Perfect Regret (Bad Rep #2)(60)
Author: A. Meredith Walters

I was in a state of shock. Garrett had quit smoking. Quit drinking. He was on the straight and narrow. Because of what I said.

And during his own struggles with sobriety he had been looking after my friend. He had been doing something, I should have been. I really was a shitty friend and overall human being.

“Stop it, Riley. I know you’re hating on yourself right now. But you were dealing with your own shit. Just stop, please,” he pleaded softly and then I stopped thinking again.

“Riley!” Maysie’s panicked call pulled me out of my Garrett induced haze and out of his arms. Maysie pushed through the kitchen door and I knew instantly something was very, very wrong. Her face was a scary shade of white and she looked…stricken. That was the only word that came to mind when I saw her.

She didn’t even register that I was standing with Garrett, our mouths bruised and red, and my eyes glassy from desire. Maysie grabbed me and I felt her terror.

“It’s Gracie! She stopped breathing!” she cried, pulling me after her into the restaurant. Garrett immediately moved into action and pushed past us to run through the kitchen and into the front of the bar. Maysie and I ran after him and the place was in complete chaos.

Moore was trying to corral people off to the side but it was still bedlam. Maysie’s grip on my hand was painful as she dragged me to the front doors. There was a ring of people around a spot on the sidewalk. I recognized Vivian sobbing into Cole’s chest. There was Jaz and Dina as well as a few people from the kitchen crew.

I pushed through them and thought I was going to throw up. Jordan had his phone out and was obviously talking to a dispatcher. Mitch was knelt beside Gracie, his fingers pinching her nose as he breathed into her mouth.

My friend looked like a broken doll lying there on the sidewalk. Her blonde hair fanned around her as though she had purposefully arranged it like that. Her face was ashen and her lips blue. She looked dead.

My god, Gracie looked dead.

Garrett fell to his knees on the other side of her body and he looked ready to fall apart. He watched helplessly as Mitch breathed five times into her mouth and then listened at her mouth. Then he would take her pulse and start chest compressions.

I stood there, helpless, struck dumb by the utter tragedy that unfolded in front of me. Garrett pulled at his hair and let out a strangled howl that made my skin prickle.

I had never felt so useless in my entire life as I watched my friend’s life drain from her on the cold sidewalk. I barely registered when the paramedics arrived and wheeled her into an ambulance. I saw Garrett jump into the back with Gracie, holding her hand and talking to her the entire time.

Maysie pulled on my hand, saying something about meeting them at the hospital. I didn’t move. I could only stand there and watch as the flashing lights disappeared around the corner.

“Riley! Come on!” Maysie said, near hysterics. Vivian was freaking out and Cole was trying to get her to his car. Jordan had his arm around Maysie but she wouldn’t let go of my hand.

And I just continued to stand there, staring into the distance where Gracie and Garrett disappeared.

“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.

23

“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 f**k 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.