Page 78 of His Heart

I laughed. She sat down again and picked up her mug.

“You look really good,” she said, her voice softer than before. “I was kind of worried I’d find you looking like a strung-out crack whore. But you don’t at all. You look beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You look great too. How have you been?”

She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Let’s see, since I last saw you… I transferred to NAU. After graduation I moved back in with my parents, though. That sucks, and I’m going to get my own place as soon as I can. I got what I thought was a great job, but they laid me off a few weeks ago. Me and like six other people. So that sucks too. I don’t know, that sounds really depressing, but it’s not so bad. I’ll find another job. It’s all just kind of… anti-climactic. Adulthood, you know? I’m itching for something more.”

“What about relationships?” I asked. “Are you with someone?”

“No,” she said. “I was dating this guy I met at school for a while. A couple of years, actually. But we had kind of a dramatic breakup.”

“What happened?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I wanted to get serious, so I brought up moving in together. I thought we could at least talk about it. He responded by getting drunk at his company Christmas party that night, and fucking one of his coworkers in a bathroom.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, it was,” she said. “I was really upset at first. But then I realized if I’d have stayed with him, I would have totally been settling. It was still a bullshit thing for him to do to me, but it was for the best that we broke up.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What an awful thing to go through.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Okay, so I talked to Sebastian after my mom did. I know you two met the day we had lunch with him. Then you left town with him and came here. He didn’t tell me why exactly, but I’m going to guess it wasn’t because your life was all sunshine and roses.”

“No,” I said. “Truth?”

“Truth.”

I took a deep breath. “I lost my job, and my apartment. Then the guy I was living with gave me a black eye and a split lip.”

“Holy shit,” she said. “Why didn’t you call my mom?”

A lump rose in my throat and my voice trembled. “He broke my phone. But mostly I didn’t want her to know.”

“Give her some credit,” she said. “What do you think she would have done? Tossed you out on your ass? You know my family better than that. We would have helped you.”

“I know,” I said. “But I kept doing stupid things. And I knew it, I just didn’t care enough to do anything differently. Everything felt so fucking hard after Liam died.”

“Well, yeah, you never got any help,” she said. “That wasn’t something you should have gone through on your own. My parents and I went to therapy. Have you seen a counselor? Or even just talked to someone about it?”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s time,” she said. “I mean, Jesus, you were there. You lived through it. I know it was so hard on you.”

I looked down at my tea, still clutched in my hands. “I don’t have the words.”

She put her hand on my knee and squeezed. “So, what’s going on now? Sebastian made it sound like he thought you were pretty happy here until you imploded the other night. What was that about?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I spent a few days feeling really down. It happens sometimes, but this was the worst in a while. I wanted to get rid of that feeling. So I took some pills and went to a bar to drink.”

“And that’s how you ended up hanging out of the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of drunk frat boys?” she asked.

“Basically, yeah.”

“Fuck, Brooke, you’re a dumbass,” she said. “I love you, but really?”

“I know,” I said. “And the worst part is…”

“What?” she asked. “Tell me.”

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