Going Long (Waiting on the Sidelines)

by Ginger Scott

  “Don’t do that!” I said in an angry slur. I giggled a little at how it came out, giving Gavin the wrong impression, because he moved back toward me and wrapped me up again in his arms, moving his lips to my neck where he started to taste me. His touch felt disgusting, and I pushed him away again.

  “I said don’t do that!” I was more forceful now, and Gavin seemed to get it. His brow furrowed as he looked down, and then back up into my eyes, confused and upset. Leaning in, so I could hear him, he got close to my ear, his lips touching it a little, making me nervous.

  “I don’t get you. One minute you’re kissing me, and don’t deny it. You kissed me. Just as much as I kissed you,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “The next, you’re telling me you aren’t attracted to me, don’t see me as anything other then a friend. Then you let me dance with you…like this! for an hour before you flip out on me again. What’s with you? Are you really NOT into me? Because I’ve gotta tell you, Nolan, you’re body is giving me an entirely different story!”

  My words were definitely unfiltered, the alcohol working its black magic as I pushed a hand heavily into Gavin’s chest, biting my lip a little, and moving close to him, my teeth gritting. “I had a miscarriage, you asshole! And Reed hates me for it! And the whole thing fucking ruined me—and you just made it worse! So just leave. Me. The. Fuck. Alone!” I stormed away from him and headed to the other side of the club, not even looking back to check his reaction.

  I holed up in the women’s bathroom for more than a few minutes after my scene with Gavin, my emotions bouncing between tears and anger. I finally gathered myself enough to touch up my makeup and storm back onto the dance floor where I continued on my journey to forget everything…again.

  I vaguely remembered Sarah telling me to go home with Sienna. And I even less recalled arguing with Sienna and refusing to leave until she left me there alone. However it happened, I found myself wandering out the back door after midnight, digging through my purse for my phone, and completely unsure of where I lived.

  Panic started to hit a little, and every face that passed me was unfamiliar. I started calling out for Sienna, but my words were slurred. I giggled a little at how I sounded. But inevitably, I would start to panic and begin the cycle again. After bumping into a few strangers, and stumbling to my knees more than once, I sat with my legs in the gutter of the main road, and zipped my boots off, setting them down next to me. I pulled my phone from my tiny purse with a force that sent my credit card and driver’s license flying into the road. Instantly, I was irrationally terrified that someone would find my license and realize I wasn’t yet 21, so I crawled into the roadway on my knees and grabbed my cards. Cars honked and swerved around me, and I remember the lines left behind as the headlights passed my face.

  I think a few people asked if they could help me, but I always smiled, or at least I thought I was smiling, and told them I was fine. Fine. I was so fucking far from fine. I was turning into a train wreck, and I was beyond anyone’s reach. So I did what I always did when I was in trouble, what I’d done every other time I needed help over the last two years. I called Reed.

  Reed

  “Dude, you just shot me, you asshole!” Trig yelled over the sound of gunfire blasting from our television. A bunch of the guys had come over to our place, and we’d been playing video games for a couple of hours now. I was starting to get tired of it, so I just started shooting all of my teammates to try to end the game faster.

  It was nice to have the distraction, but I was tired. When I found out that Pops had invited Nolan and her parents over for Thanksgiving, I flipped my lid. I knew it was my fault for not telling him about the problems Nolan and I were having, but I didn’t think I’d be forced to out our up-in-flames relationship at the dinner table in front of our family and friends, while we all said grace and thanks for everything wonderful in our lives.

  I talked it over with Sean and had come up with a plan that he said he was pretty sure Nolan would actually go along with. I just had to talk to her about it. And that’s where the big hang up was…we weren’t really talking. And I wasn’t sure I could look at her anymore. The more time passed, the more I thought about that smug asshole Gavin and the way he looked when I saw him. I couldn’t believe Nolan would be into a guy like that, but I was starting to think that she had changed into an entirely different person, someone I didn’t really know at all.

