Out of Nowhere (26 page)

“What the hell, Riley?” Sydney said when I opened the door to find her standing on my porch, hands on hips. Eva stood next to her, a troubled expression on her face. “We’ve been calling and texting you for the past two hours. We thought you were dead or something.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I stepped aside to let them in. “I guess my ringer is turned down.” Actually, I’d been ignoring all calls and texts that didn’t come from one particular number.

“On your house phone
and
cell?” Sydney said, rolling her eyes.

Eva studied me, her wide blue eyes taking in my wrinkly T-shirt and unwashed hair. “Syd,” she said, touching her arm. “Let it go.”

Sydney mumbled something unintelligible and the three of us went into the living room. Eva sank into the chair while Sydney perched on the arm of the couch, arms folded as she peered down at me. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Lucas called both of us this morning to see if we’d heard from you. He said you practically ran out of his house last night and then you called in sick for work this morning. He’s worried about you.”

I stared at the TV screen, which was now showing a commercial for dishwasher soap. When I didn’t respond, she grabbed the remote from my lap and flicked off the TV. Across from me, Eva was fiddling with her bracelet and watching me.

“I’m fine,” I said. My standard answer. My friends thought I was this strong, capable girl. Dr. Tate. To them, my anxiety and hypochondria were just a part of who I was, a particular quirk I happened to possess, like Sydney’s addiction to coffee and boys and Lucas’s busybody tendencies and Eva’s lax driving skills. They didn’t know how bad it had gotten. How would they react if I told them that the events of last night had culminated in me rushing myself to the hospital, convinced I was minutes away from a trip to the morgue?

“Riley,” Eva said softly. “Just tell us what happened last night.”

“I’m sure Lucas already told you,” I said. I figured he’d given them the general rundown of my visit, at least. I didn’t have the energy to go over it again in detail. Cole’s rejection still burned.

“He told us about your fight with Cole,” Sydney confirmed. “So you guys are really done?”

I picked one of Tristan’s little monster trucks off the coffee table and spun the wheels with my finger. “It’s probably better this way.”

“Why?”

“He’s leaving in a few months, remember? Maybe it’s best to end it now.”

“And miss all that time you could’ve spent together before he moves away?” Eva said sadly. Now that she and Sebastian were back together—and tighter than ever—she truly regretted the time they’d wasted being apart. But unlike her, I didn’t have the luxury of many months or years by my boyfriend’s side, going off to college together and living happily ever after. All I had was fall and winter, two measly seasons, and possibly not even that.

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Sydney said in her cut-the-bullshit voice. “There are planes, you know. And phones, and email, and Skype. You act like he’s falling off the face of the earth or something. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that crap. And if you love something, let it fly away or whatever.”

Eva rolled her eyes at this butchering of platitudes. “Riley, you need to fix this with Cole. He obviously cares about you.”

Sydney nodded in agreement. “It takes a special kind of guy to turn down sex because he respects your convictions so much. Like I said at the movies the other day, decent guys like that are a rare breed. You’d be nuts to throw it away.”

“I know. It’s just…” The words dissolved on my tongue as the enormity of the situation sunk in. I may have single-handedly destroyed one of the best relationships I had in my life. And as much as I liked the idea of fixing things, I didn’t think I could fix this any more than I could fix myself. Sometimes there was no cure, even for the most damaging things. Sometimes you didn’t survive and recover. Sometimes reality just sucked.

Eva came over and sat down beside me. “Tell us what happened after you left Lucas’s. Your mom called us last night too, you know. All of us. She was in a panic, looking for you. She said you were upset about something.”

I looked at my two best friends, these girls who didn’t quite get me at times but loved me anyway, and then I told them. All of it. I even told them about Dr. Maser. “I’m a mess,” I finished with a sigh.

They were quiet for a minute, digesting everything I’d said. Then Eva wrapped her arm around my shoulders while Sydney smiled at me and shrugged. “Aren’t we all?” she said, and for some reason we all found this funny and started to laugh. It felt good to laugh, even for a second. It had been a few days.

