IT’S MONDAY, AND SCHOOL is back in session, and I’m not going. I can never go back there. My main goal for today is to have a shower since I hadn’t had one in three days, but it suddenly felt like it was going to be too much of an effort, so I take another huge handful of sleeping pills mixed in with some painkillers, and drift back off to sleep.
By Tuesday, I’d blocked Abby’s number from my phone, too. She’d called and told me that Logan wasn’t to blame for the pashing Ashleigh situation, so I hung up. It hurt me because I knew I had no one else.
Thursday comes, and I still haven’t showered, but I’m hungry, and out of pills. When I find some chips in the kitchen, I grab a can of Coke from the fridge, and I go to my mother’s room to hunt for more sleeping pills.
As I make my way through my parent's ridiculously huge, and extravagant bedroom, I throw the Coke and chips on their bed and continue through to their private bathroom in search of pills.
“Bingo!” I find some in her cabinet.
As soon as I’m back in my bed, curled up with my chips and coke, I turn the TV on. Desperately, I need to find something to watch, something I don’t have to think about, so I put Trailer Park Boys on and lay back, taking a pile of pills and chuckle at how ridiculously stupid and awesome Ricky is.
Sleep consumes me, once again, and I welcome it, but I wake to someone shaking me.
“Fuck, Hayley. Fuck, how many did she take?” I can’t work out who’s talking because I’d taken not one hand full of pills but two. I wasn't trying to kill myself, but I did think that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I were dead. It’s not like anyone would miss me.
I can’t open my eyes, and someone tries to tell me something, but I have no idea what, so I swipe at whomever it is away from me. “Fuck off,” I mumble.
“Hayley?” someone whispers.
I swipe again. “Let me die for fucks sake. No one will miss me,” I know I’m mumbling, but it’s all I can manage. My body is exhausted, so I give in again and sleep.
Logan
The moment we walk through the front door of Terrance’s house, the room roars. “Dude, where’s Hayley?” Terrance, our friend, asks as soon as he meets us.
Terrance is your usual seventeen-year-old. He walks and talks like LL cool J, thanks to his amazing African-American heritage, he manages to pull it off and look cool all at the same time. He’s a laid-back guy that cares for those around him, and his parties are always the place to be. He doesn’t discriminate either. Like Lucas and me, he doesn’t care if you’re rich or on the poor side of things. He just wants everyone around him to have fun.
My hand outstretches and he takes it, shaking it in greeting. “She’s home with a migraine. She sent me out to have fun, but all I’m doing is worrying about her.”
Our hands drop, and he nods in understanding. Terrance has seen Hayley when she’s been at her worst. He knows how ill she can become. “Poor thing. I’ll bet that the family bullshit is getting to her. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but damn did she get dealt the shit card, parent-wise.”
“You’re telling me. The fuckers have no idea how amazing she,” but then I’m cut off when someone rests their hand on my forearm. When I turn and see nothing but a pair of huge, fake boobs, I roll my eyes and then shift my attention to Lucas. “Get rid of the skank?” I ask as I yank my arm away from Ashleigh’s grip.
“Where’s the whore?” Ashleigh asks just as Lucas grabs her by the shoulders, and pulls her out of my reach.
My blood is now boiling. “Shut your fucking mouth, you stupid slut! Hayley has way more class than you will ever have,” Lucas growls.
“Get her away from me, or I’ll be classed as a fucking woman basher,” I seethe.
“Dude, she’s not worth shitting on,” Terrance adds. “Let’s go and get you a drink.”
Blowing out a hot breath, I know that he’s right. I need to have a drink and calm down. Hopefully, that is the last I'll have to deal with her for the night.
AFTER A FEW DRINKS, I begin to relax. Some of the other party-goers informed me that Ashleigh had managed to snake her way back into the house, but while she didn’t bother me, I figured I’d drop the subject.
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG we’d been there when I saw that Lucas had found some girl, he takes her upstairs, and while he did her, I kept slamming back the drinks.
