Page 93 of It's Always Been You
Your fault.
Your fault.
Your fault.
“Allie.” In the two syllables of her name from Jordan’s mouth are heartbreak and devastation and a pain so intense it lives and breathes. I see it weigh him down. Take him over.
I know what it feels like when your own heart breaks, and now I know you can feel someone else’s break too. It happens inthe bowing of his head and the curl of his back. In the shaking of his shoulders and his anguished cries. In the way he falls forward, no longer able to hold himself up.
So, I try and do it for him, as best as I can. I don’t break, because Jordan needs to. He’ll need to, over and over again, for days and weeks and months and years and for however long it takes to build a new life on the wreckage of the one he lost.
The enormity of it is staggering. My crisis brain won’t let me contemplate it.One foot in front of the other. Do what comes next.
I wrap my arms around my friend and hold him tight. I let him cry onto the shoulder of the new sweater I was so excited to show Allie. The one I can’t show her. That she’ll never see. Because she’s gone.
And it’s all my fault.
An hour later, I walk out the same side door of the ER I came in through less than two hours ago.
It feels like ten years.
Jordan hadn’t said another word since Allie’s name fell from his lips. He stopped crying at some point and went terrifyingly silent.
I never stopped holding him.
Ben, Jeremy, Asher, and Rachel and Steven Parker came half an hour after Jordan broke down. With Rachel’s and Steven’s arms around him, and his brothers in front of him and behind, he broke again.
And I slipped out of the room.
I don’t remember going back down to the ER. Suddenly I was just there, and now I’m here. Outside. In the dark. The police are gone, and the street is quiet. There is one item left on my list.
Get home.
My phone pings incessantly in my purse, and I’m sure it’s my friends wondering where I am. Rachel told me Hallie, Julie, and Emma were together at Emma’s house since she wanted to stay with Maddy while the guys came to the hospital. The thought of going there is too much for my tired brain. I know they’ll have questions. I know there are hard days ahead and the only way through this is together. I just can’t. Not tonight. The combination of guilt and grief starting to surface threatens to take me under, and there is only one person I want right now.
Gabe’s face fills my brain, and I wish with wild desperation that he was here. That I had told him to come, to wait for me, to be here so I didn’t have to be alone.
Except then I don’t have to wish it, because he’s there, leaning against the wall right outside the main ER doors. I blink at him like my brain is playing tricks on me and I somehow conjured him through the sheer force of my desperation alone.
But then he’s in front of me, taking my hands and leading me to a bench. Helping me sit. And I know he’s real because he cups my face in his hands and pushes my hair away from my face and kisses my forehead. He whispers words likeI’m so sorryandI love youandI’m hereandI’m so proud of you. AndYou’re such a good friendandLean on me, RoryandI’ll take care of you.
Then he wraps his arms around me and holds me tight, and I don’t have to get home, because Gabe is here, so I’m already there.
With every item on my to-do list for tonight crossed off and no more steps to take, my crisis brain crumbles to dust.
In the shadow of the hospital where all of our lives have changed forever, I collapse into Gabe’s arms, and I sob.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Gabe
Ipull up to the house and turn off the engine. Opening my car door, I gently unwind my hand from where it’s tangled in Molly’s vise-like grip. She makes a noise of protest in her throat and tightens her hand back around mine. She’s been gripping my hand like a lifeline since she fell apart in my arms outside of the hospital, and if she needs my hand in hers, then that’s what I’m going to give her.
There is nothing I wouldn’t give her right now.
There have been times in my life when I wished for superpowers. To be able to get jacked like Captain America without having to go to the gym. To fly like Superman just for the hell of it. To swing from webs like Spiderman because it looks like fun, and sometimes traffic sucks.
Right now, sitting in a dark car next to a silent Molly, I wish fervently for the power to take her burden and carry it myself. Or to make it so she never had to do what she did tonight. See the things she saw. I would do it immediately and without a second thought. But since I can’t, I focus on what I can give her.