The front door opened then and my baby brother burst into the room, his mouth rimmed with what looked like chocolate. Uh oh, I thought. Someone was going to be in trouble. Tristan plus sugar and caffeine was a lethal combination.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Eva said, smiling at him.

Tristan stopped short at the sight of my friends and shyly lowered his eyes, peeking up once at Eva. Little flirt. He gave her a tiny smile and then ran back to Jeff, who had come in behind him. He crashed into Jeff’s legs at full throttle and it was like a bird flying into a building. He hit and then slid down, stunned by the impact.

“Hi, Jeff,” Sydney said, all but batting her eyelashes.

“Oh, hey, girls,” he said, bending over to gather up his son. I noticed Sydney checking out his assets and I reached over and flicked her arm. As I did this, Jeff came over and dropped a box into my lap. All of a sudden the scent of maple was overwhelming. “Little treat for ya,” he said, then carried Tristan into the kitchen.

I opened the box—which was from a chain coffee shop I rarely went to anymore—and discovered half a dozen maple dip donuts. They were my absolute favorite kind of donut, and the one flavor of pastry Jitters did not sell. “Thanks?” I called, the word coming out as a question in my surprise. I had no idea how Jeff found out my favorite donut, or why he got them for me today, or how he knew they were the only food on earth I felt like eating right now.

“Aww,” Eva said, her hands on her chest as if my future stepfather bringing me fried dough was the most touching scene ever.

“It’s just donuts,” I said, even though they were more than that to me. The last person to buy me a box of maple dip donuts was my father. He used to bring them home for me all the time. Was Jeff even aware of that? Had Mom told him? I doubted she even remembered.

Later, after my friends left, I took a long shower and then shut myself up in my room. Depression had set in again, this time with the added bonus of indigestion from the three donuts I’d consumed. I curled up in bed with my phone, checking again for messages. Nothing. I thought about texting Cole again, but decided against it. I’d already sent two texts to him, and also tried calling. Sunday was his day off. Where was he? I pictured him looking down at his buzzing cell phone, hair tumbling into his face, then shoving it back into his pocket at the sight of my name. Ignore.

“Babe?” There was a knock on my door and then my mother poked her head in. “There’s pizza out here. You hungry?”

My stomach rolled. “Not really. Maybe later?”

She nodded, a trace of leftover worry in her eyes, and shut the door without another word. For the next half hour I lay there, isolated and exhausted, and listened to their family sounds echoing throughout the house.

* * *

I ventured out once to the kitchen to get a glass of water, then I went back to bed and didn’t move for the next two hours. A few times I heard scratching at my door, which I ignored until it became excessive. The cats were probably taking turns. Sighing, I got up and opened the door for them. Along with Lucy and Alice, my mother was standing on the other side, her fingers still attached to my doorknob.

“Oh,” she said, dropping her hand. “Sorry, babe. The cats were making such a racket that I thought I’d let them in. Did they wake you?”

When I shook my head, she leaned in closer to me and narrowed her eyes. It was the same dissecting look she always gave Tristan when she thought he might be getting sick. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” I replied, my palm on the edge of the door, ready to shut her out.

“You’ve been in your room most of the day. You haven’t even eaten.”

“I’m not hungry.” Too tired to argue, I turned away and went back to my bed. Lucy had commandeered my pillow, and Alice was grooming herself at the foot of the bed, one back leg sticking straight up in the air. I gently pushed Lucy aside and climbed under the covers. Mom watched me from the doorway for a minute before coming in and sitting on the edge of the bed. I had a flash of myself as a child, sick with the flu, soothed by my mother’s cool hand on my forehead.

“Riley, we need to talk.”

I looked up at her. What now? I thought. What else could she possibly spring at me?

“What happened last night…” She rubbed her eyes, which were red and bordered with shadows. “It was a real wake-up call for me. I’ve been so distracted with work and Jeff and the wedding, I haven’t been paying enough attention to you. You were struggling, and I wasn’t there to take care of you.” Her voice broke on the last word. “I want to apologize to you for that, Riley. I’m sorry for being so selfish.”