  I heard my phone buzzing in my pocket, but just let it go to voicemail, and kept shooting random targets on the screen. When it buzzed a second time about two minutes later, I got annoyed. I ignored it then, too, but the third round of buzzing made me panic, and immediately think that something was wrong with my dad. I paused my game player and tossed my controller to one of the other guys. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I walked out to the hall so I could hear. When I saw the face and name staring back at me on the screen, my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. Why was Nolan calling me? Why now, after all this time? At 1 a.m.? On a Saturday?

  I almost missed the third call when something forced me to answer.

  “Noles?” I was confused. I could hear traffic in the background, and people laughing. It sounded almost as if she had dialed me accidentally, a misfire from her purse. And the hurt I felt at that thought surprised me a little. I was about to hang up when I caught the unmistakable sound of her breathing.

  “Reed?” she sounded upset, like she’d been crying. “Reed? I can’t hear you. Are you there?”

  “Noles, I’m here. I hear you. What’s wrong?” I said, pulling keys from my pocket and flying down my hallway out of instinct. Then she started giggling. It was an off sounding laugh, though. Like she was…drunk? I put my hand on my forehead and pinched the bridge of my nose. Jesus, this was not happening.

  “Nolan, are you drunk?” I waited while she finished a giggling fit, and then it turned into panicked breaths, and near crying again. Nolan, I’m hanging up.”

  That did something to her, because she started talking more clearly now. “No! Wait. No, no, no, no…” she was fighting to make sense. It was irritating me, and scaring me at the same time. I instantly regretted the times I’d put her through having to deal with me like this. “Reed? Don’t go. I…I need help.”

  That was it; I was out the door now. I hated how weak I was, and half of my brain admonished the other half for giving into her, letting her run my actions still after breaking me in half. But I wasn’t over her. I wasn’t even remotely close to the start of getting over her. And she needed help, so I’d come.

  “What’s wrong, where are you?” I said forcefully, trying to get her to concentrate. She giggled a little again, and then stopped.

  “I’m…at a bar,” she burst into laughter again. I leaned my forehead on my steering wheel and banged it a little. This was not going well. And if I was going to drive 100 miles to come get her, I was going to need a whole lot more to go on.

  “Yeah, I get that. But what bar?” I said, sarcasm winning out.

  “I…I don’t know, Reed. I’m scared. I don’t know where I am,” she was starting to cry harder now. Fuck! I was already pulling onto the main road for the highway.

  “Nolan, you need to find out where you are. Can you tell me what you see?” I asked, grasping for anything.

  “I see…people,” she was giggling again.

  Realizing I wasn’t going to get anywhere this way, I tried to figure out where her friends were. “Where’s Sarah? Nolan, I need to talk to Sarah. Is she with you?” I was crossing my fingers like hell that Sarah would be on the phone soon.

  “Sarah left,” she was giggling again.

  “Okay, how about Sienna?” I asked, knowing it was less likely Sienna was with her. When I thought about who she could be out with if it wasn’t her girlfriends, I wanted to scream.

  “She’s mad at me,” she started giggling, but less than before. “I mean…she left. I didn’t want to go home.”

  I knew there was no way Sienna would leave her somewhere al
one, not when she was like this. “Okay, Noles. I need you to do something for me, okay?” It was like reasoning with a 4-year-old.

  “Okay,” she was almost listening.

  “I’m going to call someone, find out where you are, but I need to call you back. Hold your phone in front of you, and I want you to watch it for when I call, okay?” I was trying to keep things simple.

  “Okay, answer the phone. Got it,” she was crying a little again. She was a mess.

  I hung up with Nolan and called Sienna. I was counting each ring, hoping like hell it wouldn’t go right to voicemail. When I heard her pick up, and heard the crowds and music in the background I felt relieved. I knew she wasn’t far.

  “Reed?” she was yelling a little into the phone. “Hang on, I can’t hear shit in here. I’m going to the ladies’ room.”

  I couldn’t tell where they were, but I knew it was crowded, the techno music thumping in the background, and the constant stream of voices filling in the gaps.

  “Okay, that’s better. I can hear you. What’s up?” she said, not even a hint of panic to her voice.

