by Karen Anne
Brit shook her head, her gaze focused momentarily on Erik before she turned to me. “No, but will you be okay?”
No. No, I won’t be okay. “Yeah, fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Have a good night.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. I got out of the car and said a quick, “night” before shutting the door.
In a way, I was happy she was not staying at the house tonight. It meant no one would be able to stop me when I went over to Harry’s later. Erik had tried to help, but all he had done was make matters worse. This was my mess, and I needed to be a big girl and clean it up.
I took a shower, needing to wash the sugary scent out of my hair, convinced smelling all the butter from the pastries was going to make me gain weight at this job. Funny, I never noticed it before. When I was just a customer, the Draught smelled like coffee and incense.
Quickly, I blow dried my hair and got dressed in a flowery blouse and skinny jeans. I added a coat of lip gloss and stuck on my heels. After being in flat sneakers all day, it felt good to be in my stilettos. I laughed thinking how I was probably the opposite of every other woman in the world. Maybe Brit was right, maybe I was poison in pumps.
I thought I had escaped free and clear, but just when I opened the door to leave, I walked in on Natalie in the midst of a good night kiss with her new boyfriend.
“Hey,” Natalie said blushing. “Kris, this is Enzo.” She pointed at the dark-haired man with matching brown eyes. “Enzo, this is Kristen, one of my closest friends.” Enzo offered me a smile.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He offered me his hand to shake, and boy was he strong.
“Nice to meet you, too.” I let go of his hand, not sure what else to say. I was hoping to slip out undetected.
Natalie gave me a once over. “You look pretty. Where are you off to?”
“Out.”
“Obviously, but where to, silly?”
I didn’t have the strength to lie. So I just gave her a look.
“No! Kristen, you can’t.”
“Look, stuff happened tonight. I’ll catch you up tomorrow. I need to go over there. I have to fix this.” I walked over to my car, but Natalie chased after me.
“No. You need to fix you. You can’t go to his place. Not tonight.”
“It has to be tonight. I love how everyone is watching out for me, but you can’t hover over me forever.” I searched her eyes. I know she cared so much, but I needed to finally give Harry the closure he deserved. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. I promise.”
Natalie crossed her arms, trying to figure out how to hold me here. “But, does Brit know?”
“Brit is not my warden!”
Natalie shrunk back. “I’ll take that as a no.”
“Brit is at Erik’s and not thinking about me. You need to finish whatever you were about to do here with Enzo, and I need to go.”
I got in, closed the door and started the engine, avoiding the look of disappointment I saw in Natalie’s eyes when I glanced in the rearview mirror. Without looking back, I headed toward Harry’s. I had no clue what I was going to say to him, but the two of us needed to have a serious talk.
THIRTY-ONE
The sight of Harry’s jeep parked outside his apartment was a relief. Part of me felt guilty for not going with him. I knew he had been drinking, and although Erik was right to hit him, we still allowed a person, who I cared about, to drive, knowing they were not only hurt, but intoxicated. What a great friend I was.
I imagined he would want nothing to do with me anymore. Which, given my track record with Archer boys, made sense. He would have felt betrayed and insulted that I chose to go with the guy who had just punched him. Still, I wanted to see if he was okay. I had to know for my own sanity.
The apartment door opened, and the sight of Harry in the light was alarming. His jaw was swollen and already a shade of purple. Damn. Erik had really hit him hard. I was grateful he hadn’t hit him in his eye. To hit a guy with glasses was pretty low. At least Erik had a code.
Harry’s hair was a mess, and his pupils were small pinholes. He looked a little crazy. “Why are you here?” he asked, his face mirrored his confusion.
“I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” he said like he had stubbed his toe, my concern invalid. He shrugged and stepped to the side so I could come in. When the door clicked behind me, I immediately regretted coming here alone. My gaze wandered around the room. There was a credit card on the table and some powdery residue from where Harry had used. I remembered all the things I had read online about how highly addictive this drug and similar opiates were. How it worked differently in different people, and I knew Harry had been drinking, too.
