Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy) (17 page)

He got up from the chair and started to walk to the exit, so I called out his name. “Skylar! Skylar!” I said desperately, the tears flooding faster down my cheeks. I knew my mascara was ruined and that I looked more like a raccoon than a princess, but I didn’t care.

As he turned, I buried my head in his chest. It took a second for him to get what was happening and to take it all in, but he pulled me in closer and took a long draw of air from around the top of my head, taking in my scent.

“I can’t believe you wanted to see me,” I said, with my head still nuzzling his firm pectorals. The cotton of the plain button up shirt smelled real, like the outside world, instead of this almost spa like wonderland. Rehab wasn’t the real world. Rehab wasn’t real life, or my life. Skylar was.

“I wanted to wait for the right time,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave your side at the hospital but they said I couldn’t because I wasn’t family, but I called yours for you and let them know what had happened. I thought you’d hate me and never want to see me again. Are they treating you well here?”

“Yeah, of course, my parents paid for the best.” With that, my heart sunk. I felt guilty: I had no idea how much a place like this cost. Hundreds, thousands per day? I had no idea. I cringed thinking how much the hospital bill was, how much my parents had to pay because of my mistake, but they assured me that they would pay double, triple, whatever it took to make their baby girl well again. There hadn’t been a sense of scale for things, not financially at least, since my parents had won the lottery. In a way, I wish they never had, that I’d lived the life I’d tried to run from for so long, but if I hadn’t, I never would have run into Skylar’s arms.

“Good. That’s...good. I’m glad you’re feeling better. I guess I should go,” he said, pulling away. I didn’t know if it pained him as much as it pained me but I held onto his hand as he started to walk away again.

“Please, Skylar. Stay. I...I have so much to say.” I’d never begged him for this before. I’d begged for a fuck, I’d begged to  be held, but I’d never begged for something emotional instead of physical, something deep instead of shallow. I’d never felt this way about anyone and maybe instead of a last, he was a first.

I’d never seen Skylar cry before, but as he turned, biting his lower lip with his fringe shielding his eyes, I saw a glistening diamond of water fall down his face and onto his cheeks. I swept up its saltiness with my lips and then closed my eyes as I kissed him on the lips.

This time, he didn’t pull away. This time, he pulled me closer.

Until I pulled away. There was no avoiding this. I knew that kiss couldn’t last forever, as much as I wanted it to, and I knew that I had something to tell Skylar. That if I didn’t tell him, I might never have the chance to, and if I did, I might never have the guts to have the heart to say it.

I held my forehead against his. “Skylar, we have a lot to talk about. But the first thing? I don’t care how you take this. I don’t care who knows. I’m in love with you, and I don’t want anything else, not the alcohol, not the pills, not the lifestyle, as much as I want to be with you. I’m so sorry I put you through all this. You’re right: I was upset at first, but I know you only took me to the hospital because you cared about me. Because you were scared for me. I can never repay you for that.”

“You can,” he said, pulling me off of him with his hands on my shoulders, like I was a steering wheel and he was at ten and two, driving to my heart. I needed this. I needed him, and direction, and a plan. I needed to know what was going to come next because right now, Peacegarden was like purgatory. It was nice enough but it wasn’t the real world, a world I knew I’d have to face soon but found myself more and more scared of, because I didn’t know what my future held, and so much had changed in the past month alone, but ever since I’d met Skylar, I’d re-evaluated everything about my life: my priorities, my goals, my lifestyle. It was terrifying and he was the only thing in this strange new world that didn’t scare me, the only thing that kept me grounded, but I’d let go and look what had happened. I’d almost fucking died.

“How?” I looked up into his eyes which were already looking at me tenderly and I knew that he had a plan for us.