  “Sienna, where’s Nolan?” I asked urgently, just wanting an answer at this point.

  “She’s out on the dance floor somewhere. I don’t know. I keep trying to make her come home, but she won’t…why?” she clearly had no idea what had happened.

  “She just called me,” I sighed, pulling off at the next exit and pulling into a nearby gas station so I could talk.

  “Wha?...Wait, where is she, Reed?” Sienna asked, now a little worried herself.

  “I’m not sure. She just called me. She’s all freaked out, said you two had a fight, and you left her at some club,” I just killed the engine and tossed my hat on the dashboard, rubbing my face out of frustration. “What the hell, Sienna? She’s fucking wasted. I can hardly understand her.”

  “Yeah, I know. She did shots—a lot of them. I’ve been trying to get her to go home for the last hour,” Sienna said.

  “Well, you have to find her. I think she might just be outside, somewhere close,” I said, hearing the sounds of the music kick in again. Sienna was on the move.

  “Hang on, I’m going out front. I’ll find her Reed,” she was just as frustrated as I was. When the music died off again in the background, I knew she was outside. I heard a few voices and the sounds of cars roaring by on the road. “Wait…I see her. She’s sitting in the gutter…with her freakin’ shoes off, ohhhhhh.”

  I heard Nolan’s voice in the background, and laid my head on the steering wheel, exhausted by the whole thing. “What happened?” I asked, wanting answers but knowing Sienna really didn’t have the time to give them to me. “Where’s Gavin?” I asked, my mouth repulsing at saying his name.

  “Gavin?! Why the hell would Gavin be here?” Sienna said, her voice a little muffled from laying the phone on her shoulder. “I got you. Come on girl…really, this time. It’s time to go home, okay?”

  I heard Nolan, “Mmmmm.” She sounded sleepy. I knew this stage of a hard night out. She was near passed out. I couldn’t even imagine what she looked like.

  “Reed? Look, I gotta go. Thanks for calling me. I’m sorry you had to,” she was a little short with me before she just hung up.

  “What the fuck?” For the next 20 minutes, I sat there just thinking about what had just happened. I hadn’t heard her voice in weeks, not that she sounded like herself at all tonight. But when I asked about Gavin, Sienna sounded like I was crazy. Maybe she didn’t know that they had hooked up? Clearly they weren’t dating or anything. My head was spinning, not sure what was right anymore, and I was just left missing everything that I’d finally started to come to terms with losing.

  Chapter 10

  Nolan

  I woke up on Sienna’s sofa, my face crusty with dried saliva, and God knows what else. My throat was dry as hell, and I wanted to gulp glass after glass of water, except when I sat up my entire world shifted, forcing me back flat on my face into the cushions. I was still wearing my clothes from last night, and my boots were stuffed in the sofa cracks, almost as if I’d clung to them overnight like they were a teddy bear. I was pretty sure I never wanted to feel like this again.

  The kitchen light flickered on, and I heard the faint sounds of coffee brewing and pans sliding from a cabinet. I pushed myself up on the sofa and cracked one eye barely open to see Sienna leaning on her hands across the counter staring at me. Not really ready to deal with the look on her face, I just grumbled and fell back into the couch.

  “Well, good morning, sunshine,” she said bitterly. “You ready to hear about the fantastic night you made me go through? Or do you want to throw up and whine about your splitting headache for a while?”

  She was full-on banging pans on the stove now, flinging the fridge door shut with extra muscle, and cracking eggs to fry so loudly you would think she was throwing water balloons onto the stove.

  “Uuuuuuuuhhhhhg. Sienna, do you have to do all of that now?” I spoke, my face still buried into the pillow.

  “Yes, Nolan. I do. It’s 11:30 in the morning. I’m hungry, and I’m sick of watching you twitch and wail, and flop around my living room couch. I want to watch TV, so sit your ass up,” she was bullying me. It was a side of her I’d never seen, and I both admired and hated it.

