Nothing More Beautiful (49 page)

We hugged each other for a long while in
silence, with only the sounds of sniffling, labored breathing, and
our nose-blowing filling the dreadful vacancy that hung in the air.
“We should get going,” I said at last. Before we departed, I said
goodbye one last time—alone—and kissed my mother’s picture that
stood beside her casket. “I’m so sorry, mom. I’m sorry for how our
last conversation went. I’m sorry I ignored your advice when you
were revealing yourself like you did. And I promise, mom—I promise
to try. I promise to build the bridge as far as I
can . . . because you were right, mom—Vince is
the only man who makes me smile every time I see him. You knew it
before I did . . . 

“I just hope it’s not too late.”

IT TOOK FOUR DAYS
for me to
somewhat recover after the funeral. I tried going for a run to
invigorate me, but it didn’t work like usual, and I ended up
crawling into bed with Colby-Jack. My sleep patterns altered into a
lethargic cat’s habits, taking extensive naps, spending most of the
days asleep.

My phone rang on Saturday. The nightstand
vibrated so violently that in my sluggish state, I thought it was
an earthquake. “Hello?” I answered without looking at the screen to
see who was calling.

“Hi, Maci, it’s Alma,” Alma said quickly and
loudly into my ear, as if shouting one of her commands. “I know, I
know, you never expected to hear from me again, and I feel terrible
that things ended between you and Vince.” Alma had been rather
pleasant since the wedding night when she hooked up with Ashley’s
coworker, Eric Dresker. The way Ashley told it, their relationship
went beyond the intended one-night stand, and the two had been
inseparable ever since. I hadn’t talked to her for over a month
though, and had no clue why she’d be calling me.

“Everything all right, Alma?” I asked,
drowsily.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling you,” she
started, then paused to yell at someone in her office. Her voice
split my head in two. “As you can guess, Vince has been severely
depressed lately, and has stopped going to his NA meetings.”

“And?”

“And I’m worried about him, Maci. I don’t
know what happened between you two, but whatever it was, I’m afraid
it will drive him to start using again. He hasn’t picked up my
calls for two days now. He’s shutting me out.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“I want you to go and talk to him. I know
you’re miserable, too. I’ve been getting updates through the
grapevine. Please, as a friend . . .”

Friend?
She thought we were friends?
She had been terrible to me for months and months. She certainly
had an odd way of showing her friendship. As far as her request, I
had attempted several times since the funeral to gather up the
courage to call him. I guess this was the push I needed because I
agreed. “Fine. I’ll call him—”

“You won’t regret it, Maci. Talk to you
later.” She hung up before I could say goodbye.

My hands shook as my finger hovered over
Vince’s number. After fifteen minutes of talking myself up, I hit
the green call button. With each ring, my stomach knotted more and
more, and I could feel the impending vomit in my throat. Relief
filled me at first when it went to voicemail. I gave it a second
thought and called again. His voicemail answered again. Alma had
made it sound like he was desperate for my call, but I guess that
wasn’t the case.

Despite the computerized rebuff, something
felt wrong about the calls. Why would Vince show up at my mother’s
funeral if he didn’t want to talk? I hardened my nerves and decided
to pay Vince a face-to-face visit.

I almost turned back twice during the drive
to his condo. Afraid his security staff would stop me in the
elevator, I paced the cramped box, talking to myself. They’d
definitely think I was crazy if they overheard me. As the elevator
halted at the penthouse level, the doors slid open, revealing the
mirrored door. I had never given back my key, so I tried it.

To my luck, it opened; he hadn’t changed the
locks. Inside, stale air greeted my lungs. “Vince?” I cried out.
“Hello?”

No one answered. I hurried into the game
room but found nothing except a mess of dishes and dirty clothes.
The bedroom door lay cracked. I pushed it open and saw Vince lying
on the bed. His skin was ice blue. When I touched it, it froze my
fingers.

I glanced at his nightstand and the glass of
water next to the bottle of pills, and let out a glass-shattering
scream as I gazed at his pale blue face in horror.

