Save Me From Me (30 page)

I’m so furious that I’m not even sure what to do. The place is empty when I return. All the random calls, texts at all hours, and the times that Gage randomly leaves start to make sense. I feel like I’m about to lose my mind. All of this has been one big joke.

The joke’s on me.

I feel completely stupid that I never pieced any of it together. The money, knowing the shop isn’t doing well. The times I’ve stopped by the shop believing he’d be working, but instead, it would be closed up tight. The way he was always more than willing, and at the drop of a hat could get me Lortab.

With nothing to do but sit around and fume, I decide to take my anger out on the dishes. Then I’ll pack my stuff. But either way, I’m waiting until he gets home before I take off.

Ten minutes later, he walks in as I’m slamming the dishes into the dishwasher.

“I picked up some dinner,” he says cautiously as he sits the bag down on the counter, eying me with suspicion the whole time.

“I’m not hungry,” I flatly say.

“Okay. What’s wrong with you? Are you hurting? Do you need a tab?”

“NO!” I scream. “I don’t need a fucking pill.” I turn around and walk past him.

“What’s the deal, Danielle? Why are you being such a bitch?”

“I’m just being my normal self.” I turn to face him, crossing my arms across my chest.

“No, you aren’t normally a bitch.”

“You’re right, Gage. Normally, I don’t have a reason to be. I ran into Brandy and Billy at my mom’s house. We had a good heart to heart, you can say.”

“No shit,” he says with a humph.

“Yeah. Total shit fest. Brandy let me know how you’ve been supplying their drug habit.”

His body stiffens as he stands there staring into the fridge. He quickly tries to play it off as he grabs a beer out. “Why do you believe anything she says? You know how druggies are. How they will use anything they know you care about to get a rise out of you.”

Wow. That’s his lame ass excuse. My sister might be a complete cunt, but she wouldn’t make something so crazy up. Even though she’s most likely to hurt me physically, she wouldn’t just make something up to do it emotionally.

“You’re a piece of shit. This whole time you’ve known how I’ve felt about them, and you’re the one feeding their addiction. You are just like them. I despise who they’ve become.” I seethe the last part out as rage starts to take over. I have the strong urge to start chunking dishes at him, but the sane part of my brain holds me back.

“How dare you put me in the same category as them? You know I’m nothing like them. I keep a job and take care of my responsibilities, Dani.”

“Oh, and that makes you what? A responsible junkie?” I laugh. “A junkie is a junkie. You are addicted just like them. I can’t believe I didn’t even see it.” I shake my head at how stupid I’ve been by not catching the signs. Staying up late. Mood swings. Just to name the obvious ones.

“If I’m a junkie, then what are you? You’ve been taking more and more of your pills lately. It wasn’t an issue when you were having me buy them for you.”

“How dare you?” I yell as I slap his cheek. “You know why I take them.”

“I know why you started taking them. But we both know you’ve become a bit more dependent on them. A drug is a drug. Just because yours comes in the form of a pill doesn’t make it any more legal when you are addicted to it.”

He’s right, even though I’m not addicted to it. I could have been getting the same relief from something of lesser strength. But I’m too pissed to admit it. Why should I? He doesn’t deserve anything from me. He’s been lying to me this whole time. I don’t do well with liars.

“True, Gage. But if you had loved me at all, you wouldn’t have let me become addicted to them. You would have put the brakes on it and told me to get a handle on it. You wouldn’t have hid your problem from me. This whole time, you’ve lied to me. You aren’t the same guy I fell in love with. He would have never kept something like this from me.”

“Get the fuck out, Dani.” His yell echoes through the small loft, causing his dog to hunker down in the corner and whine.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” I run back to the room and grab as much of my stuff as I can, chunking it into my suitcase. I don’t have too much here because I left the bulk of my stuff at my mom’s house.

I head for the front door. He grabs my arm as I pass by him. His eyes are pained, but mostly, they’re filled with anger. “If you walk out that door, you aren’t coming back. You got that?”

I shrug my arm loose. “I didn’t plan on it.”

I know that I’ll have to go back to Gage’s to get the rest of my stuff, but I need to wait until we have both calmed down, or for my sanity’s sake, he isn’t there. I’m not sure if, or when, I’ll be able to talk to him again. I feel like he burned me in the worst way possible. I absolutely dread driving back to my mom’s house after the spectacle my sister made. My mother now knows the same truth as I do, and it sucks.

Mom is home — alone — thank God. I have no idea where the boys are, but she wants to chat, and right now, I’m just not so sure I’m chatty.

“Can we talk, Dani?” she asks with sincerity.

