Save Me (2 page)

Chapter Two

Tegan

I woke up and the pain of missing Dad hit me hard again, same as ever morning since he died. Getting out of bed took a hell of a lot of effort and I could quite happily stay curled up under the covers all day.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs was when I heard Mum and Ava talking and crying together in the living room. That was the same every day, too. It’d been four days since his funeral and I hadn’t been able to cry since. Something was wrong with me. Dad meant everything to me, he was the person I turned to, the one that made sense of the world, and the one that taught and guided me. He would’ve told me what to do but he was gone and I didn’t even know how to grieve. I was a zombie.

I turned the corner and saw them huddled up on the sofa together. They helped each other so much. Mum was to Ava what Dad was to me. She would be o
kay. Mum was holding her up. She was trying to do that for me, too, but I just felt disconnected. All I knew was that it hurt so much more than words could describe and nothing was helping to ease it at all.

Dad’s things were all over the house. I wanted to hide every single thing that reminded me of him but they wanted them around.
They wanted to feel close to Dad and I wished I could forget.

“Tegan,” Mum said, holding her hand out. “Come here, sweetheart.”

My stomach turned. I didn’t want to sit with them, hear them talking about him and crying. I hated when my mum cried. She was the strong one; my parents had always kept a strong front for me and Ava. Mum didn’t cry in front of us and right now she was a mess. Every time I saw that look in her eye or heard her sobbing I felt like I was being ripped open all over again. It wasn’t enough that I lost my dad but my mum had to be in pain, too. It wasn’t fair.

“I-I need a drink,” I said, spinning around and making a run for the kitchen.

Breathing heavily over the sink, I took deep breaths to try to calm my queasy stomach.

On the counter was another frozen meal defrosting. People brought us food.
Mum’s friends came every couple of days since he died with meals. Everyone was too nice. I wanted things to be normal, not for people to look at me in sympathy.

“Tegan, you okay?” Ava asked.

I turned around and looked in her tear-stained eyes. “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t fine. I was drowning
, but the person that could tell me how to stop was gone.

“I’m thinking of going out today, there’s only so long I can spend looking at the same four walls. You want to come? It might be good for all of us to get out of the house
, take our mind off everything.”

That was what I wanted. I wanted my mind somewhere else, somewhere my dad hadn’t died and I didn’t feel like I was so completely lost and alone.

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

I regretted it. The second we got into town and the people that knew what’d happened stopped to offer their condolences or the ones that pretended they hadn’t seen us because they didn’t know what to say.

My friends were in Starbucks and I watched through the window as they laughed and messed around, throwing wadded up napkins in empty coffee cups. A few weeks ago that was me, too. Every one of them had tried calling or coming over and I ignored them or sent them away every time. I couldn’t do it.

My best friend, Sophie, the one that I did still talk to because she didn’t mention
Dad, knowing I didn’t want to talk, looked over and stood up. Shit, I hadn’t wanted any of them to see me.

I felt like running to the bookshop next door to find Mum
, but Sophie was already halfway to the door and I didn’t want to hear Mum having a conversation about my dad with the lady that owns the shop.

“Tegan, hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“You want to join us?”

“No, thanks. I’m here with Mum and Ava.”

“Okay, cool. You up for a party at Adam’s tonight? His parents are on their annual South of France holiday.”

I didn’t want to say yes but I kept thinking about what Ava said about getting out and taking my mind off what’d happened. “Sure, I’m in.”

“Great! I’ll get Adam to pick you up, too.”

“It’s at Adam’s house.”

“I know
, but I don’t like to walk and he’s too nice.” She laughed and tucked her short, dark blonde hair behind her ear. “Pick you at up eight.”

“Thanks, Soph.”

She grinned. “No worries. Bye, hun.”

Mum and Ava came out a few minutes later. “Lunch now?” Mum asked.

“Sure. Is it okay if I go to a party at Adam’s tonight?” I asked.

“Of course. I think it’ll be good for you to spend some time with your friends.”

“Thanks. Where’re we going to eat?”

