside Gracie, his fingers pinching her nose as he breathed into her mouth.

My friend looked like a broken doll lying there on the sidewalk. Her blonde hair fanned around her as though she had purposefully arranged it like that. Her face was ashen and her lips blue. She looked dead.

My god, Gracie looked dead.

Garrett fell to his knees on the other side of her body and he looked ready to fall apart. He watched helplessly as Mitch breathed five times into her mouth and then listened at her mouth. Then he would take her pulse and start chest compressions.

I stood there, helpless, struck dumb by the utter tragedy that unfolded in front of me. Garrett pulled at his hair and let out a strangled howl that made my skin prickle.

I had never felt so useless in my entire life as I watched my friend’s life drain from her on the cold sidewalk. I barely registered when the paramedics arrived and wheeled her into an ambulance. I saw Garrett jump into the back with Gracie, holding her hand and talking to her the entire time.

Maysie pulled on my hand, saying something about meeting them at the hospital. I didn’t move. I could only stand there and watch as the flashing lights disappeared around the corner.

“Riley! Come on!” Maysie said, near hysterics. Vivian was freaking out and Cole was trying to get her to his car. Jordan had his arm around Maysie but she wouldn’t let go of my hand.

And I just continued to stand there, staring into the distance where Gracie and Garrett disappeared.

“No,” I said finally, after Maysie screamed in my face to snap me out of it.

“What do you mean
no?
Riley, Gracie needs us!” Maysie yelled, tears streaming down her face. Jordan was making soothing noises, trying to calm her down.

I pulled my hand back and shook my head. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t be in a hospital. Not again. Not so soon. I was shutting down. That was the only way I could function right now.

“Go on. Call me when you know something,” I said, my voice deadened by the turmoil of the last twenty minutes. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. This upheaval threatened to snap me in two.

I pulled my keys out of my pocket and walked to my car.

“Riley!” Maysie yelled after me and I heard Jordan tell her to let me go.

“A
re you going to go by to see her?” Maysie asked me and I could hear all too clear the vaguely thinned criticism tinged with sympathy.

Maysie had just come back from visiting Gracie, who was now staying with her parents in town. Gracie had spent forty-eight hours in the hospital after being diagnosed with acute alcohol poisoning. According to Maysie, she had suffered from depressed respiratory functioning and was hooked up to an oxygen machine while the alcohol worked through her system.

And I hadn’t gone to see her.

I know that made me an even shittier friend than I already was. I was painfully aware that I would not be winning friend of the year. But the thought of going to another hospital to watch someone I cared about lying in a bed, waiting for them to get better…or worse…was more than I could handle.

So I had shut down. Gone home and proceeded to hate myself for the new coward colored clothing I was wearing.

I hated that I couldn’t call on the part of me that had always dominated everything. The part that would look the world in the eye and tell it to fuck off. The Riley Walker that didn’t let a thing like discomfort or fear to rule her decisions.

But now I felt guilty for the way I had screwed up everything. I had screwed up my relationship with Gracie. I had screwed up my relationship with Damien. And I knew, that after everything, I had screwed up thing with Garrett.

Because while I had been holed up in my apartment too chicken shit to visit my friend, Garrett had proven he was everything I
should
be. He hadn’t left Gracie’s side, proving he was hands down a better person than I was.

“How’s she doing?” I asked, not answering the question.

Maysie blew out a breath, her bangs puffing up before falling back down on her forehead. She looked tired. Her skin stretched tight and the black circles that shadowed her eyes could have had their own zip code. Maysie had taken Gracie’s crash into rock bottom particularly hard.

She, just like the rest of Gracie’s friends, felt responsible for where Gracie ended up. We knew she was spiraling fast. She was partying too hard. Drinking too much. Yet what had we done to stop it from happening?

Not nearly enough.

“She’s not quite
Gracie,
if that makes sense. She’s getting better physically. But mentally, she’s still struggling. She’s trying to be normal, but I can tell how difficult it is for her,” Maysie answered, tucking her feet underneath her as she sat beside me on the couch.

I closed the book I had been reading for Senior Symposium and gave her my full attention.

“I get it.” I could only imagine how hard it was for Gracie. Trying desperately to show everyone she was okay, but feeling anything but. “What’s she going to do?” I asked. We were a week away from the end of the semester, all of us ass deep in finals. Gracie understandably, hadn’t returned to school.

Maysie lifted her shoulders in a tired shrug. “I don’t know. I haven’t wanted to ask her. None of us want to stress her out or anything, so I have no idea…” she said, letting the words trail off.