The answer I got wasn’t said with words, but with the embrace he gave me as he whispered in my ears, “Emma Nelson, I have no idea how you got into UCBH if you lack some basic reasoning skills, but damn it, you should have seen by now that I love you. I love you, Emma, and that’s never going to change, not even if you keep living your fucked up lifestyle. I don’t hate you for it. I don’t even hate that lifestyle. I just want the best for you, though, and that lifestyle? That’s not it. Maybe you’re meant to write, or to travel, or to be a mom or something, but you’re not meant for that life. Your sorority sisters were bitches, fuck, they are bitches, but sometimes, bitches are right. They’re right: you’re not meant for the party girl lifestyle, and I don’t know what you’re supposed to do. I can’t figure that out for you, but I want to go on that journey with you. Emma Nelson?”

He got down on one knee and my heart pitter pattered as he pulled out a ring. My heart skipped a beat. I had no idea what he was doing. There was no way that he was proposing, though, not after what happened. The ring box was plain black leather but the ring inside that he started to slip on my finger as he watched my face for a reaction was heavy, hefty, with two entwined metal pieces although it was flat on the inside. It was like two ribbons wound together, a braided of two instead of three, and one was a straw gold, like my hair, and the other a deep bronze, as rich and brown as his hair. I’d never seen anything like this. There was no diamond, no stone, but there didn’t need to be, because it was from him. It was from Skylar.

“This is a promise ring. The entwined metal symbolizes the fact that through it all, I want to be with you. That I’ll be there for you. Even as life twists, curves, and throws you for a loop, I’ll be by your side. Forever. I can’t promise you that it’s going to be easy, or even that it’s going to be pleasant, but I want you to know that I’ll always be there for you, through thick and thin, helping you be strong, even when I’m weak. Will you accept this promise ring? Will you accept me?”

“Oh, Skylar, of course I will,” I said as I took a knee and kissed him right back. I didn’t have a ring of my own to give him, of course, but what I did have was my heart, a heart that I held his hand up to so that through my white sundress, he could feel my pulse, that it was strong and steady and that my heart beat for him, that he’d saved me and that pulse that kept me alive.

All the people in the office who had been watching this, dumbfounded, were even further stunned.! They stood up from their seats and all started to clap and cheer. The same nurse from before said, “You go, girl!”. My parents, who had walked into the lobby, clapped with them and I turned to see my mom smiling with tears in her eyes from Skylar’s beautiful speech and my dad giving Skylar two thumbs up, the biggest blessing he could give anyway. He was trusting Skylar with me, his baby, and Skylar was going to take good care of me for sure and keep me in check.

After the clapping subsided and Skylar and I got up, an aide came up to me. “Miss Nelson, are you ready to sign your release papers?”

“My release papers?” I’d lost track of the time. I’d forgotten the past month had gone by already. I’d been counting the days at first, but not since I’d been working on my own recovery.

“Yes, you’ve made significant progress over the past few weeks and you can sign yourself out. You could at any time, of course, but your parents suggested that maybe now would be a good time,” explained the young nurse.

I knew that I was ready, that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I had in the past, time and time again. I knew that the cycle of drug abuse, of alcohol abuse, of self abuse, was over, that I was ready to make new mistakes and meet new challenges with Skylar beside me all the way.

So I signed my name on the dotted line.

I
’D BEEN SOBER AND CLEAN FOR TWELVE MONTHS NOW. All through the process, through the twelve steps, through recovery, through sobriety, Skylar had been by my side and made sure that I didn’t fall back into my old ways, with the old crowd. Finals were harder than ever without my study drugs, but I managed to get passing grades. I knew that with even more hard work, I could find a way to get even better grades in the coming year.

Eventually, my parents went back to Iowa, about a month after I’d resettled in our apartment in LA to recoup with Skylar by my side, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn't worried at first. If I said I wasn’t scared. I was. I didn’t want to ever go back to a hospital or to rehab again, and I didn’t want to be weak any more. I want to be strong for Skylar and for myself.

Even though Skylar hadn’t had a problem with substance abuse, he joined me in my journey of recovery. He quit caffeine and stopped eating junk food, which made him even fitter than he already was, so we started to hit the gym together so I could catch up. He assured me he’d love me at any weight but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be healthier so I could do more things with him and share more of my life with the one man I knew I wanted to share it with forever.

