Follow Me Back

by A. Meredith Walters

  Trembling and sick, I crawled out to the living room and found my phone. I dialed a number I had programmed and had never used.

  I put the phone to my ear and listened to it ring. “Recovery hotline, this is James. How can I help you?”

  I took a deep breath and didn’t say anything. I thought about hanging up.

  The road stretched out ahead of me, and the choices I made now would define how I moved forward.

  It terrified me.

  “Hey, James, I’m an addict and I feel like using . . .”

  chapter

  twenty-seven

  aubrey

  i wasn’t expecting my day to end with a decision to go home.

  It had started like any other typical day.

  I had gotten up. Gotten dressed. Had a cup of coffee. Made small talk with Renee. I had met Brooks in the library, careful to avoid any reminders of our awkward conversation in my apartment. I had gone to class, eaten lunch, spoken to Maxx on the phone.

  And then my mother happened.

  My phone rang just after I settled into my evening of homework and required reading.

  I answered it without looking at the number on the screen. I assumed it would be Maxx or Renee.

  I was the queen of repeat mistakes.

  “Aubrey, I’m so glad you picked up.” I paused, in shock to hear my mom’s voice on the other end. We hadn’t spoken since our last phone call weeks before, and by my calculations I shouldn’t hear from her again for at least another two or three months.

  Her voice sounded strange. Husky and thick, as though she had been crying. I was instantly on edge.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked, thinking something must have happened to my dad. That could be the only reason for her calling me again so soon.

  “Yes, everything is fine,” she said, her voice muffled. Then there was silence. Was I supposed to fill in the gap?

  I had forgotten how to have a normal conversation with my mother years ago, so I was completely at a loss.

  “Is there a reason you’re calling?” I finally asked, going for blunt instead of beating around the bush.

  I waited for my mother to chastise me. To tell me that I was being rude and should watch myself. She did neither.

  What was going on?

  “Your dad and I were going through Jayme’s room this week. Finally cleaning out her clothes and donating them to Goodwill. I . . . I almost couldn’t do it.”

  I frowned. Why was she calling to tell me this? She sounded weak and tired and nothing like the aggressive, antagonistic woman she had become since my younger sister’s death.

  I was equally surprised that she and my dad were disturbing the shrine they had built to Jayme. Her room had been left virtually untouched since she had last been in it, over three years before. The only time I had been home after starting college I had found my mother changing the sheets on Jayme’s bed as though she were still sleeping there.

  “She told you everything! You had to know what was going on! How could you not tell me? How could you not do anything to help your baby sister? What sort of person are you?” my mother had screamed at me the night before I had left to go back to Longwood. It had been the last time I had slept under the roof of my childhood. The last time I had been in my parents’ company.

  I had become so used to my resentful mother it was easy to forget the other sides to her personality that had all but been obliterated.

  “I’m sure that was hard,” I ventured slowly, feeling as though I was walking into a trap.

  My mother sniffed loudly on the other end, confirming that she was indeed crying.

  “We found some things I thought you might like to have. Some pictures and keepsakes I know Jayme would want you to have.”

  I swallowed thickly around the lump that had formed in my throat. “Oh, well, you can mail them—” I began, but my mom cut me off.

  “Actually, I was wondering whether you’d come down for a visit. I asked you last time we spoke and you never really answered me. But your dad and I would really like to see you. It’s . . . it’s been too long,” she said in a rush.

  The air was sucked out of my lungs. “You want me to come for a visit? Why?” I practically shouted into the phone.

  My mother hissed in a breath, and I waited finally to be yelled at.

  But instead she remained calm. “I’m your mother. Do I need a reason to see you?”

  “Yes. Considering you haven’t bothered in the last three years.” I sounded angry. And I was. I thought I had made peace with my lack of parental relationship. But with my mother dangling the carrot of her company in front of me, a part of me I thought was dead resurfaced. The part that longed for her parents’ affection. The part that had once been loved and adored by her family.

  “There’s a lot I think we need to talk about. We can come to you if that would be easier. Your dad and I could get a hotel room. Take you out to dinner—”

  “No!” I said loudly. I knew that having them here at Longwood was the last thing I wanted. I couldn’t have them invading the space that had become my escape. From home. From Jayme’s memory. From them.

  “Okay, I understand,” my mother said, sounding sad, which was perplexing on so many levels.

  I had no defense against this person. This ghost of my childhood that I thought long gone.

  I didn’t know what had precipitated this dramatic change, but I was wary and distrustful. I had hardened myself against my family because they had hurt me deeply already. But my heart strained to open up to her. It wanted to. It needed to love her again.

  I had spent years avoiding going back to that place. I had worked hard to put it behind me, even if the memories of my sister and the family I had lost still clawed at my insides every day. I had been firm in the belief that I couldn’t go there. Ever again.

  But hearing the soft regret in my mother’s voice had me doing something I thought was impossible to do.

  It made me miss home.

  “But please think about it. I think it would be important. For all of us,” my mother said quietly, the lack of resentment in her tone louder than her words.