I had to ask the other question that was eating me alive. “Have you seen Garrett?” I queried, ashamed that I was bothering to know this particular piece of information after our friend almost died. But I hated not knowing how he was doing.

I knew he was taking Gracie’s situation particularly hard. It had come out after the fact that all these weeks, when I thought the two of them were possibly hooking up, Garrett had been in fact trying to keep Gracie together. He was making it his mission to keep her sober.

I figured this had more to do with his feelings regarding his parents’ death at the hands of a too-drunk driver. But it didn’t change the fact that he had stepped up and helped Gracie when the rest of us had failed miserably.

Maysie gave me a look that I refused to interpret. “Yeah. He was at Gracie’s parents’ place this afternoon. They were hanging out when I got there.”

The pain that sucked my breath from my lungs was a combination of regret and guilt.

“He’s been really great to her,” I commented, not knowing what else to say but the truth.

“Yeah, he has been. Better than the rest of us,” Maysie said, sounding miserable and sad and all the other crappy emotions that I was currently feeling.

“He asked about you,” she said after a moment. I wanted to jump all over that tiny statement like white on rice. I wanted to hound out of her every infinitesimal shred of information.

But I didn’t.

“Really?” I asked without a hint to the wave of something resembling hope that threatened to leap out of me with a gigantic whoop.

“Really. He wanted to know why you haven’t been by to see Gracie. He just wanted to make sure you were okay.” Well, that little bit of hope went straight down the toilet.

Because I knew what he was thinking because I hadn’t been to see my friend. It confirmed every horrible thing he had ever thought about me. And he was right.

“Oh,” I said shortly, feeling like a fool. I had bungled up so much of my life recently and all I could think was that my father would be really disappointed in me.

Maysie put her hand on my arm. “You should go and see her though. It would be good…for both of you.” My roommate had become unnaturally astute in her old age.

“I’m most likely the last person she’d want to see. Or have you forgotten how I was crowned Gracie’s least favorite person in the last month?” I asked bitterly.

Maysie shook her head as though I were an idiot. “You’re an idiot,” she muttered, confirming my thought. “Gracie hasn’t been herself in a long time. I think the Gracie, who we know and love was being sucked under by all the other shit going on. She was a jerk to everyone, not just you,” she stated.

“After Garrett, I don’t blame her,” I said.

And then Maysie slapped me. Yep, the bitch slapped me.

“What the hell?” I growled, putting my hand up to my flaming cheek.

Maysie shook out her hand. I hope it stung like hell.

“You gave me a good slap once when I needed it. So I’m now returning the favor. Stop this woe is me stuff. This is not the Riley Walker I know and adore. You made some crappy decisions. Just stand up and make the right ones now,” she said firmly and I couldn’t help but grin.

“Good advice. I see the grasshopper has finally learned from the master,” I told her. Maysie rolled her eyes.

“Well the grasshopper is going to smack you again if you don’t pull yourself out of this funk. I know you’re hurting about your dad. You haven’t really allowed yourself to grieve. I’m not telling you how to handle things, but I think it might be time to try something else. Because
this,”
she waved her hand in my direction, “is clearly not working.”

“Wow, who made you Maysie Ardin, PH.D?” I asked sarcastically.

Maysie smiled. “You know I’m right. I understand that abrasive form of sarcasm well.”

“Whatever,” I replied, channeling some grade school maturity.

Maysie got to her feet. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Jordan and I are going out to dinner. You wanna come?” she asked.

“And watch you eat each other’s faces instead of the food? Huh. Let me think about that for a minute,” I mused.

Maysie gave me a stern look and started toward the bathroom. “Seriously though. You need to go see Gracie. She needs you,” she said before disappearing behind the door.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time. It was a little after four. I grabbed my car keys and headed out. Maysie was right. It was time I was the friend I should have been all along.

I stopped at the store and picked up a bag of Gracie’s favorite mixed chocolates as well as two incredibly horrible chick flicks. If I was going to grovel, I should probably do it baring gifts.

I knew that Gracie’s parents lived in a subdivision just outside of town but I realized I didn’t know the exact house number. I pulled down a road with a line of similar looking brick houses and was about to call Maysie to ask for the exact directions when I saw a familiar white van.