“You need ice,” I said more to myself than to Harry. I headed into the kitchen, noting the half empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter. I had no way of knowing if he had drank all of that tonight, or if he took a shot occasionally and I simply caught him on a bad day. Either way, it was alarming. My hands shook while I dumped the tray of ice into a Ziploc bag. Wrapping the bag in a kitchen towel, I took a breath and spun around, jumping when I found Harry behind me in rather close proximity. “Here, ice that bruise. It’s all swollen.” I reached out to his jaw, but he took the ice out of my hand and tossed it behind me in the sink.
“I don’t need ice.” He stepped closer. “I need you.” He pulled me against him by my waist and slammed his mouth against mine. I was shocked and admittedly nervous by how forward he was being. I felt like a doll, unable to move as he played with me. His kiss wasn’t hot, nor was it romantic. It was hungry. This man was a stranger, and I was alone with him.
I managed to pluck my mouth away, taking a breath and trying to make sense of his behavior. “Harry, stop.” I pushed him by the shoulders, but I may as well have tried to move a mountain. He was solid stone.
He buried his face into my neck and began kissing me aggressively. His hands were still locked on my waist. He dragged his lips to my ear and whispered, “I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you.” His words were shocking and downright confusing. I wanted to believe they were sincere, but he was under the influence, and for all I knew, Brit was right, and this was just a way to get me in his bed. Would Harry do that? I didn’t know because this wasn’t Harry.
“That day, in your bedroom, I wanted you so bad.” His words confirmed my suspicion, and I knew exactly how he wanted tonight to go. I slammed my hands against his chest and shoved him hard. He let go of my waist and snapped his head up, his eyes narrowed in confusion.
“That day in my bedroom was probably a mistake,” I said, trying to control my voice so it wouldn’t shake.
“What? How could you even say that?” His face was inches from mine. “You wanted it. I asked you. You told me yes!” He was yelling now, and the sad part was, he was right. He had asked, but that didn’t make any of this right.
“We had taken something, Harry. We weren’t thinking clearly,” I pleaded, taking a step back. His face only twisted into more rage.
“It’s that fucking group of people you surround yourself with. They don’t want you happy. They don’t want you to have a good time. Look at my face, Kris!” He stepped closer, pointing to his jaw that was discolored and misshapen. “Look what they did to me!” He was wild now, pacing the kitchen like a tiger. I looked out into the living room, the front door seemed miles away.
“Harry… I think you need help.”
His eyes widened, and he shook his head. “I can’t believe you. Last time we were together you were doing the same thing I was. What changed? Who the fuck are you to judge me? You’re playing sick games with my head!”
“Harry, I’m not. I would never!” Tears threatened, stinging my eyes.
“I’ve had to watch you, listen to you, with him for years!” he shouted. “Moaning like a whore with him but pushing me away.” His words stabbed at my heart like a jagged dagger, clumsily hacking away.
“Why would
you say such things?” My eyes glazed over with tears. Newly enraged, I pushed past him and stormed into the living room. I started tossing pillows on the couch, looking for his stash. The tiny white pill that turned Harry from Jekyll to Hyde. I was determined to flush them away. I couldn’t allow him to spend another night in this apartment if he still had those pills.
He grabbed for my wrist, but I was able to twist it away. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed. “Where are they? Where are your pills?”
Something in him snapped. His rage quickly faded as fear took over his eyes. “You need to go. Now.” He was seething with a newfound sense of panic.
“No. Not until you hand over what you have left.”
“I’m not playing games, Kris.”
“Neither am I!” I darted past him into his bedroom, throwing the light switch on and seeing my prize on his dresser. A clear plastic bag with the small white pills. I lunged for them, but Harry caught my waist. “Let me go!” I squirmed in his arms. “Don’t touch me!” I shouted again, this time able to stretch far enough to grab his pills.