I watched her wipe her eyes with her thumb, wondering why she chose to see it that way. Obviously, she thought she was the root of my anxiety, my hypochondria, my resistance to change. That I was like this because I wanted attention.
Her
attention. And who knows…maybe she was right.

“We don’t have to move,” she went on, trying to smile but failing. “We can stay right here, in the house you grew up in. We’ll make it work, babe. Okay?”

“No,” I said, surprising her. “Sell the house. You want to move on with your life, and I’m not going to hold you back.” I pressed my hand over Lucy’s tail, feeling it twitch under my fingers. “I’ve done enough of that already.”

Mom’s head jerked back like I’d punched her and suddenly she was her normal self again, no longer tiptoeing around my frail mental state. “Riley, we just went through this. You have
never
held me back, and if your father were still here today I know he’d say the same.” She let out a weary sigh. “I know you don’t want to move, and I know you’re mad at me for even considering it, but we’ll have to leave here eventually.”

I sat up and faced her. I couldn’t fix things with Cole tonight, but I could have ‘open dialogue’ with my mother. “Dad
died
here, Mom. In this house. How can we just leave it behind like it’s nothing?”

“I see him in every corner of this house, Riley. Just like you do. Of course part of me wants to hold on to that. But you’re right. I do want to move on.”

“Seems to me like you moved on a long time ago,” I said. It came out before I could stop it and she glanced up at me, her face reddening. There it was, the one accusation I’d never had the guts to fling at her—that she’d gotten over my father too quickly. It was a thought I’d always kept tucked away in my mind, never meant to be voiced, but what did I have to lose now?

“So this is about Jeff,” she said, her back straight and rigid. “This is about the wedding. You’d rather I remain faithful to a dead man, right? Spend the rest of my life mourning him. Stay a grieving widow forever. Is that what you want, Riley? You want Jeff to disappear?”

I felt the same blaze of anger I’d experienced last night on the steps with Cole, only this time I wasn’t entirely sure where it was coming from. Who was I mad at? Myself, for this constant, nagging fear that never left me? Mom, for letting go when I couldn’t? Jeff, who’d never been anything but nice to me, even when I acted like a total jerk to him?

“Well, what if he does disappear?” I blurted out. “What if one of those power plants he works in blows up or he gets exposed to radiation or something? What will we do then?”

My mother blinked at me for a moment, then her face kind of crumpled and her eyes got all shiny. “Oh honey,” she said, looking at me like I’d just been diagnosed with flesh-eating disease. “Oh honey.”

“What?”

All of a sudden she was hugging me so tight, I could feel my ribs grinding together. “Oh honey,” she repeated into my hair. “You care about him, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, deeply insulted by the suggestion.

“Yes, you do. You try so hard not to, but you do. You care about him and you’re scared he’s going to die. That’s why you act so cold to him. You’re just protecting yourself. Oh honey.”

I wiggled out from under her vice grip. “Stop saying that.”

She beamed at me, her face flushed and glistening. “He loves you too, you know. He’s never given up on you.”

“Mom,” I said, lying back down and pulling the blankets up to my chin. “I’m really tired. Can we talk about this later?”

“Sure.” She patted my hip and stood up. “Sleep tight.”

I watched her as she headed for the door, her hand rising up to mop the tears from her cheeks. Just as she reached the threshold, I cleared my throat and said, “He brought maple dip donuts home for me.”

She stopped and turned back to me, smiling slightly, as if she’d suspected all along that I’d eventually crack. “He’s trying, babe.”

I almost smiled back at her because that was exactly what he’d said about her once: “She’s trying.” I guess we all were.

Chapter Twenty-One

“How was your week, Riley?” Dr. Maser asked me as I sat down across from her.

“I ended up in the ER with the worst panic attack of my life and they doped me up on tranquilizers.”

I had to hand it to her. She barely even raised an eyebrow. I liked the way I could forgo the small talk with Dr. Maser and get right to the meat of things. It saved a lot of time. “What brought it on?”

“Things have been sort of building up for weeks. I found out that my mother wants to sell our house and then a few hours later I had a fight with my boyfriend. So I was pretty messed up at the time. I just…freaked out. I think the hospital sent you a copy of the chart.”