“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.
“Are 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.