“Give them here. Now!” he yelled, holding me too tight.
“Harry, you’re hurting me!” I cried.
“And you’re hurting me, Kris!” he shouted, his words silencing me into submission. I stopped fighting him, just stared into blue eyes I no longer recognized. He loosened his grasp on me. We were both panting. “I don’t want to feel this way, Kris. I just want to feel…” He kissed me again. Soft at first, then with more fervor. I could taste the whiskey. I turned my face away, denying him, his lips landing on my cheek.
“Harry, please stop,” I pleaded, speaking to the man who had taken care of me and not this imposter. “Don’t kiss me like this. Not with all this crap in your system.” My body was trembling, my grip on the pills so tight my nails were digging into my skin.
“It’s still me.” He looked so confused. He leaned in again, but I took a step back, feeling my body hit the door. He stepped closer, his gaze taking me in. “It’s still me, and all I want is you.” He placed one hand firmly over my fist that held his pills.
“No, Harry, it’s not you.” As he leaned in to kiss me, I kneed him in the groin.
THIRTY-TWO
I was outside sitting on the steps of Harry’s apartment. I didn’t smoke, but I never in my life needed a cigarette more than now. After what seemed like hours, Jaime pulled up in his silver SUV, with Erik riding shot gun. Jaime got out first and jogged over to me. I stood, stumbled into his arms, and cried on his shoulder. “He needs help. I didn’t know. I didn’t see.”
“Shhh.” Jaime held me tight, stroking my hair. “We’ll take him. You can go back home.”
“No, I need to go with you. I need to help check him in.”
“Are you sure, Kris?” Erik asked.
I turned around. “Positive.”
After I had kneed Harry, he did the most inexplicable thing. He cried. But not from the pain. From his own demons. “I need help, Kris. I thought I could control it, but I can’t.” After he agreed to go to rehab, I told him to rest on the couch. He was asleep fairly quickly, and again I wondered what had he taken. Hopefully the hospital could give us some answers. I called Jaime because I knew it would be impossible to physically lift Harry and get him into a car. I had packed a small bag of clothes and toiletries for him, and then went outside to wait for the boys.
“Did he hurt you?” Erik asked as we walked up the stairs to his apartment.
“No, of course not.” I shook my head. Yes, Harry was more aggressive than usual, but I refused to believe he would have physically hurt me.
“I told him what you said, Kris. How he kept grabbing and kissing you,” Jaime admitted, eyes cast down as they walked on either side of me. When I had called Jaime, I was running on pure adrenaline and perhaps told him more than I should have. I’m sure by now Brit knew, and that meant she was planning Harry’s public execution.
“It wasn’t like that,” I affirmed.
“You kneed him in the groin,” Jaime said, his voice filled with a concern I wasn’t accustomed to from him.
“I know. It was a mixture of things. He was kissing me and saying things, and I just wanted it to stop. But he wouldn’t have raped me if that’s what you’re both insinuating.”
“How do you know?” Erik asked skeptically.
“I know.” I stopped walking up the stairs and took a breath. “It was nothing like that. I know Harry. But the guy in there asleep on the couch isn’t him. You said you’d help me and not judge. That’s what I need. Help me help my friend.”
Jaime kissed the top of my head. “I’ll help you. But he doesn’t deserve you.”
“I don’t know about that.” I took another deep breath and started walking back up the stairs. “I do know I’m not leaving without my kitten, and Summer will have to learn to live with the little Beast.”
The next morning, I lay with my head in Brit’s lap while she stroked my hair. I had gone through the whole messy night with her, trying to make sense of how everything had changed. How a friend started to resemble a monster. The whole thing was absurd. Erik wasn’t so quick to drop his suspicion. He even asked if I would consider pressing charges. Press charges? This was Harry. Harry! The sweet guy who held me while I cried, who taught me how to cook, and who was too shy to kiss me without popping a pill.