  She was flipping cushions up to move me now, so I slid to the end of the couch to curl up in a ball, and keep my face buried in the covers and my hands. “Stopppp, I get it. I’m moving,” I said, my voice defensive, like I had some right to be. I had no idea what events led up to me being here, but I knew that there were at least 7 or 8 ounces of vodka involved. My stomach felt like a tar pit, bubbling and full. I left my arm wrapped around my chin, my nose covered and protected from any smells. I hoped this would keep me from vomiting.

  “Noles, I swear to God, if you throw up on any of my shit, our friendship is over,” she said, flipping through the channels and not even looking at me.

  “Geeeeeeze, what the hell crawled up your ass?” I rolled my eyes, or at least the one that was open.

  At that, Sienna shut the TV off again and got up off the couch to return to the kitchen. I had pissed her off, and I knew I was acting like a major bitch, but I was so miserable that I couldn’t seem to turn it off. “I’m sorry…” I half-heartedly grunted from my sofa corner.

  She just scoffed. I listened to her bang around the kitchen some more, before I drifted back into a light sleep. I slipped in and out of it over the next two hours. When I heard the unmistakable sound of Sarah’s voice added into the mix, I finally rose from the dead, my body a little more prepared to sit upright…and possibly take in some liquids.

  “Jesus, Noles. You look like shit,” Sarah said, tossing a clean T-shirt at me from the chair on the other side of the room. On instinct, I pulled my night-before top off and put on the one she’d thrown to me. When I saw the small traces of vomit on my new blouse, I realized how bad the situation probably had been.

  I finally got up from the couch and slid into the kitchen to pour myself a giant cup of coffee and sift through Sienna’s cabinets for aspirin. “You won’t find it in there. Hang on, I’ll get the bottle from my bathroom,” Sienna said from behind me. I hadn’t seen her and her words startled me a little. She came back seconds later with two pills, and I took them quickly, thinking the faster they were in my system, the faster the nail pushing into my skull would go away.

  “Thanks,” I said, sheepishly. I was embarrassed now, both because I remembered how I behaved to Sienna just hours ago, and because I couldn’t remember much before that. “So…how bad?”

  Sienna sat there on a stool, staring at me for a few seconds before she spoke. “Epic,” she said.

  Sarah chortled a little, causing Sienna to toss a wad of wet paper towels at her. “Fuck! What was that for?” Sarah said.

  “That was for leaving me last night…in charge of…this!” Sienna said, waving her hand up and down the length of my body.

  My mind raced
, “Oh god, what had I done to make her this mad?”

  “I’m sorry,” I started right away, my instinct to repair things kicking in. I leaned my face into my hands and rubbed my eyes before settling back on Sienna. “What…did I do?”

  She and Sarah just looked at one another for a little while, almost like they had some shared secret that they were terrified to tell me. The longer it took them to give me words, the more I worried and let my imagination fill in the blanks. Had I gone to Gavin’s? Did I kiss him again? Did I kiss someone else?

  “You called Reed,” Sienna said, taking a slow drink from her coffee, her eyes watching me for my reaction, which was devastated. My stomach felt as if I’d just dropped from the highest point of a roller coaster, and suddenly, I knew I was going to be sick. I sprinted to Sienna’s bathroom, and dry-heaved for about 10 minutes, my stomach clearly empty from whatever I had turned over the night before. My equilibrium finally giving me a break from the spinning apartment walls, I came back into the kitchen with Sarah and Sienna.

  “What did I say,” I whispered, staring at the floor, because I couldn’t bear to see any more disapproval on Sienna’s face.

  “You weren’t very coherent,” she started. “You had slipped away from me, for just a few seconds. It was the end of the night, and you were confused. You thought we were fighting, because I wanted to go home and you wouldn’t leave the damn bar.”

  She was getting worked up again, so I just put a hand on her arm and squeezed, forcing her to look at me. I gave her a crooked smile, one full of genuine regret. “I’m soooooo sorry,” I said.

  Finally sighing, she put her hand on mine and squeezed it back. “I know you are,” she said, blowing out the air in her lungs a bit. “You were just…a lot to handle. That’s all.”