“N
o, no, no, no, no!
Vince!” I tapped him on the cheek. “Vince, wake up.” He was out
cold. “Wake up! Vince! Vince!” Hysterical, I ran around the room,
searching for the radio, then into the kitchen, where I found it on
the counter. “Avery, are you there? Avery! Hello, anyone?”

“Who is this?” a resonant voice asked.

I instantly recognized the voice as Vince’s
new bodyguard. “Maci Goodwin,” I squawked, and started running back
to Vince’s bedroom. “It’s Vince, Avery, he’s dying—there’s a bottle
of pills—bedroom—he’s dying!”

He didn’t fool around. I heard him yell at
another guy to call 911. “Hold on, I’ll be up in a sec.” And a
second later the elevator doors opened and I could hear his feet
pounding the floor as he sprinted. He rushed into the room with an
emergency medical kit. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I think he took these.” I
handed him the half-empty unlabeled pill bottle. He plucked one of
the capsules from the bottle and broke it over the nightstand. The
white powder smelled vaguely like vinegar.

“Heroin,” Avery concluded. He went to the
medical kit and extracted a box labeled NALOXONE HYDROCHLORIDE.
Dumping out a syringe, he applied an odd foam tip to it, and then
inserted a tube of medicine into the syringe. He stuck the foam tip
into Vince’s nose and pushed down on the syringe. When it was all
gone, he fiddled with his watch, making it beep several times. “It
should take two to five minutes to work. If it doesn’t, I’ll give
him a second dose. Stand back, I have to give him rescue
breathing.” He waved me back, so I bolted around to the other side
of the bed and watched, going out of my mind with worry.

Avery tilted Vince’s head back and checked
if his airways were blocked. He pinched Vince’s nose closed,
grabbed his chin, then blew a breath into Vince’s lungs. His chest
rose as Avery gave a second breath. He started breathing into Vince
in routine as a minute passed.

Two minutes.

Nothing.

Every second killed me.

Three minutes and still no response.

Four minutes.

Suddenly Vince came to life, his body
ejecting a stream of vomit. Avery rolled him over and let him get
it all out. “Get a towel,” he ordered. I darted for the bathroom
linen closet and hustled back with a handful of towels.

Vince stared at me through a fog. Avery
wiped off the vomit as Vince spit into a towel. His breaths were
ragged and shallow, but he was breathing. Color and warmth
eventually returned to his skin as he recovered on his side.

More tears came. It seemed like all I did
lately was cry. Avery left us alone, getting a fresh glass of water
from the kitchen.

“You scared me so much,” I said, kissing his
forehead. “Why? Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know,” he rasped. “After one, more
just seemed right. It made me forget, and I liked that.”

“I’m so sorry,” I cried. “For
everything.”

He sat up with his back against the wall.
“No,” he said. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. It was me—I pushed
us into that situation. It was my fault.”

I shook my head, holding his hand. “It was
my insecurities. I made myself believe that you didn’t love me all
because of a look . . . I love you, Vince. I
want to be with you.”

He rubbed my face with the back of his hand.
“I love you, Maci, more than I could ever
show . . . I’d do anything for you, you have to
know that.” Both our sob engines were full bore by that point.

When Avery returned, he found us in a strong
embrace, tears soaking the sheets and our clothes. He cleared his
throat, and we parted as he handed Vince the cup of water. “Sorry
about the puke reaction. I’ve never been able to give the right
amount of air—always too hard, goes right to the stomach.”

“It’s okay,” Vince laughed. “You saved my
life, Avery, and I don’t know if I can ever repay you for that. But
I can start with a new car, or anything. You name it and it’s
yours.”

Avery smiled. “If I said something like,
‘Doing my job is its own reward,’ I’d sound pretty cliché, so I’ll,
yeah, I’ll take a car. A damn nice one, too.” Vince choked from
laughter. “Easy now, we don’t need to go through the process
again.”

When the paramedics arrived, Vince
apologized for their unnecessary aid, and tipped them even though I
was pretty sure that wasn’t normal or exactly legal. Avery drove us
to the hospital, where Vince requested admittance for a night of
observation. He made a sizable donation in the process.