“That place Dad loved?” Ava suggested.

The positivity I felt just a few minutes ago was replaced with dread. “Not there,” I said, practically snapping. “Um, what about the pizza place? Mum, you said you wanted to try that pesto base next time we were in town.”

Mum put her arm around me and I hated it. I wanted the comfort but I didn’t want it to hur
t. When she hugged me she cried and I felt even guiltier for not being able to.

Adam’s annual parents-are-gone party was the same every year. People would drink far more than they could handle and end up passed out on the floor, sofa or bed. I’d had a few every time but never to that extent. But this year I was on my sixth and the alcohol combined with not being at home with my grieving family and seeing Dad’s stuff everywhere, meant I was feeling good.

I sat on the
bench outside getting some fresh air. My head felt fuzzy but in the best way possible. Nothing hurt, nothing was hard.

Adam’s older brother,
Ian, sat beside me. “Hey, how’re you doing?”

“Good, you?” I replied.

He nodded, swigging on his bottle of brandy. Down on the lawn some girl that I didn’t recognise slapped another girl and chucked her drink on her. That didn’t usually happen at Adam’s parties.

“What happened there?” I asked.

He shrugged. “She doesn’t like that Sammy has the same shoes or some shit like that. They were bitching each other out about it earlier.”

They were wearing the same shoes but so what. “She’s a bit of a bitch,” I said.

“Yeah, but that’s intentional, no one can hurt the bitch.”

No one can hurt the bitch.

“What’re you looking all pissed off over?”

“Nothing,” I replied. I was going to be okay now. “I need more drink.”

He handed the bottle over and I took a swig. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever tasted but that didn’t stop me going back for more.

“Keep drinking,” Ian said
. “It makes everything ten times better.”

“I never believed that before now.” I took another long swig and winced.

“You want to know what else helps?”

“Sure.” I
would do anything to stop it hurting so much.

Smiling, he leant in and I was completely unprepared for his lips. Stunned, I sat still for a second until I felt the comfort I craved with none of the feeling.
Ian meant nothing to me and I clearly meant nothing to him because he didn’t even take me to his room. I let him kiss me. I let him take me to his car at the side of the house. I let him pull up my skirt.

It hurt. It was my first time and he either didn’t know that or didn’t care but it didn’t matter. I was close to someone without it hurting, emotionally hurting anyway. I closed off, shut everything away and for the first time since Dad died I felt absolutely nothing at all.

Ian was right. Alcohol and sex took it away.

I leant against the bar and downed the shot. In the thirteen days since I’d lost my virginity and learned how to feel fuck all I was free. Sex was entirely overrated, pleasure wise anyway. What it did, however, was take me to a place where I didn’t have to think about anything.

Sophie loved the new me. She was promiscuous and now she had a wing woman. I hated the new me. Hated what I did to my body and hated how my relationship with Mum and Ava had so many cracks I didn’t think there was enough glue in the entire world to fix it. But I did love how I didn’t feel like I was standing in a room full of people screaming for help but not being heard.

No one can hurt the bitch.

Since Soph left me half an hour ago to dance with some guy I was left alone at the bar to drink until I passed out or was picked up. Either was fine by me. I’d never be clean again
, so what was the point in worrying?

A guy with eyes the colour of dark chocolate and tattoo
s that’d make any woman swoon leant on the bar beside me. “Hey,” he said.

I sat up straight. Jesus, he was gorgeous. His just-fucked hair made me want to jump him in the middle of the club. “Hi.”

“I’m Kai.”

I smiled. His name was just as hot. “Tegan.”

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, looking so deep into my eyes I wanted to tell him to do one. I smiled again. He saw more. I didn’t want him to see me.

“Thanks,” I replied. “I’ll have a vodka and lemonade.”

Kai was different. The other guys – eight to date – hadn’t given a shit about me at all, they hadn’t asked if I wanted a drink or made any attempt to even learn my name. I wasn’t convinced that it was better this way but I couldn’t make myself walk away after that second drink or the third.