  “I will,” I promised.

  I hung up the phone feeling conflicted.

  “Ugh!” I yelled, throwing down my pencil in frustration. Jayme snickered from across the kitchen table, and I threw her a nasty look.

  “What’s wrong, Aubrey?” my mom asked from the back door. She had just come in from getting an armload of firewood that Dad had cut up last weekend. It was the end of fall, and the first signs of winter were appearing. North Carolina was experiencing an unseasonable cold snap, catching everyone by surprise. The forecasters were even calling for a few flakes of snow before the week was out.

  “I hate algebra! I just can’t get it!” I complained, picking up my pencil again.

  I should have listened when people said high school was a lot harder than middle school. But I thought I would be fine. I mean, I was smart. I got straight A’s. What would be the problem?

  Algebra with Mr. Foltz was the problem.

  “You look really funny when you want to cry,” Jayme teased, though it wasn’t malicious. I stuck my tongue out at my little sister.

  “You just wait, Jay. In two years you’ll be exactly where I am, and then I can make fun of you,” I threatened, though there was no real bite to my words. We both knew that when the time came, I’d be helping her with her homework anyway.

  Mom opened the refrigerator and pulled out a jug of iced tea she had made earlier, pouring some into glasses and bringing them over to the table. She sat one down in front of me and handed me a chocolate chip cookie.

  “Brain food,” she said, smiling and sitting down beside me.

  I took the offered snack and ate it, thinking there was nothing better in the world than my mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies.

  “Okay, so what’s the problem?” she asked, leaning over my textbook, a concentrated frown on her face.

&n
bsp; I pointed to the gobbledygook on the page. “Mr. Foltz told us one way to do it and the book is saying to do another. Neither of them make any sense!” I moaned, burying my head in my crossed arms in a fit of teenage melodrama.

  I could hear Jayme giggling again and Mom quietly shushing her. Then her hand was on my back, a calm, comforting touch. I lifted my head and looked at my mother. Even though I was a teenager and quickly outgrowing the idea that my parents were the coolest people on the planet, I still believed that my mother had the answer to everything. I held on to that belief with a strength of conviction I didn’t think I’d ever lose.

  My friends had always been so jealous of the relationship I had with my mom. They thought she was the coolest. She’d take me shopping, talk to me about boys, help me apply makeup that looked great. I was lucky.

  Mom put her finger underneath my chin and lifted my face. “Sometimes we just need to look at something another way. Things are never so simple that there’s only one answer.”

  I smiled. She smiled. Jayme smiled from across the table.

  My entire life up to that point was made up of moments like this.

  And I felt completely and totally loved.

  I waited for Maxx after his shift at the coffee shop. I had been sitting in the same booth for over an hour, pretending to look over my assigned reading when actually I was simply watching him work.

  He looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes. His smile was strained as he greeted customers. The bright blue of his eyes was dull and listless even though they still lit up when he looked at me.

  I could see Maxx talking to the other girl on duty. She smiled a sickeningly sweet grin and flipped her hair. He picked up a plateful of chocolate fudge cookies and inclined his head toward me.

  I quickly ducked behind my book but peeked out over the top. The girl’s expression soured, but she nodded.

  “I see you,” Maxx said, dropping down into the booth across from me.

  “Didn’t realize I was hiding,” I teased, though feeling embarrassed at having been caught staring like a psycho girlfriend. He slid the plate of cookies toward me, his exhausted face softening as he looked at me.

  “What was it you said about chocolate?” he teased.

  “That I’d do just about anything for it,” I responded, picking up a cookie and taking a bite.

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” he said, his voice husky and rich.

  I cleared my throat, feeling my face flush and my belly twist in that slightly painful way that meant I was completely turned on.

  “So, I have a proposition for you,” I announced, putting the rest of the cookie back onto the plate.

  Maxx reached across the table and took my hand, his thumb sliding back and forth over mine. “Well, that was the point of the chocolate,” he said with a smirk.

  I rolled my eyes but had to clear my throat again before continuing.

  “I’m thinking about going home for the weekend. To see my parents,” I said quickly, needing to say it before I lost the nerve.

  Maxx frowned and dropped my hand, sitting back in the booth. “Okay . . .”

  “I haven’t been home in three years.” I glanced out the window and then back to Maxx. “I haven’t seen my parents in three years,” I went on.

  “Wow. Okay. So why are you going now? Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Everything’s fine. My mom called and said she’d like me to come home. She has some things of Jayme’s she’d like me to have. I just think . . . that it’s time.”

  Maxx nodded. “Well, if that’s what you need to do. Then absolutely you should go.”

  “I’d like you to come with me,” I stated, not quite able to look at him. I hadn’t really thought about Maxx coming with me until that moment. But I realized that if I was going to do this, I wanted him with me.

  Maxx blinked a few times, looking shocked. “You want me to come to North Carolina with you? To meet your parents?” he asked incredulously.

  Shit.