Never had I felt as disoriented as I did sometime later in the night. Something wasn’t right, and I wanted to go home, but the moment I tried to stand, my head began to swim, and my legs gave out from under me.
MY EYES OPEN, AND IT’S so damn bright. Immediately, I raise my forearm and rest it over my eyes, trying to block the light. “Logan?” That’s Lucas.
“What the fuck happened?” I whisper. My whole body feels weak. I feel as if I’m going to be sick.
“Dude. Ashleigh drugged you. It’s fucking ten in the morning, we’ve been here most of the night. The doctors told me you're going to be okay, but they wanted you to stay in under observation.” I hear him move and then the lights go out.
My arm relaxes, and I let it drop to my side. “Thanks.”
“No problem. So, do you think you’re well enough to get the fuck out of here? These damn doctors and nurses are boring as fuck.”
My gaze meets his, and I see a smirk. “I feel like shit, but I need to go home to see Hayley.” His mood falters, and I begin to worry. “What’s going on?”
“I haven’t been able to get a hold of her. She must still be sleeping,” he shrugs.
"Let's go."
“SHE’S STILL NOT ANSWERING, bro,” Lucas tells me as he drives us back to the house.
“Where’s her car?” I ask as we pull into the driveway.
Lucas sighs. “I didn’t think she’d be here.”
What the fuck? “Why wouldn’t she be here? What do you know, Lucas?” He doesn’t look happy. He looks almost panicked.
He takes a breath. “When I did get through to her, once last night, Abby answered Hayley's phone.”
“And?” I press.
“All she said was, ‘Tell Logan he’s a cheating cunt and that he's never to contact Hayley again.’”
My eyes widen, my mouth is now dry. “What the fuck? Why would she say that?!” I scream.
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to call the pair of them. Let’s go and see if there’s a note or something that will tell us what’s happened.” Lucas pulls the car to a stop, and I sluggishly hop out and move up the front stairs.
“You okay, bro?” he takes my arm and flings it across his back, his arm around my waist, helping me up and into the house.
Once we’re in my bedroom, immediately, I see that most of Hayley’s belongings are gone. I take a seat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand.” My head is killing me. Why is she so mad? Why did she leave? None of this makes any sense, whatsoever.
“Shit,” I hear Lucas mumble.
“What?” I turn and watch as he picks something up off the ground. And then I see it. I see the ring, and I want to break down.
Lucas walks over to me and places it in my palm. “We need to find out what happened.”
I nod, still staring at the ring. I feel numb. My love has left me. The girl I fell in love with the instant I saw her, has left me, and I don’t have a fucking clue as to why. I need to find her.
For hours, we made calls, trying to piece together the mess that has been created. But I came up with jack shit.
THE NEXT DAY, I’M BACK to being myself. The drugs are completely out of my system, and the search for Hayley escalates. I call every hotel in the area, but nothing. Even though Abby told Lucas to fuck off on many occasions over the last twenty-four hours, we still push forward and out of desperation, we show up on Abby’s doorstep.
When the door opens, and Abby sees that it’s us, she starts yelling, “What the fuck are you two doing here? You need to get the fuck out of here.” She comes up and into my face. “You think I want to fucking look a
t you? You’re a fucking asshole. How could you hurt her like that? She loves you, and you do that to her?” Abby has a small frame, but right now, the five-foot-six-inch blonde-headed girl standing before me is so fuelled with rage that she could quite possibly take me out if she wanted to.
“Abby, I was fucking drugged on Friday night. The last thing I remember was telling Ashleigh to fuck off. Lucas had the paramedics come and get me, I was kept in for observation until the morning. When I got home, she was gone, and she’d thrown away her ring. I’ve been trying to get a hold of her. I need to know what happened.” Deep down, I know Abby will help me. She knows in her gut that I’d never hurt Hayley.
Abby’s eyes close. “You’d better come in. I’ll show you why she left you.” Lucas gives me a grim look, but we follow her through her very bright white living room and up the hall to her bedroom. Once she has her phone, she scrolls through it until she finds what she’s looking for, and when she does, she hands it to me.