I never forgot the sacrifices that Skylar made for me to pay off the debt. My parents offered to reimburse him but time after time, he refused, until they ended up talking to the building manager and paying off two years of Skylar’s rent, in advance, no strings attached. He insisted it was too much but in his eyes, I saw relief. Still, he had to keep putting in extra hours at the nightclub for a while, but soon, found a way to get certified in welding so he was able to get another job. It was still dangerous, but he didn’t have to see the thing that broke his heart every night: girls like me, getting into trouble with the wrong type of guys, or getting too drunk or too stoned or too out of it. Anything was better than that.

However, I didn’t realize it was twelve months, a whole year and at the end of my sophomore year now, into my second summer living in LA and living with Skylar, until I got my chip at group, marking a year of being off drugs, alcohol, and nicotine.

Skylar was the one who brought it up as we got ushered into the first class section (I still treated myself on occasion). We were heading to Iowa, to see my parents for the Fourth of July. Skylar and my parents had spent a lot of time together: we all had, because I made more of an effort during sophomore year to remember who I was, where I was from, and to not let California change me...at least, too much. Going back home for major holidays, with Skylar by my side, kept me grounded. It reminded me that although I could live a dreamy almost celebrity style life, certain things were more important, things like love, like family, like Skylar.

My life had changed so much in the past year, the only constant the beating of my heart and Skylar by my side. I had never expected that I would have hit rock bottom after becoming a California stereotype, or that I would have been pulled out of it by someone I never thought I would ever see after just a few glances in a night club. Although life had thrown so many challenges at me, if it hadn’t been for those challenges, those hurdles, those trials, I would have never met Skylar, become a stronger woman, or fallen in love for the first time in my life.

That Fourth of July ended up being the best ever.

Skylar and I headed out that afternoon to the festival on Main Street. There was a parade with floats and they weren’t the flashy kind from Mardi Gras or Spring Break, but stuff by the 4H club, the cheerleaders, the knitting club, just normal stuff by normal people, but it was better than something as over the top and glamorous as my first year in the OC. The fact I could do this sweet, tender, more innocent things with Skylar instead of living the fast and dangerous lifestyle of before made me so glad to be with him. He wasn’t like the guys in town that wanted to go mudding more than to a movie, and although Skylar’s tastes were more artsy and “hipster” than I was used to, they also reminded me more of home: meeting people in person instead of relying on name dropping to get the privilege of meeting someone, a focus on things made locally by hand, and a small community like the one I’d left behind in Iowa, hidden in the LA underground music and arts scene. Skylar was my rock, keeping me grounded, keeping me from floating away again.

After the parade, we checked out the booths that were setting up. A girl from 4H recognized me, not because of the lottery or the fact that the town had talked about me, but because there was still a picture of me, my senior year with 4H, with my goat I’d raised to adulthood. She asked for an autograph and so I gave her one, as she beamed at me with her mouth full of silvery braces, and I made sure to donate a few (hundred) dollars to their program. Skylar rolled his eyes: donating was good but I’d started to do it more and more even as my expensive tastes in stuff like designer goods slowed and I became more reasonable with my spending. But it was an improvement.

There were so many food stands set up, I could have sworn I was at a carnival instead of in my sleepy town in Iowa, the only ride set up a Ferris wheel at the end of the street, at the end of town. We ate our way down there, munching on funnel cakes, cotton candy, candied and caramelized apples, and drinking (or at least attempting to) frozen lemonade quickly turning to slush. By the time we reached the Ferris wheel, we were stuffed and had to wash our hands. We waited our turn in line and held our wet clammy hands together, but I didn’t care, because I was with him.

I leaned in to kiss him discreetly. We were still in line but Skylar had no qualms about public displays of affection. I usually did, and was shy, but around Skylar, I didn’t care. I didn’t care what people would say about the Nelson girl fraternizing with the tattooed youth, or about the fact that people would keep saying I could “do better”, and the fact I knew that what they weren’t saying was “because your parents won the lottery and you have the money to meet a rich boy now”.