  This would be that “meet the parents” moment.

  It was too much too soon.

  He was going to balk and freak out and God knows what else.

  The niggling doubts that always worried at the back of my mind when it came to Maxx roared to life.

  He’s going to go get high. You’ve pushed him, and now he’ll need to turn to the pills. It’s all he knows. He will always disappoint you. How can you have a relationship when you don’t even trust him?

  I became enraged at myself for letting that horrible voice in my head drown out everything else.

  “It’s cool. You don’t have to. I just thought I’d ask. I was only thinking it might be nice to get away—”

  “Of course I’ll come, Aubrey. If you need me, I’m there. Always,” Maxx said earnestly. He reached back across the table and took my hands again, and I relaxed marginally.

  “I know it’s a big step, meeting the parents and all. Particularly my parents, because they’ve sort of sucked. And if this freaks you out or makes you want to—”

  Maxx leaned across the table and wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, gently tugging me toward him. He kissed me. A hard pressing of lips that effectively silenced my worries.

  When he was finished, he rested his forehead against mine, our noses touching. “I’m ready for any and every step, Aubrey,” he whispered, and I shivered.

  I sat back in the booth and gave Maxx a shaky but genuine smile.

  “Okay, then. I guess we’re heading to North Carolina.”

  My heart seized up the moment we entered the city limits. Marshall Creek, North Carolina, hadn’t changed a bit. There was something both comforting and exasperating about that.

  I drove through the familiar streets, past the diner where Mom took me to celebrate winning the school election. Past the local library where Jayme volunteered during middle school. And right by the high school where I had graduated.

  I didn’t look at any of it. I didn’t need to. The memories of this place were imprinted on my mind whether I wanted them there or not. And strangely, it still felt like home.

  I had expected to feel nothing. A numbness. An emotional disconnect. But the warmth that spread outward from my heart to be back in this small country town was something indescribable. It felt good.

  Maxx hadn’t been very talkative on the two-and-a-half-hour ride to my hometown. He had spent most of the time staring out the window and chewing on his bottom lip.

  After agreeing to come with me to see my parents, he had seemed to retreat into himself. He was present but absent at the same time. I began to second-guess my decision to ask him to come with me in the first place. Because it seemed to weigh on him in a manner I didn’t understand. I just wished he would tell me why.

  “I always pictured you in a place like this,” Maxx murmured, half under his breath.

  I looked through the window at the nondescript brick houses and well-manicured lawns. The white picket fences and random joggers with their dogs on the sidewalks.

  “Really?” I asked, turning off the main road and onto a side street lined with red maple trees. In the fall they turned a bright, almost violent red, and Jayme had always loved to walk by them.

  “It’s sort of perfect,” Maxx said, finally looking at me. “The streets are clean, the houses are painted, the people are smiling. You deserve to live in a place like this.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I gave him a small smile in return, which quickly faded. I slowed down the car as I approached the end of a cul-de-sac and the house with light blue siding and tan shutters flanked by the familiar red maples. I could still see the frame of the tree house my dad had made for Jayme when she was six among the bare limbs.

  I pulled my car into the driveway. I thought I was going to be sick. And then I started to panic.

  “I can’t do this,” I said, my voice hoarse as my throat tightened.

  I gripped the steering wheel as though I
would break it in half. “I have to leave. I can’t go in there.” I heard the rising hysteria in my voice and knew I was three seconds from losing it. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe in and out of my nose, trying to slow my erratic breathing.

  I was jolted out of my downward spiral by a gentle touch on the back of my neck. Fingers buried into the hair at the base of my skull, a firm pressure that had an instant calming effect.

  “It’ll be okay, Aubrey,” Maxx whispered, and I felt his lips on my temple, the soft whisper of his breath as he spoke in my ear. “It’ll be okay.”

  I opened my eyes and turned to look at him. Blue eyes burned into mine, and I knew he was right. I leaned in and kissed him, unable to put into words how much his presence meant to me. Maxx Demelo had become my savior.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” I said, a little louder than I meant to. I pulled away from Maxx and opened my door, getting out before I could talk myself out of it.

  “I’ll get our bags,” Maxx said as I started heading toward the porch. I took in a million details in the seconds it took me to approach the house that had once been my home. My parents had replaced the old, battered porch swing with a small, wrought iron patio set. My mother’s old rosebush on the side of the house had been dug up, and a wooden lattice now stood in its place.

  It was obvious my mother was still compulsive about her gardening. Now that the weather was getting warmer, I could see she had been working to get her flower beds in order.

  My eyes traveled over the well-worn steps I had climbed countless times. And then I was standing in front of the door, now dark blue and no longer a gleaming white. There were so many changes, yet it still felt the same. The soothing familiarity of home fought to overwhelm the nerves in my belly.

  I stood there, staring at the door, not knocking. I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for, but I couldn’t bring myself to raise my hand to the wood.

  “Do you want me to do it?” Maxx asked quietly, dropping our bags on the floor by his feet.

  I nodded. This was it. I was home.