“Yeah, sure. What the hell,” I say as I sit down next to her on the couch. She instantly pulls me into an embrace, and I let myself fall into her loving hold. It feels good. I don’t usually let people comfort me when I’m sad. I usually try to hide it, but this past year, it’s been harder to keep it all in. The only person who held me after my father died was Tyler. One night, we actually held each other. I’m pretty sure that was the one night that he gave himself permission to cry. Kind of like a night of cleansing for him or some sort of rite of passage that he only had a certain amount of time to conquer. Everyone else, I shut out. Including my mother, until I had moved back. Nothing against her, but it was just too much to deal with all at once.

“My strong daughter. You don’t always have to be so tough. It’s okay to have weak moments and let people in,” she says as she lets her fingers comb through my hair. “You take on so much since your father died. You can’t save everyone, Dani Jo. You need to save yourself.”

Something about those words makes it all click. Like I needed her to give me that final push. She’s telling me that I need to live my life. It’s something I’ve known that I haven’t been doing for a while, but didn’t care. Everyone else I love seems more important than my own wants and needs. My mother wants what’s best for me. Just like my father always did. He thought encouraging me to take off was best. It might have been at the time. But now, I know my life needs to go in a different direction.

I have been too busy trying to save everyone else that I haven’t realized that I was the one who needed saving. I squeeze my mom real tight, hoping she feels the love I have for her. “You’re right, Mom.” I pull back to look her in the eyes. “Ever since Dad died, I’ve carried the blame. Feeling like if I wouldn’t have took off, then I could have done something.” I let the tears slide down my face and watch my mother’s as well. “It’s taken me a long time, but I get it. I get that
it wasn’t my fault. That even if I had been here, it still would have happened. But it also took Dad dying, and my coming back to realize I wasn’t living while I was gone. I thought taking off was the answer to everything, and it wasn’t. It was coming back.”

“Oh, Dani. I love you so much, Baby Girl.” My heart bursts when she uses the same words my daddy used to say. “Your dad would be so proud of you. I know you worry about me, but it’s my burden to live, not yours. I made the choices I’ve made. I don’t want you sticking around being worried about me. One day I might grow a backbone and do what I’ve been needing to do, but until then, it’s all on me. You have so much life and love to live and give. You deserve so much happiness.”

“I love you, too, Mom. I know you told me before that you didn’t need me around, but now I get it. More like accept it for what it is. I think I’m going to go stay at Tyler’s for a while. Figure things out on my end and then probably come back here and take some photography classes.”

My mother beams. “You’ve always had a knack for that. That would be great.”

I leave my mother’s house with the opposite feelings than I had on my way there. I arrived with dread, and I’m leaving with hope. That thought makes me miss Holden. I wonder where he is? What he’s doing? If he misses me? I also wonder if I made the right decision two months ago.

Tonight I’m going out with a new attitude on life.
Screw wearing my boots tonight.
No, instead, I’ll be going out in the only pair of heels I own. Adyn calls them ‘fuck me heels’, explaining that’s what women silently scream when wearing them, or that’s what guys, at least, take them
to mean… that you’re out looking to get laid.

But tonight, I’m not looking to get laid, and my heels are anything but ‘fuck me heels’.

Tonight, I’ll be wearing my ‘fuck you heels’

I want to forget the past few months. The pain. The love. All of it. I want to be numb again. I was stupid to get involved with Gage. He’s not the same guy that I fell in love with so long ago. I hate who he’s become. The liar he’s become. It took me longer than it should have to figure it out — figure out that he’s no better than the siblings of mine that I loathe. He’s known how I feel about all of it, yet he still kept it hidden. Now, I know he’s been trying to play on my weaknesses. I have a tendency where I care too much, and put everyone’s needs before mine. I’m easily sucked into the whole feeling like I can help, and not wanting to fail the people I care about.

All night long, Gage tries texting and calling me. His voicemails are full of so much pain and regret. I heard so much sadness the first few times that I was almost unable to enjoy my night out — until I shut my phone off. Adyn made sure to keep supplying me with drinks while we danced the night away. I’m sure I had a different guy dancing with me every other song, but I didn’t ever pay attention to who was behind me. Hell, for the most part, my dancing consisted of my eyes closed, and my mind off.

I wake up way too early for a hung-over person. In fact, I may very well still be drunk. My phone is buzzing and I know who it is. I resist the urge to throw it, and instead hit the answer button.

“Yeah,” I say reluctantly.

“You know you’re thirty minutes late, right?”

I roll over, sighing as I cover my eyes with my arm. “I’m not gonna make it in today. I’m sick.” I cough. Fake as hell, but still.

“Real convincing,” she says, annoyed. “If you aren’t here by ten, you’re fired.”