The instant I see the image of Ashleigh straddling my lap, her lips on mine, I spit, “That fucking slut,” I’m livid. “She sent this to Hayley?” My gaze meets Abby’s, and she nods. “Fuck!” I scream. “No wonder she fucking left. Where is she?”
Abby thinks for a moment, before sighing and saying, “She’s at her house.”
My body stiffens. “Why would she go there?”
She shrugs. “Why not? She thinks her father’s right and that she’s an idiot.” Her gaze meets mine. “She’s been hitting the sleeping pills pretty hard. I only left because I knew she was out of them.”
“We have to go there,” I tell Lucas. Even though Hayley is out of pills, I’m still worried because I know she’ll hit the booze, hard. My love always tries to mask her feelings with alcohol, and even if the pills are gone, they may not be out of her system, yet. She could overdose. I can’t let that happen.
Abby comes a step closer. “She’s got that place secured so you can’t get in.”
My head drops. “Ashleigh is going to pay hard for this. I will destroy her.” I’m going to fuck her up. How? I have no idea, but she will pay for doing this to my love. Fuck the waiting four years, bullshit. My grandfather loved Hayley. I know after everything that's happened, he wouldn’t blame me for wanting to make her my priority. To make sure she knows that she’s my number one priority.
“I’ll call Hayley and see if she’ll listen to me,” Abby offers as she takes the phone from my hand, she then begins dialing and places it on speaker.
“Hey,” Hayley answers, but she sounds groggy and miserable.
“Hayley, you need to listen to me. I spoke with Logan, and it isn’t what you think.”
“Fuck you. What, now you’re on his side? Fuck you!” And she hangs up.
Abby tried calling her back, but she’s already been blocked. “What now?” Abby asks.
“We go to her fucken house and make her let us in. She’s self-medicating. She may be out of pills, but she’s slurring. I’ll bet she’s either found some more, or she’s hitting the booze,” Lucas says as he places a hand on my shoulder. He can see how stressed I am. “Right now, that girl is hurting because she thinks that the man she hates, the man she’s supposed to call dad, was right. She thinks the man she loves, cheated on her, and I’ll bet she’s already talked herself into believing that you never loved her to begin with. And to top it all off, she also thinks that her best friend in the world,” his focus moves to Abby, “is siding with the guy that she thinks cheated on her. Somehow, we have to get to her before it’s too late.”
WHEN WE SHOW UP AT the front gates of Hayley’s house, I press the intercom button. “Fuck off and drop dead you fucking asshole.” That's all she says, her words slurring. I try the intercom, again, but I know she’s already silenced it.
FOR THE NEXT TWO HOURS, we try to get Hayley to listen to us, but it's to no avail. Eventually, I tell Lucas we need to go home and make a plan.
When we arrive back at our house, we begin to brainstorm. “We need to get in there,” I say as I sit on the sofa in the living room, downstairs, with my elbows resting on my knees, and my head in my hands.
“How? Every single part of that fence is over eight feet tall, and has cyclone wire wrapped around it.” Lucas is pacing my room.
Suddenly, it hits me, like a bolt of lightning. “Ladder and that picnic blanket mom has. The one with the heavy plastic underlay.”
“What the fuck are we still doing here?” he asks as he waves his hands in the air.
“Let’s go.”
THE LADDER AND BLANKET work like a treat, and I climb the eaves to reach her bedroom window. The moment I see Hayley, I panic. I know she’s drugged to the max. She’s hunched over in the bed, and she's foaming at the mouth.
Immediately, I raise the window, climb in, and race over to her. Rolling her onto her side, my heart races. “Fuck, Hayley! Fuck, how many did she take?” I scream as Lucas climbs over the terrace.
“Fuck off,” she mumbles.
“Hayley,” I whisper, my
emotions rising to the surface.
She swipes at me again. “Let me die for fucks sake. No one will miss me.” My heart breaks and then, she’s unconscious, again.
“Call an ambulance,” I yell to Lucas as I pull her head into my lap, tears flooding my eyes. She was trying to overdose because she feels alone in this world. She can’t die. No, I won’t let her leave me like this. Never!
