“What is the story with you and her? What kind of friends were you if you didn’t share things with one another?” she asks, her eyes tightening around the edges.
“The physical kind,” I reply honestly, watching her reaction carefully and feeling slightly annoyed that I don’t see the green-eyed jealousy I was hoping for. “Rey and I always had this way of just mucking through life together. Like a soldier on the battlefield…It’s all a lot less scary when you have someone standing right beside you on the front lines. But all of a sudden, or at least it felt that way to me, Rey wanted out of the dark place we’d found each other in. She started pulling away from me.”
“Reyna fell in love with Liam.”
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head at the fact that Vi is completely oblivious to the pain those two names together caused me while I was in rehab. “Yes. That’s exactly what happened. I wasn’t even aware that Rey and Liam had a history of some sort. Did you know Liam used to date my sister, Marisa, back at Oxford?”
“I had no idea.”
“Well he did. I don’t know the details…It’s probably a story that could fill an entire book. Regardless, it is funny we’re talking about Rey right now, considering she’s a large part of day one on my countdown.”
Vi’s eyes widen. “Your final countdown day? How so?”
I sigh heavily, feeling that familiar aching in my chest that I feel every time I transport myself back to that night.
This is it, Hayden. This is the final day of your countdown challenge from Doc. You’re strong enough for this. Don’t hold back now.
“The night of the gala, I was completely trashed. As you know from the other days I described, things had been going from bad to worse for me. I’d been drinking most of the day because I had it in my head that I was going to do it that night. I was going to kill myself.” I pause, swallowing hard. Damn, those last two words are still hard to say. “But I started having second thoughts. Namely because of Reyna and how awful we’d last left things. So I thought maybe if I saw her just one last time, something would click. Something would make sense again. She’d see me differently, or I’d see myself differently, and I could get out of that place in my mind.”
“But it didn’t work,” Vi says softly. Her eyes are trained on my cuff-covered wrists.
“No. Our conversation was painful, horrid, awful…crap.” I shrug helplessly. “I fell in love with her. It’s that simple. And she was in love with Liam. And Theo was in love with Leslie, and it just seemed like everybody around me was getting on with their lives except me.”
Vi nods thoughtfully. “How are you with Rey now?” Her blue eyes watch me with a deep sympathy that I feel in my heart.
“Doc labels Rey as a trigger for me. He says it’s best not to engage with her any more than casual acquaintances.” I pause for a moment before I admit, “I have actually revealed more personal information to you in one week than I ever did in three years of friendship with Rey.”
Vi inhales sharply. “How is that possible, Hayden?”
I shake my head. “Rey was a huge part of my life for so many years. But it was mostly our grief that maintained our friendship. Not our true selves.”
“I’m so sorry, Hayden.”
“That’s why I have to protect myself, Vi. From alcohol, from pills, from depression…”
“From me?” she finishes my sentence.
I shake my head earnestly as I reach out and take her hand in mine, twining our fingers together. I note the difference in skin tones, from her creamy complexion to my olive tone, and silently marvel at this simple gesture. Feeling her soft hand in mine is a sense of life I might never have experienced. “I don’t want to protect myself from you,” I whisper in answer to her question. “But caring for someone more than myself terrifies me. I can’t slip back into the darkness, Vi. There are too many people here that I want to live for. Marisa, my family…you.”
She looks up through her low, dark lashes. “But we’ve just met.”
“I know, but I feel something in my body when I’m around you that I have never felt in all my life, Vi. I want to dive in with you and figure it out. I want us to be something. But I don’t want to fall into another Reyna situation where I use you as a crutch. You’ve heard my countdown. I’ve completed my challenge. I don’t want to be seen as damaged anymore.”
“I don’t see you that way!” she exclaims and stands up. She moves over to me and pushes me back in my chair, straddling me so I can look straight into her ocean blue eyes. “I don’t think you’re damaged. I think you’re beautiful.”
I smile—genuinely smile—for what feels like the first time in years. “I think that’s my new favourite thing about you. Mostly because it’s all about me.”
She laughs and swats me across the chest while mumbling something about me being a narcissist.