“What are you doing?” I sniff.
“Going to get him.”
“No!”
“Mom, he’s drunk,” David says, his eyes that are so much like his father’s pinning me with the truth of that. He’s not angry, not emotional at all, really. He’s calm, rational. “He shouldn’t be driving right now.”
I bite back the urge to cry again, to beg him not to go.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I confess.
The words must break my son as much as they break me, because he swallows and looks away from me, his jaw trembling for just a second before his eyes are steady on me once more. “Greg will stay with you.”
He looks toward the staircase then, and I follow his gaze, realizing that Greg is perched on the bottom step. He’s been silent this whole time, but one look at him and I know he wanted to do what David did to Josh and maybe more. His elbows balance on his knees, hands clenched together between them, one foot nervously tapping as he sniffs. One glance at me and he forces a breath to calm himself, standing and running a hand back through his shaggy hair.
Greg slipped into our lives what felt like overnight.
He went to the same high school as David, but he was a senior when David was only a sophomore. The first week of school, David got caught up with the wrong people. He was bullied — horribly so — and Greg stepped in to protect him.
They became fast friends after that, and they’ve been inseparable since. Either Greg is here at our house, or David is over at his. I always prefer the latter, both because I know David is safer there, and because the way Greg looks at me unnerves me.
He sees me. He knows me.
And even though I know it’s silly and stupid and wrong, sometimes I think he wants me, too.
He nods to David — my son, his best friend — with a look that only best friends can have. It’s one that doesn’t need words, one that promises loyalty and love and respect with just a single glance.
“I’ll be back soon,” David promises, pressing a kiss into my hair.
I nearly cry at the touch.
“Please be careful,” I beg him. I know now, even as his mom, that it’s useless to try to stop him. He’s just like me — stubborn as hell — and he’ll go whether I want him to or not. I can either give him my permission, know that he’ll call me as soon as he has Josh in the car, or I can force him up to his room only to have him sneak out later.
“Always am,” he answers, and then he’s gone.
I cover my mouth as the sob I’d been holding back finally breaks free, and for a long moment, I just cry, shoulders shaking and heart splitting in two. I don’t even care about the bruises or the cut still bleeding on my forehead.
I just can’t believe this is real, that this is my life.
How did I end up here?
How did I bring a son up in a house as unsteady as this one?
And will it ever stop? Will Josh ever get clean? Will he ever go back to being the man I married?
The man… I almost laugh at that.
He was just a boy when we married. And I was just a girl.
Now, he’s a monster.
And I’m his favorite toy.
When I finally stop crying, I sniff, wiping my eyes just as a pair of dirty Converse sneakers come into view where I’m staring at the kitchen floor. I observe those shoes for a long moment before a young hand reaches out, palm up, the fingers long and tan.
I slowly bring my gaze to his, but he doesn’t say a word.
Greg just watches me, waiting, his brown eyes telling me without a word that he sees me, that he recognizes my struggle, that he isn’t judging me even when I deserve to be judged.
Against all logic, I slip my hand into his, if for no other reason than to be touched by someone who understands.
His thumb smooths over mine as he leads me upstairs.
CHAPTER TWO
GREG
One week after the accident, I finally let Asher convince me to go out after work.
I’ve been preoccupied all week, mostly with convincing myself that I should — under no circumstances — try to contact Amanda Parks.
Or Amanda Young, as she had so delicately pointed out.
But also with a full week of surgeries, especially since the pile-up delayed some of our scheduled ones to make room for the amount of trauma patients we had coming in.
It’s been a busy week, and I like busy. Busy means I can avoid the thoughts racing in my mind. Busy means I can keep my head down, lose myself in my routine, and not face the fact that I desperately want to get on social media and search out my high school best friend’s hot mom.
“It’ll be fun,” Asher promises for the fourth time as we walk the small stretch between the hospital and Shipwrecked, our favorite local dive bar.
Or should I say, his favorite dive bar, along with Beck and Larsen, who are waiting for us there. Being that I don’t drink, I don’t really have an affinity toward one bar or another. I do appreciate the classic rock and warm wood that always greets me when I walk through those doors, though, and the fact that I can always depend on them to have the Tampa Bay Lightning on the big screen when there’s a game.
I slap on my happy face as we push inside.
Just as expected, Beck and Larsen are leaning against the polished-wood bar when Asher and I join them.
“Uh-oh,” Asher mutters under his breath, elbowing my side. “Looks serious.”
I assess the tightness in Beck’s shoulders, the furrow of Larsen’s brows as she listens to whatever he’s rambling on about. “It does, indeed,” I agree.
Asher and I share a shit-eating grin, and without a word, vow to change the mood.
I toss an arm around Beck’s shoulders just as he mutters something to Larsen about not having time for a relationship. “I hate to break it to you guys, but we’re at a bar — not the hospital morgue.”
Larsen smiles at me, her brown eyes sparking a bit with amusement as she mouths a thank you. Poor girl, she’s a psychiatrist for at least sixty hours a week if not more, since she loves literally nothing and no one as much as her job. Still, my bet is on the fact that she’d like to just relax and enjoy the vodka tonic in front of her right now.
Beck elbows me. “Get off me, kid.”
“I’m older than you, asshole,” I remind him with a shove of his shoulder. “And nowhere near as broody.”
“What did the bartender say to the horse?” Asher chimes in as I signal to the bartender. It’s Harold tonight, and he knows my order without asking, sliding a soda and bitters in front of me moments later.
“What?” Beck deadpans.
“Why the long face?” Asher delivers his punch line with pride as he sidles up next to Larsen, who wrinkles her nose at the lame joke.
Even I give him a look that says he could do better.
“What?” he asks, thanking Harold as he slides Asher his drink of choice — Irish whiskey, neat. “Is this about that pile-up last week?”
“Here we go,” Beck groans. “Asher’s dick is so big—”
“It was an intense morning,” Larsen interrupts, giving Beck a look like she can see right through him.
Beck has struggled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder since I’ve known him, and though he doesn’t speak about it to me much, I know he’s opened up to Lars about it. And she can see better than any of us that a pile-up like the one we faced is harder for him than we know.