Once the paramedics arrived, they shoved a tube down her throat and whisked her away. They wouldn’t let me go with her because there were too many machines they needed to use to keep her alive. They couldn’t even tell me if she would, in fact, live.
Lucas managed to get me in the car and drove me to the hospital. When they asked who I was to her, my brother barged in and told them I was her husband, and that he was her brother-in-law. I was glad he did because if I said I was her partner, they never would have let me in.
We were ushered through to a waiting room, and we sat back while we anxiously waited for news, any news.
Pacing the room, my mind keeps wandering to the girl I love. “Ashleigh’s going to wish she was dead,” I seethe.
“Fuck that bitch, bro. Let’s
focus on Hayley and think about dealing with that slut later. Right now, the woman you love is behind those doors,” he points in the direction of the sliding, frosted doors, “Needs to know that she has us to turn to. That we will be here for her, no matter what.”
He’s right. Hayley is all that matters.
IT FELT LIKE WE'D BEEN waiting forever before a doctor came to speak with us. “Is she okay?” I ask as I stand to greet him.
The youngish, Asian, male doctor, nods. “She will be. We had to pump her stomach. She’s still unconscious, but you can see her. I'd like her to consult with one of the councilors before she's discharged. I wouldn’t want her trying to harm herself again. Generally, when people go back home, they realize they hadn’t taken enough and they make sure that the next effort won't have them ending up in the emergency room, but rather in a casket. Is there anything she's been through recently that may have triggered this suicide attempt?”
My body is now numb, and the word suicide keeps playing in my head. Lucas must have noticed because he jumps in on my behalf. “She has had a lot of family abandonment issues to cope with lately. She’s practically raised herself, and her father cut her out of his life completely the other week. She’s been to hell and back, doc.”
The doctor nods. “That would do it. I'll pass that on to our counseling department, but for now, I can take you to see her.”
We follow him through to a room just outside of the emergency department. The moment I see her, I feel as if the wind has been knocked out of me. My chest grows tight, and I can’t breathe, but I have to push through, for her. For the girl I love.
Hayley’s natural bronze glow is gone, her hair is matted, and her cheeks are sunken. When I’m at her bedside, I reach out and take her hand in mine,
and when I do, she smiles.
HAYLEY
I know that hand, I’ve missed that hand, but I’m too weak to be angry with him even though I know I should be. My eyes flutter open, and the first thing I see is the boys standing over me. Then I soon realize that we aren’t in my house.
Immediately, I try to sit up, but can’t because my head begins to spin. “Where the hell am I?” I whisper.
“Hospital. They had to pump your stomach. Are you okay?” Logan asks, and my heart aches with each word. I’ve missed being with him. I’ve missed him holding me against him, assuring me that everything will be okay. Right now, I need it. I need him.
“I’m too weak to be mad, but I will be, soon. Why would you do that to me?” I shift to my side, burying my head as the tears begin to fall.
He kneels beside the bed and moves the stray hair away from my face. “Baby, I didn’t. I was drugged, and I spent the night at the clinic. I saw the photo. I wasn’t even conscious when it was taken. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you were put through that. I’m sorry I listened to you and left you that night. Never would I ever be with anyone else. Fuck, I even made sure I got the damn doctor’s notes to prove I wasn’t conscious. I love you too fucking much to be with anyone else. I need you to believe me, baby.” He presses a tender kiss to my cheek.
“That fucking bitch. I’m going to kill her, and you cannot stop me,” it comes out as a whisper, but then my sobs take control of my body.
“I’ll come back,” I hear Lucas tell Logan. I see him nod, but his attention is still focused on me.
My hand grabs at his shirt, and I use it to bring him closer. I need him. Logan climbs on the bed beside me, his arm pulling me until I’m flush against him.
I feel like an idiot. “I should have known. I’m so sorry.” I cry. I should have asked. I should have at the very least, spoken to Lucas.
Logan holds me tighter, “No, I saw the photo, it looked pretty fucking bad.”
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