Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy)

by Brooke Jaxsen

  It was like a present from past self to present self, a gift that I wouldn’t have to share with anyone but myself. There were tablets, there were capsules, in a baggie I thought I’d lost a long time ago at a club. It must have somehow slipped into the purse. Had I placed it there before, like Coco and her love letters and her original bag, or had I lost it on accident or what? I didn’t remember, didn’t care. What mattered was getting those pills inside of me as fast as possible.

  And what better to wash it down with than the mouthwash by the sink? The only alcohol that Skylar could tolerate.

  The sharp minty flavor filled my throat and foamed. Shit, it was that whitening stuff that foamed in the mouth. I gagged and swallowed, not wanting to throw up the pills. I couldn’t waste them, the only thing I had left.

  My precious pills, the chemical candies, the only thing that could take me away from this, because sometimes, being grounded wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  Sometimes, a girl has to fly away.

  Forever.

  What else did I have to play with? Well, there was Draino under the sink, but I’d seen what had happened in Heathers and wasn’t about to play that game. Not that way. I felt my head spinning as I looked all over for something else to take, something to make the pain go away, or at least numb it until I figured out what to do.

  But first, I had to throw up. I could have sworn as I opened the toilet’s lid, the lid I’d been sitting on before, that the smacking sound it made was like the front door opening, of keys hitting the linoleum floor in the kitchen’s entrance, of footsteps running and slipping on the clothes I’d left in the hallway.

  The last thing I saw, with my tube still tied around my arm, slumped over the toilet, was Skylar’s face. Even as I died, the image my brain wanted to see most was his. The sound it made was his voice, calling my name over and over, each time, more desperate than the last. I felt a pressure on my wrist as the blood kept pounding and pouring through my veins as if somebody was checking my pulse to see if my heart was beating, even as it was stopping.

  I heard Skylar scream and then I stopped hearing. All I heard was white, and then, nothing, as my vision went blank too.

  Instead of seeing darkness, I finally saw the light and I ran.

  Chapter Twenty, #ThingsGirlsNeverSay:

  I WAS DEAD. At least, until I woke up. I thought I was in heaven, at first. It felt that way, in the white room with a white door, plush carpet, in that feather bed with the soft comforter as light as air but as warm as a candle.

  A young woman in scrubs entered with a clipboard. “Am I in heaven?” I asked, still groggy.

  She didn’t laugh, just smiled. I guess she got that question a lot. “No, sweetie, this is rehab.”

  She explained the situation to me. Apparently, I’d been in and out of states of consciousness and had come dangerously close to falling into a coma.

  My parents had me sent to rehab. Luckily, living in Southern California had a perk in the sense that there were lots of places for them to choose from. Ultimately, they chose Peacegarden Cove Retreat and Spa, which was a discreet rehabilitation center that daughters of the wealthy were often to sent to.

  At Peacegarden, although the treatments were gentle, there were still rules. There wasn’t any illicit drugs present at all, like at some places where people snuck them in or bought them from the attendants. The recovery rate was the highest in the nation and very few people ever ended up having to come back. My treatment was to last a month, the average amount of time for a problem I learned was surprisingly common. I was going to be treated for alcohol abuse and drug abuse, with a group of people my own age, as well as in private one-on-one therapy with a variety of specialists who would help me with more personal issues. I also learned life skills that would help me in the real world and how to better deal with things like peer pressure. Although technically, my smoking wasn’t an addiction, I still had to quit during my time there because others went there for nicotine abuse and no nicotine products were allowed other than those intended for recovery.

  I’d never wanted to recover before, but I’d also never almost died, not that way.

  I’d also never been madder at Skylar. Who was he to sentence me to this? How had my parents found out where I’d been sent? I knew that I could have just charged an emergency room visit to my credit card and said that Beverly Hills Hospital had received a donation instead of charged me for services rendered. He could have just called 911, wasn’t that what he was supposed to do in this case anyway? He wasn’t supposed to meddle. He wasn’t supposed to care.