Those pills. Those stupid pills that had completely flipped his personality. It made me painfully aware of how far I could have gone had I kept up the habit. I lost my job, came too close to failing and almost destroyed my relationship with Brit, not to mention my other friends. All because I wanted to escape reality rather than deal with it. How stupid I had been!
And the worst part was… Harry had warned me. “I am so afraid of unleashing my demons, Kris…” I had all the puzzle pieces right in front of me. I was just too caught up in my own self-pity to see the big picture.
“He called me a whore. Was that how he really felt? Had the drugs just pulled his true thoughts out of his brain?”
Brit stopped playing with my hair, and I knew she was trying to find the right words. “You said so yourself, when you first started with those pills you felt free, and you kept trying to get back to your first high. Harry obviously took too much. No, Kris, that’s not how he felt. It was the drugs, not him.” She paused for a moment. “Do you think David knew about his problem?”
“No, I honestly think David had no clue.” But then it struck me like lightening— bad habits. David wanted me to keep Harry company so he wouldn’t form bad habits. I hated when David smoked, of course he would think I’d tear away pills from Harry. I was the last person he had expected to join in. “Or if he did know,” I added. “I assume it was something that happened in the past and wasn’t a threat now.”
“If David knew how Harry acted last night, he would kill him. Like we’d all have to visit him in prison.” Brit laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “And orange is not David’s color.”
It worried me what David would think if he knew, because I honestly didn't know.
“So he signed himself in?” Brit asked, sounding skeptical.
“Yes. Well, we drove him to the hospital. He was admitted there, and the nurse at the front desk said she would get in touch with the closest rehab facility. I gave her my number so they’ll call with the information.”
Brit nodded, and I knew Harry could spend the rest of his life clean and she’d still never trust him. I decided to offer her an olive branch. “I think I may want to give Dr. Rivers another chance. I sort of had a wall up the first time. Maybe I could remove a few bricks and let her in.”
Brit’s eyes softened. “I think that’s a great idea.” There was a light tap on the door, and Jaime and Erik poked their heads in.
“Morning! How you girls doing?” Erik asked. He was holding a tray with four coffees and a box of donuts. Breakfast of champions.
I sat up and wiped away my tears. “I’m better. Thanks so much again f
or your help.” Erik placed the donuts on my dresser and waved me off with his hand that was bandaged up. A pang of guilt pulled at my core. Jaime sat on the bed. He was holding Beast, who was squirming to get out of his arms and under the covers. The poor thing was probably so confused and wanted to hide.
“I still have to deal with Summer. She’s going to make a fuss over Beast.”
“I already spoke to Summer. She knows it’s only until the end of the semester. No big deal,” Jaime said with a smile. Summer was Jaime’s ex-girlfriend so the fact that he had spoken to her for me meant a lot. They usually avoided each other.
I looked around, holding my little Beast and seeing my real friends all around me on my bed. I felt like Dorothy, and I was finally back from Oz—for good.
THIRTY-THREE
Dear David,
I’m writing this letter knowing you’ll never read it, but sometimes, things that were left unsaid still need to be whispered to the universe. Or so my shrink tells me.
That’s right. I have a shrink. I bet you didn’t see that one coming, huh? Neither did I.
I’ve made a mess of things here, David. And I’m trying like hell to fix everything that I broke. But the thing I can’t fix is us.
I always encouraged you to dream big, and you did. But when your dream came true, I was so blinded by my jealousy, I couldn’t be your cheerleader. That was my first mistake. The second was not trusting you. Maybe by now you’ve moved on. Maybe you’ve moved on with Danny, or maybe with a girl you met in a crowd. But you wouldn’t have even had to have moved on if I had only pulled back. I was so scared of someone taking you away from me that I pushed you away before it even happened.
I wish I could go back to January and tell the old me to just breathe. To let go and trust in us. But I can’t. I made my choices. Some of them so dark and so horrible you can’t even imagine what I would have done. But it’s now part of my past. And I have to live with it. That’s hard. But not as hard as living without you in my life.