I stayed with Vince through the night,
sleeping in the chair beside his bed, but only after several hours
of admitting our wrongs and talking through what happened. In the
end, we came out all the stronger, and I thanked my mother silently
for her wise guidance. Without it, I could have been lost forever,
and Vince might have been cold and six feet under instead of warm
and wrapped in my arms.

“SO, TELL US HOW
it
happened,” Danielle begged. A week had passed since Vince OD’d.
Vince and I—together with my closest friends, my brother and his
family, and Alma and Eric—sat on Vince’s terrace, sipping champagne
in celebration of our engagement. “Did he get on one knee? You know
I did when I proposed.”

“I would’ve done it if I’d known you were
ready,” Ashley said, already two glasses deep, and completely
thrilled.

Bridgett waved for silence. “So?”

“Well, I’ll start at the beginning,” I said,
squealing in delight. I was on cloud nine and buzzing with love,
sunshine, and champagne. “This morning I woke up with a note beside
me, instructing me to be at the spot where we had a picnic in the
Rose Garden, near the amphitheater. Anyway, the note was a riddle,
and I had to figure it out. When I got there, I found Vince with a
picnic basket filled with breakfast. Then he gave me a chocolate
coin—you know, the ones wrapped in gold foil. He also gave me a
second riddle. That began a full-day scavenger’s hunt. Every place
we went I found a new clue and a chocolate coin. And we went
practically everywhere in town—parks, breweries, you name it.

“Anyway, after touring the city, we
eventually arrived down at my brother’s brewery in Oregon City.
After that, I ended up in a huge field that Vince rented just for
today. I dug in six different locations before I found the last
clue. On the last one, I dug and dug and dug, until I finally hit
the lid of a plastic storage container. When I opened it, I was
staring at gallons of chocolate coins.” I hefted the container onto
the patio table. “The riddle told me to dig through the coins, so I
did, until my hands pulled this out.” I removed a small ornate
treasure chest, made from assorted wood, with a dome top, and brass
corners, hinges, straps, and fasteners.

Everybody oooh’d and ahhh’d at the chest’s
marvelous beauty. I unlatched the fastener and opened the top to
reveal the green velvet lining. Inside were more gold coins and a
wooden heart-shaped ring box. I started crying when I saw it. “My
father—” I paused, checking my emotions. “My father proposed to my
mother with that box 36 years ago. Donny—” I stopped, unable to
continue.

“I remembered it when I was going through
our parents’ house on Monday,” Donny said. “I decided Vince would
have a better use for it after he told me about his plan to
propose.”

“To answer your question, Danielle, yes, I
did get down on one knee. I didn’t have any heirlooms of my own, so
I bought the ring from a little jeweler down in Milwaukie. I
actually also bought a ring box, but when Donny offered me such a
precious and sentimental gift, it really completed everything.” He
hugged me with tenderness and kissed my forehead the way he always
did.

Danielle shared my tears, and the others
were moved by the sentiment as well. “To finding Mr. Right,”
Danielle toasted, and everyone had a laugh, raising their glasses
in the air and clinking them. That was one of many toasts that
night; the party lasted long after sundown, ultimately switching to
Vince’s fresh taps of beer. With fine food and endless laughs, I
didn’t want the night to end. I showed off the ring to everyone
about a million times, struck by disbelief, awe, and joy.

All in all, it was the happiest day of my
life.

AFTER OUR ENGAGEMENT, VINCE
started addiction therapy, and returned to his regular NA meetings
again. We had also celebrated his 27
^th
birthday on the
sixth. I quit my job and started getting my mom’s house ready for
the market, which was no easy task for me. The appraisal for the
house and land ended up around $350,000—about 100 grand more than
any of us had estimated.

I also scouted out new locations for the
bakery during this time, planning to use the money from the sale
like my brother wanted, though I didn’t plan on accepting it all.
He needed it much more than I did, after all, without a billionaire
fiancé.

Nearly two weeks after Vince proposed, I
decided to hit the gym for the first time since we broke up and
reunited. I went later in the evening to avoid Emma, who Vince said
had begun stalking him after our night together. He now had a
restraining order against her because it got so intense. And even
though her gym membership had been revoked, she still prowled the
area, waiting for Vince.