  I talked about him in therapy, a lot, at first in group, but later, more in private therapy than anything. In group, people said they wished they had a friend like Skylar, someone who cared enough to intervene, who had tried to help, instead of enablers. Those enablers were my friends, though, the people I’d wanted to be. In time, I learned that it wasn’t healthy for them to influence my life so much. If people wanted to fuck up their own lives, it was fine, but it wasn’t my job to save them. So why had Skylar saved mine?

  I found myself missing him though. I couldn’t sleep, some nights, until I could get the thoughts about him out of my mind. I had so much to ask him. Why had he called my parents? Why had he cared to begin with? Why, that second night at the club, had he played along? Why had he made sure I got home that first night to begin with? And why hadn’t he come to see me if he cared so much?

  My days, for the next month, were filled with yoga, group therapy, and spa treatments. Long walks in the garden and painting in the studio helped me keep myself grounded. I knew the world outside rehab was different, that it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but that’s what I needed right now. It was arranged that I’d be able to take my finals at the facility and although they were hard and I was sure I’d failed them, it gave me closure on my past but not last year at University of California, Beverly Hills.

  My parents offered to let me transfer to another college or even just come back home with them, but I didn’t. I wanted to finish up at UCBH, even if that meant I couldn’t be at OMG. I knew life as a God Damn Independent would be hard and that as a GDI, I’d lose all the privileges I had as a member of Omega House, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. Only three people had cared enough to help me get better, and although I now got to see two of them on a weekly basis, one person was still missing.

  My parents ended up staying in the LA area while I recovered. My mom spent her days shopping and my dad worked on business and played golf. It was as if we were a normal family again, except things were never going to be the same.

  They visited me every week. Most parents did. My parents would have visited me more often but the program recommended they see me at most once a week, and of course, because the program had a low recidivism rate, it was obvious they had some good reason. My job wasn’t to analyze that, but to get better. Every week, I was asked if I’d like to see my visitors, and every week, I said yes.

  Until week four.

  That Saturday, the slip I had to sign listed three names: my mom’s, Betty, my dad’s, David, and a name I never wanted to hear or see or say again, but I found myself whispering it out loud anyway. “Skylar”. My white dress seemed to wave in an imaginary wind, but it was just the fancy silent fan that made it whip around my body as I wondered why he was here. Why would he want to see me after what had happened? i wouldn’t want to see me. I still didn’t.

  “Can I just see my parents, first?” I asked the attendant, and they smiled. Of course I could. This was a retreat, not a prison, and I could have whatever I wanted. My parents were paying a lot of money to guarantee that and I and the rest of the daddy’s girls had to have things perfect. My mom, in her pastel sweaters and khakis that she’d been accustomed to since they’d won, and my dad, in his same old business clothes, came into the private visitation room. Like all the rooms in the facility, it was serene and elegant. The walls were a calm shade of light blue and the seating was
in wicker, with large plump white tufted cushions in breathable, airy cotton. The carpet was a sandy beige and on the walls were seascapes done in ink. I wondered if they were done by past patients and put that thought out of my head. It wasn’t important. If I dwelled on stupid things, I’d never get the answers I was looking for.

  I hugged my parents before I blurted out, “Did you know there’s a third person here to see me today?” I hadn’t told my parents about Skylar yet. I’d only talked about him in group and with my therapists, but I’d been assured everything they were told by me was confidential and wouldn’t be told to my parents. I loved them and didn’t want to hide anything from them anymore, but there was a lot of ground to go over and I’d taken things slowly.

  “Oh, the lovely young man out front?” inquired my mom. “Is he your boyfriend?” My dad frowned: I was growing up too fast in all the wrong ways. Was this possible boyfriend candidate part of the new world I’d sunk myself into? If only he knew that it was Skylar that had been trying to save my life the whole time.

