Losing Track (32 page)

I just wish I hadn’t taken off on a full-blown hangover.

But Sam deserves to hear about Dar in person, not over the phone. Or in email, or a text. And I need someone who I can count on to give it to me straight. She’s the only other woman in my life I deem worthy of advice besides Dar—and I can’t lose Sam, also.

Giving it some more gas, I push the engine of my new bike harder as I climb the bridge. The New York City skyline opens up around me, buildings piercing the fluffy white and blue, soaring higher and higher as I coast over the bridge. I didn’t think I’d even make it to the halfway point of this trip.

I’ve always prided myself on the fact that I was a loner. A one-percenter. The road my companion, and all that jazz. That’s because Dar was always more a part of me than a separate person altogether. This is the first time since I escaped my hometown that I’ve traveled any real distance on my own.

Even if I had to stop a couple of times—get a room, shake off the panic. Sleep, talk myself into continuing on—I’ve gone this whole trip solo.

When it became too much—the cravings for a line, the need to lose all consciousness in a bottle—I about put down roots right in some little out of the way town in Virginia, just took up with this pintsized old lady who ran a bed and breakfast. Her husband had recently departed, and she asked if I wanted a job.

I stayed a whole day there, helped her out, made some quick cash, and truly struggled with whether I wanted to leave. It’s the first time I didn’t know what I wanted. Would I stay out of fear or because it would be a smart, fresh start?

Was I afraid that I couldn’t hack it out there on my own?

Would I regret violating parole, being on the run forever? Avoiding Florida like the plague?

It’s as if some alien set up shop inside me, turning and cranking levers in my brain, confusing the hell out of me. My own feelings and thoughts so foreign; I decided, finally, that if I didn’t yet know myself, then I couldn’t stop there.

I had to keep going.

And that’s a fucking scary thought; not knowing your own damn self. Your true wants, needs, fears. Out of every messed up thing in my life, I thought I had that one covered. But I’m discovering it’s the illusion, the
idea
of who I thought I was that I projected to the world.

Not the truth of me—I wasn’t ready to look that deep. Not yet.

Besides, the thought of never seeing Boone again frightened me—possibly more than the discovery of Hunter. Whether he can forgive me for bailing on him, though, I don’t know. I don’t deserve any forgiveness, or his empathy for my pathetic freak-out, but I still have to see him, to know he’s all right. Eventually.

I just don’t know how to process all of it—that he’s mourning a dead child. How can two recovering addicts really help each other through that kind of pain?

I need to get my head straight before I can move forward. But I want the option to do just that. For that maybe future for the both of us.

After exiting the bridge, I swing a right down the first road I come to and make a pit stop at a gas station. I want to splash myself with water, wake myself up, get myself together somehow before I just show up at Sam’s front door.

Dar and I checked out Manhattan once, to say we did. The memory is bittersweet. We stayed a couple of days in the worst hotel, this totally shoddy, dirty, little room. But we made it work. We always made it work.

Nodding to the checkout clerk, I head to the back of the gas station. I barricade myself in the tiny bathroom, my heart palpitating out of control. Throwing the lock, I press my back against the door. Breathe in, breathe out.

I can’t go a minute without thinking of her. And it’s becoming paralyzing. I don’t understand why I’m falling apart now—why not when she first died? Fuck it; I was in shock. It’s taken this long to finally hit, and hit like a mallet.

Somehow, maybe, I have to stop seeking that elusive inner strength from her. Maybe I have to find it within myself. That’s what this solo mission is about. As long as I had her to follow my lead, I was strong, in control, brave. I feared nothing and no one.

But in reality, she was my crutch. I’ve discovered I have a few of them. I depended on Dar to need
me
. As long as she did, I had a plan. Never more than our next stop, or the next score. I never planned anything long-term, but I could be strong enough for the both of us when it came down to it.

Staring in the grimy mirror, I want to punch the girl looking back at me. Just reach right through the glass and strangle her. How could I fail the one person who counted on me the most?

How could I not change the chain reaction before Darla’s domino toppled over?

Simple.

Because really, truly, honestly…when it’s all said and done, I don’t have the discipline that Boone does to find a new way of life. I only know one way; mine. Only it’s no longer working.

With that gloomy thought, I leave the bathroom, buy a pack of cigarettes, and take off toward the one safe haven where I can crash and burn.

Someone’s checking me out through the peephole. Then the door swings wide open.

“Holy shit!” Sam’s arms surround me, pulling me to her petite body (she’s smaller than me, if possible) in a tight embrace that nearly crushes the breath from my lungs.

I return the hug, inhaling her lavender scented shampoo mixed with the smell of paint thinner and some other acrylic paint smell. When she pulls away, she blinks to clear the fresh tears in her eyes, and I roll mine. Really, to prevent myself from tearing up also. But she doesn’t need to know that.

“Surprise,” I say, fanning my hands around like I just poofed into existence.

“No shit, surprise. What are you doing here?”

I give a partial shrug. “Um, visiting you.”