I pulled in behind Garrett’s vehicle and turned off my car. He was just closing the front door as I walked up the path. He was digging in his pocket for his keys and hadn’t noticed me yet. He was dressed in his typical slacker grunge attire that at one time I found to be horrific. His dirty blond hair brushed his shoulders and hung in his face. His beat up Vans were untied, the laces trailing to the ground. His green button shirt was only buttoned halfway, which was I assumed was him trying to be respectful of Gracie’s parents. I found that I hated not being able to see the taught muscles of his stomach. God, why didn’t I just go and lick his chest while I was at it?

I slowed down my walk, giving him time to see me. And when he did, I froze. Because the look on his face wasn’t the one I expected to see. I had anticipated disgust or disapproval. I was so sure he was done with me after my crappy display of friendship to the girl who lived in the house behind him.

But what I saw reflected in those beautiful blue eyes was a tenderness that made me weak in the knees.

“Riley,” he said in his husky voice. I had to take a deep breath to calm my rapidly beating heart. It was either that or pass out cold on the Cooks’ front lawn.

“Hi, Garrett,” I said, trying to smile but knowing it most likely looked like a spasm of the lips.

Garrett met me halfway and we stood there like the Two Maxs in that Dr. Seuss story. Neither of us moving, both stuck in our tracks.

“I’m here to see Gracie,” I announced stupidly.

Garrett’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah, I figured that, with you being at her parents’ house and all.”

“I know I haven’t been to see her yet, I just wasn’t sure…”

“Whether you could see another person you loved sick and suffering?” Garrett asked and I felt the giant knot in my stomach loosen with the realization that he got it. Just like he always did.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called. Especially after the way we left things,” Garrett said, surprising the hell out of me.

“You’ve been a little busy. Frankly, I didn’t expect to hear from you,” I said honestly. No sense in denying the big hole of suck I had been wallowing in for the past few days.

Garrett frowned and then shocked me even further by reaching out and wrapping his hand around my wrist, tugging me forward. I stumbled toward him until the tips of our shoes were touching and were breathing in each other’s air. I looked up into his eyes and almost recoiled at the depth of emotion I saw there.

I didn’t spend a lot of time embracing the touchy feely. I tended to feel awkward and weird when forced to deal with it. Even when Damien had said I love you, I never felt entirely comfortable with it, so it was my natural reaction to pull away.

But there was something about the way Garrett Bellows looked at me that made running the last thing I wanted to do.

“I
should
have called you, Ri. Because after what we said to each other, you deserved to hear every second of every day that I feel the same way. That you’re my girl. That we’ll be together until you decide you can do better and kick me to the curb.” He tugged on my arm again before moving his arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered before kissing the side of my mouth softly. He let his lips linger there, not deepening the kiss but with an aching tenderness that made my knees buckle.

“Stop saying you’re sorry. It’s annoying,” I said huskily after he moved away.

“It annoys you, huh? What else is new?” he teased before his face darkened. “I a
m
sorry. But Gracie,”

“Gracie needed you. I get it,” I finished for him.

“We weren’t hooking up, Riley. We were never together like that. I just saw in her something that reminded me way too much of myself. I just wanted to help I guess,” he said, sounding like the boy who had lost his world and didn’t know what to do about it. It made me sad and angry and scared. All for him.

“I get that now. You’re a good guy, Garrett,” I said with a small smile.

Garrett gave me a crooked grin. “Just don’t tell anyone,” he quipped.

I stood there in the circle of his arms, knowing this is where I wanted to be. That even in the worst of circumstances he was always there. He was steadfast and loyal and never, ever wavered.

How many people could say they’d do the same?

Because this man had proved time and time again that he could handle the ugly that life threw at him and that was the kind of person I wanted in my life.

“I’d better get in there,” I told him, not wanting to move away from him, but knowing that I should. That there was someone else I needed to make things right with.

“Yeah, you should.” He didn’t move in to kiss me. In fact, he backed up and dropped his arms from around me. But I didn’t feel like I was being rejected. In fact, it felt almost like a promise of something more. Of something that we would build on…soon.

“Can I see you later?” he asked me, sounding hesitant, as though bracing himself for my rebuff.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” I said.

“Okay then. I’ll call you tonight. You’ll answer, right?” he asked is light tone but he meant what he asked. He needed the validation that I wouldn’t turn him down again.

“Damn straight,” I said fiercely, earning me a laugh.

“Cool,” Garrett nodded, flipping his keys around on his finger. “Talk to you then.” He gave me a salute and I headed to the front door finding Gracie standing there, her hands shoved into the pockets of an oversized sweater.

Her long, blonde hair was lank and lifeless and her face was pale but her eyes were anything but remote.

“Hey, G,” I said not turning to watch Garrett drive away even as she lifted her hand to wave him off.