  “N-no, not exactly,” I stuttered. “I don’t know what he is.”

  “Well, he’s a very nice young man, that’s what he is,” said my mom. She still had her Midwestern accent and speech patterns, and although she had different clothes, she was still the same mom I’d grown up with who had snacks ready in the kitchen every day after school and who never wore makeup because she was saving money for our school supplies instead.

  “Wait, you’ve met him?” I half asked, half said. How would my mom know he was nice from just a first impression? She was a hard woman to impress!

  My mom gushed. She only did that when she was impressed with someone, usually a “very nice young man” she thought would like me or my sister (who had been a bigger priority for my mom, who was trying to hook her up so that her baby would have a daddy, the one thing our money couldn’t buy). “Oops. Well, cat’s out of the bag. Yes, honey, of course we wanted to meet the man who saved your life! He didn’t tell us everything though, just that you’d been staying with him, he’d found you in a mess, and took you to the hospital. We booked the first flight out. We even rode coach! We met him after we made sure you were okay and he’s a very nice young man.” That made sense.

  I guess dad hadn’t been frowning about Skylar, but about my mom playing games. She sometimes did that. I loved my mom but sometimes, to get my side of the story, she would ask questions instead of being up front about what she knew. Obviously, my dad had enough because he interrupted the chitter chatter. Usually, he just went to the garage to get away from it, but this time, it was personal. I’d almost fucking died.

  “I know that you and your mom usually sort this stuff out, but damn it, don’t play mind games with the boy. You know your mother and I met when we were around your age. We might have the storybook marriage now, Hell, we won the lottery! But why are we still together and not divorced, with trophy spouses? Because we had to go through this hard stuff.”

  I was taken aback in a good way. My dad usually just let mom handle these kinds of talks, but when he did give suggestions, they were usually well thought out and pointed out what should be obvious, but wasn’t. “You think that your mother and I always had it so good? We may laugh about it now, but back then, it wasn’t funny: it was heartbreaking. I had to save her on more than one occasion, and she had to save me. We had break ups, we had make ups, and we’re still together to this day. We’re not perfect. Love isn’t perfect. Maybe your knight in shining armor isn’t on a white horse. Maybe he’s right outside that door.”

  I knew exactly what my dad was saying and my ears started to well up. It was all true. I knew, in my heart, that Skylar was the only man that I could see myself with and that I was willing to work through whatever issues we had as a couple and to improve myself to be a better girlfriend. I got up from the couch quickly and walked to the doorway fast, almost tripping over my heeled strappy sandals, to open the door, and no, Skylar wasn’t literally right outside of it, but I ran all the way to the guest lobby.

  “No running in the Serenity Hall!” said one of the nurses, but another attendant said, “You go, girl!” I smiled and kept going until I reached the lobby.

  There, sitting with one of his hands in his pockets, the other checking the time on his phone, was Skylar, wearing a pair of jeans as usual, dark with fades, as well as a pair of dress shoes and a button down white shirt I’d only seen in his closet. The only thing that was bright were his tattoos, brighter colored and more pronounced than anything in the room, the room meant to nurture calm rather than the provoke passion, but what Skylar and I hadn’t wasn’t calm. It went beyond passion, and it had to be talked about, before it was too late, and it burned to become nothing but ashes and embers, the things I knew we were better than. That what we had was better than.

  He got up from the chair and started to walk to the exit, so I called out his name. “Skylar! Skylar!” I said desperately, the tears flooding faster down my cheeks. I knew my mascara was ruined and that I looked more like a raccoon than a princess, but I didn’t care.

  As he turned, I buried my head in his chest. It took a second for him to get what was happening and to take it all in, but he pulled me in closer and took a long draw of air from around the top of my head, taking in my scent.

  “I can’t believe you wanted to see me,” I said, with my head still nuzzling his firm pectorals. The cotton of the plain button up shirt smelled real, like the outside world, instead of this almost spa like wonderland. Rehab wasn’t the real world. Rehab wasn’t real life, or my life. Skylar was.

