Page 93 of Harrison's Wedding

“Okay, angel. I still love you.”

She needs to know this. She needs to know that I love her more than anything else.

“I know. I still love you, too, Harrison. I don’t know if I can get past this, but please know that I intend on trying.”

I look at her again, and she meets my eyes. I miss her already. I miss the world I lived in before last night. I physically ache to have her in my arms. I turn and walk out of the room, closing the door behind me.

I don’t want to go to our bed, either. I don’t want to be away from Heather. That conversation was the worst one of my life. I catch sight of the bar, and all of the alcohol there. The drugs might still be in my system. Apparently, it wasn’t great for us to inadvertently mix alcohol with them last night.

I consider drinking something because getting drunk is a tempting idea. I want to forget the pain I’m feeling right now. If the drugs are still in my system, though, they might react badly with more alcohol. I could die in my sleep, and Heather would find me dead in bed tomorrow morning. I can’t risk that happening to her.

Instead, I turn and walk to our bedroom. I lie down on Heather’s side of the bed, place my face on her pillow, and inhale deeply. It smells like her. I miss her. I want to go to the spare bedroom and get her; bring her back to me where she belongs, but I can’t.

It takes me a long time to get to sleep. I lay in the dark, and behind my eyelids, I see images of Maddy and images of Heather, both painful for different reasons. I hate last night. I feel sick again when those images of Maddy arise. I replace them with images of Heather whenever I can. I force myself to think of her instead, naked at Galena the last time we were there. I relish the pain of remembering how happy we were because I’ve earned it.

Finally, I am given the relief of sleep. But when I wake, everything comes rushing back to me, and I wish that I could sleep forever. In my dreams, none of this happened. I came home to my angel, who welcomed me home with open arms, and we had the most amazing sex.

Reality is cold and cruel. I ache for Heather, and when I hear her moving around in the kitchen, I make my way out to see her. She’s wearing the same silk pajamas she had on last night, and I can see the curves of the body I know as well as my own. I long to wrap my arms around her and tell her I love her, and I’m sorry, and I want her to forgive me. I don’t.

“Morning, angel.” I force a smile onto my face.

“Good morning, Harrison.”

My name sounds strange coming from her lips. She hasn’t called me ‘honey’ since she found out, I realize, and this knowledge feels like a knife piercing through the heart I didn’t think could possibly hurt any more than it already did.

“Are you doing that on purpose to hurt me?” I ask her, barely unable to voice the question.

“What? Eating toast?”

She answers while glancing over her shoulder at me as she deals with her breakfast, and I’m surprised she’s misunderstood what I meant.

“No, angel. Calling me ‘Harrison’ all the time.”

“It’s not intentional. I’m sorry.”

A second knife takes its place in my heart next to the first. I’ve hurt her so badly that, subconsciously, she hates me.

“I think that might make it worse,” I sigh deeply.

I sit down at the kitchen bench as she turns with her plate of toast, and brings it and her glass of juice to sit next to me. She’s so close, physically, but so far away emotionally.

“I don’t know what to say, Harrison”—I can’t stop myself from flinching when she uses my name—“I guess it doesn’t feel right calling you ‘honey’ at the moment. My ‘honey’ is someone who would never do what you did, drugged or not. I’m coming to terms with what happened, and as shitty as it all is, my faith in you, which was previously completely and utterly unshakeable, has been shaken.”

I drop my head into my hands and close my eyes. I can’t stand this. I hate it. My angel hates me. I take a deep breath, then raise my head to look at her when she sighs and asks me a question.

“Did you wear a condom, Harrison?”

She wants me to think about it. I can’t think about it. Images of Maddy come to my mind, and I push them away. The nausea is overwhelming me; it’s too much. I can’t talk about it. I can’t answer this. I hate everything.

“I’m not sure,” I say. Then, I turn my head because I can’t look at her when I say, “I don’t really remember anything.”

There’s a heavy silence between us. I’m lying to her. I’m a piece of fucking shit. I don’t want to remember. I can’t remember; I hate remembering. The nausea won’t leave, and fear floods through my body because I’m unsure if she will push me. Will she force me to remember?

“How are you feeling?” she asks instead, and I’m grateful when she continues, “I mean, physically. What did the doctors say?”

A safe topic. I can tell her how I’m feeling physically.

“I feel like shit. The doctors wanted me to stay in the hospital like everyone else,” I confess to her, “because they didn’t know what dosage we’d been given or how pure the drug was. They wanted us all to stay for monitoring for at least a day. I need to call the others and find out how they’re doing, actually.”

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