She laughs and shakes her head, her dark hair with strategically streaked blue bangs falls across her forehead. Then she smacks her hand right over it. “Oh, right, come in! Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re here, Mel.” She waves me into her apartment, and before I’m even fully through the doorway, she turns and says, “Where’s Darla?”

The question hits me like a direct punch to the gut. The little air left in my lungs after her hug completely depletes. I suck in a much needed full breath and don’t hold back. “Sam, I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to tell you before…but Darla—she died.”

Sam goes sheet white. The blood drains from her flushed cheeks. Her thin mouth opens, closes, and opens again, seeking words I know she can’t find. Somehow, she manages. “Sorry? Mel, what…why?” She shakes her head again. “Jesus. What happened? Are you okay?”

I shrug off my pack and let it land on the hardwood floor. I haven’t even gotten the chance to look around, but as I seek the best way to spill everything to her, I take a quick glance. Paintings everywhere. Of her and Holden, of their trip—the one where they worked things out and somehow found each other again. It’s all documented in colorful paint along the brick walls, telling their story.

And featured on one canvas, a painting of me and Dar. I can’t fucking believe it. I smile and head straight toward the canvas. “Is this the Bitchfits show?” I ask, reaching out to touch it, but then think better. Not knowing if her paints are sensitive to skin oils or some shit. I heard that somewhere.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice too soft, fragile. “We had such an awesome time, I couldn’t not paint it.”

“You captured her perfectly.” Darla’s standing beside me on the railing, all three of us with our hands raised in the air, our fingers formed in devil horns. Her frosty blue eyes blaze through the darkness of the painting, clear and capturing the scene, aware. Alive.

I wrap my arms around my tightening chest and face Sam. “It’s beautiful. You have some mad talent, girl.”

Sam doesn’t respond. She marches over to me and links her arms around me once more, and before I can even process it, I’m breaking down into sobs. No words. No explanations. Just acceptance.

I cry until the pain consumes, becoming a living, separate entity that devours me, until it’s all there’s left to feel.

Sam sets a cup of coffee in front of me on the small, rickety table. Her place is great; college kid chic. Cheap furniture and some just scooped right off the street corner. Holden’s engine parts—headers, gaskets, carburetors—turned into art along the walls. A mixed array of artsy and modernism turned Rom Com.

This place is so them.

I’ve somehow managed to get the whole story across to Sam without making any accusations against Boone. Well, I might have called him a sobriety peddler at one point—but that was early on in the story. I’m allowed a slight poke at him on occasion. It keeps me…me. Real.

“As much as I want to lock you up and keep you to myself,” Sam says, cupping her coffee mug close, “because I’m selfish like that, you know what you have to do, Mel. You don’t need me to tell you that. You have to go back. And soon.” Her eyes widen to punctuate her point. “I mean, hell, you can talk to that PO lady and I’m sure she’ll understand. She’ll work something out where you don’t have to go back to rehab or
jail
. Those people want to help…addicts, not punish them.”

I give her credit for only slightly stumbling over that word. But at least she’s keeping it real, too.

Nodding, I say, “I’m sure she would. Yeah.”

“And you really need to send Boone a message soon,” she pushes on, not missing a beat. “Mel, this guy is like whoa. Intense. I hate to say it, but he’s like your equal. He challenges you. And as much as I love you—and you know that I do—you have to admit that you really don’t hook up with guys that are much of a challenge. It’s a safety thing with you. No one gets close, and you don’t get burned.”

This is Sam. Blunt. Direct. No holding back. But it’s why I’m here. To get the truth with no filter. She wasn’t always this sure of herself, though; she had a crap ton of things to figure out, and from the little she’s told me of what’s been going on with her, she’s still working through that process. But the strong woman I always saw in her from the start, the one she bottled up deep down, is finally breaking the surface.

“That’s why I’m so scared of him,” I admit, hugging my legs to my chest. “Look, I’m not trying to bring up bad shit, but you know what that kind of loss can do to you.” For a second, I glimpse the fleeting panic in her eyes, the struggle she endured after the death of Tyler, her fiancé. But she checks it quickly.

“Boone lost his son, Sam,” I continue. “His tiny baby son. He’s probably out there now at some backyard brawl getting the shit beat out of him. He’s…hurting. I’m terrified I’ll only add to that pain. I’m so strung out. So fucked up. I just…” I drop my legs and clamp my hands on my head, trying desperately to force the words in my brain
out
. “I’m not what he needs. I might make light of life, treat it like it’s one long ride, but truth is, I actually care whether or not my mark on this world causes someone else pain. I don’t want that.”

Sam tilts her head, her eyes squint in contemplation. “You know, for someone so poetic and worldly, someone who tries really hard to come across like she knows herself, you don’t see yourself in true light, Mel. That’s the best part of you, or at least one of the best. Listen, you’re going to hurt him, and he’s going to hurt you. That can’t be helped.”

I huff out one short, forced laugh. “I thought you were supposed to be making me feel better.”

“Oh, no,” she says, setting her cup down, getting all seriously feisty. “You’re going to get it straight from me. The heart wants what the heart wants, remember that? You gave it to me straight once, and now it’s my turn to return the favor. I’ve always had faith you’d eventually break through to your heartwood.”