  “I wanted to wait for the right time,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave your side at the hospital but they said I couldn’t because I wasn’t family, but I called yours for you and let them know what had happened. I thought you’d hate me and never want to see me again. Are they treating you well here?”

  “Yeah, of course, my parents paid for the best.” With that, my heart sunk. I felt guilty: I had no idea how much a place like this cost. Hundreds, thousands per day? I had no idea. I cringed thinking how much the hospital bill was, how much my parents had to pay because of my mistake, but they assured me that they would pay double, triple, whatever it took to make their baby girl well again. There hadn’t been a sense of scale for things, not financially at least, since my parents had won the lottery. In a way, I wish they never had, that I’d lived the life I’d tried to run from for so long, but if I hadn’t, I never would have run into Skylar’s arms.

  “Good. That’s...good. I’m glad you’re feeling better. I guess I should go,” he said, pulling away. I didn’t know if it pained him as much as it pained me but I held onto his hand as he started to walk away again.

  “Please, Skylar. Stay. I...I have so much to say.” I’d never begged him for this before. I’d begged for a fuck, I’d begged to be held, but I’d never begged for something emotional instead of physical, something deep instead of shallow. I’d never felt this way about anyone and maybe instead of a last, he was a first.

  I’d never seen Skylar cry before, but as he turned, biting his lower lip with his fringe shielding his eyes, I saw a glistening diamond of water fall down his face and onto his cheeks. I swept up its saltiness with my lips and then closed my eyes as I kissed him on the lips.

  This time, he didn’t pull away. This time, he pulled me closer.

  Until I pulled away. There was no avoiding this. I knew that kiss couldn’t last forever, as much as I wanted it to, and I knew that I had something to tell Skylar. That if I didn’t tell him, I might never have the chance to, and if I did, I might never have the guts to have the heart to say it.

  I held my forehead against his. “Skylar, we have a lot to talk about. But the first thing? I don’t care how you take this. I don’t care who knows. I’m in love with you, and I don’t want anything else, not the alcohol, not the pills, not the lifestyle, as much as I want to be with you. I’m so sorry I put you through all this. You’re right: I was upset at first,
but I know you only took me to the hospital because you cared about me. Because you were scared for me. I can never repay you for that.”

  “You can,” he said, pulling me off of him with his hands on my shoulders, like I was a steering wheel and he was at ten and two, driving to my heart. I needed this. I needed him, and direction, and a plan. I needed to know what was going to come next because right now, Peacegarden was like purgatory. It was nice enough but it wasn’t the real world, a world I knew I’d have to face soon but found myself more and more scared of, because I didn’t know what my future held, and so much had changed in the past month alone, but ever since I’d met Skylar, I’d re-evaluated everything about my life: my priorities, my goals, my lifestyle. It was terrifying and he was the only thing in this strange new world that didn’t scare me, the only thing that kept me grounded, but I’d let go and look what had happened. I’d almost fucking died.

  “How?” I looked up into his eyes which were already looking at me tenderly and I knew that he had a plan for us.

  The answer I got wasn’t said with words, but with the embrace he gave me as he whispered in my ears, “Emma Nelson, I have no idea how you got into UCBH if you lack some basic reasoning skills, but damn it, you should have seen by now that I love you. I love you, Emma, and that’s never going to change, not even if you keep living your fucked up lifestyle. I don’t hate you for it. I don’t even hate that lifestyle. I just want the best for you, though, and that lifestyle? That’s not it. Maybe you’re meant to write, or to travel, or to be a mom or something, but you’re not meant for that life. Your sorority sisters were bitches, fuck, they are bitches, but sometimes, bitches are right. They’re right: you’re not meant for the party girl lifestyle, and I don’t know what you’re supposed to do. I can’t figure that out for you, but I want to go on that journey with you. Emma Nelson?”