He was funny and a huge pervert. But he wasn’t a sleaze.

When he took me into a bathroom stall, for the first time since I lost my virginity, I wanted sex. Normal sex. When he’d kissed me I ached for a whole new reason. He kissed wherever his lips would reach, touched wherever his hands would reach. It wasn’t purely selfish, he wasn’t in a race to get off and then leave. He made sure it felt good for me and I realised that sex wasn’t overrated. Kai was the first person to make me come, the first person to kiss me after, the first person to ask for my number, and the first person to take me back to a table and continue talking to me for the rest of the night.

Chapter Three

Lucas

Dad lay on the sofa with two bottles of water, a cup of tea
, all the medication he needed and a sandwich wrapped up for lunch on the end table beside him. Mum had to go back to work part-time yesterday so Dad was alone for a lot of the day, with plenty of people popping in to make sure he was alright. It had only been three weeks since the transplant and I was shit scared of leaving him in case something happened. He was going to need regular visits to the hospital and six weekly blood tests for the rest of his life. I wasn’t a religious person but I fucking prayed to everything that could be out there to make him okay.

As
the last person that would be leaving the house every day, I had the responsibility of double-checking he had everything he needed for the first hour until my aunt and nan arrived.

“Lucas,” Dad said. “I’m fine and if I need
another drink I’ll get up and get it. That much I can do for myself. Go to work before you’re fired.”

I did another check of the table.

“You sure you don’t need anything before I go?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not in any pain?”

“No more than usual.
I’ve got my tablets right beside me, ready to take in half an hour. Get going.”

I nodded. “Right. Okay. Nan and Leanne’ll be here soon.”

“I know. Now go.”

I was terrified of leaving him. Dad had congestive heart failure and it had been getting progressively worse until the point where we were told that he would die
very soon if he didn’t have a transplant.

I walked out of the
house, forced myself to get in my car and drive to work. I’d never wanted to blow off work and just drive so much. I thought things would get better after the operation, thought I’d worry less, but now we were faced with Dad’s body rejecting the heart and some pretty serious side effects from all the medication he was on.

The garage I worked at was
a mile down the road so I knew I could make it back in a minute if Dad needed me. I just didn’t know if something bad happened a minute was quick enough.

“Morning,” Malcolm said, scratching his beer belly. Mal was the boss
but he acted more like a dad, always looking over me and Leon. “You ready to spray the CLK?”

“Yeah, gimme five and I’ll be out back.”

I chucked my phone on the desk and grabbed a mask.

“Hey, how’s your dad?”
Leon asked, coming out of the bathroom.

“He’s doing alright.”

“Good. And the girl you’re obsessing over?”

Tegan Pe
nnells. Daughter of the man who donated his heart to my old man. You probably couldn’t get much more complicated than that. She wouldn’t leave my head, though. I couldn’t stop seeing that look on her face. Her dad died and she was devastated.

I wanted to help her but I had no idea how. Mum and Alison kept in touch and I knew
my twin sister, Grace and Tegan’s sister, Ava talked but Tegan never reached out and I wasn’t sure if she wanted to. Couldn’t blame her, I don’t think I’d want to talk to the people that were still a complete family because mine wasn’t.

“I’m not stressing over her and I don’t know.” I rubbed my forehead. “I wanna do something. We owe her whole family so much.”

“Her dad made a choice, it’s not one you have to pay for, Lucas, that’s not how it works.”

“Yeah, I get that. He did it to
help someone else, it’s selfless and an incredible legacy, but to me he saved my dad’s life and I want to do something to help his daughter.”

“Alright, I get it. Just be prepared for her to not want your help. Anyway, we better get this car sprayed fucking pink.”
He turned his nose up. “I swear if I didn’t need to eat I’d refuse to fuck cars up this way.”

I grabbed my spray gun an
d mask and headed out back. Leon’s words stuck around. She might not want or need my help but from what Grace had said, Alison and Ava were doing as well as you could under the circumstances but Tegan was all over the place.

No matter what anyone said I owed it to Simon to try.