Watch Over Me (19 page)

As his lips brush against mine and I run my fingers through his hair and deepen the
kiss, I know that my mind is already made up about just how far we'll go and how soon
it will happen.

The ringing of my cell phone in my back pocket forces us apart, and I chuckle at Zander
as he takes a few steps away and adjusts himself in his jeans, taking a few deep,
calming breaths. I can't help but feel giddy knowing that I have that effect on him.

The smile on my face as I watch Zander quickly dies when I hear the panic in my dad's
voice.

"Addison, have you talked to Meg today? She hasn't shown up for work and she's not
answering her phone," he tells me in a frazzled voice. I can hear the clanging of
pots and pans in the background and the hum of customers giving their orders.

"No, I haven't spoken to her in a few days," I tell him. A wave of guilt washes through
me when I realize I haven't even seen her in a week since my dad continues to banish
me from the bakery.

"Do you need me to come up there?" I ask him as Zander comes over to stand next to
me and gives me a questioning look.

"Meg didn't show up for work and my dad hasn't heard from her," I whisper to him as
my dad curses loudly into the phone after I hear a crash of something falling to the
floor.

"No, I've got it under control. I don't want to ruin your day," he reassures me.

"Why don't we drive over to her place and check on her?" Zander asks.

I nod at him and mouth a silent "thank you" and let my dad know what we're doing and
that I'll get back to him before ending the call.

"I'm sorry. I'm ruining our picnic lunch."

Zander takes my hand and leads me over to the passenger side of his car and opens
the door for me.

"Nonsense. Nothing is ruined. We'll go check on her and then continue on with our
amazingly romantic lunch in the park where I can rest my head on your lap and you
can feed me grapes and tell me how awesome I am," he tells me with a wink.

I get into the car with a roll of my eyes and a laugh as he closes my door. I hope
that I can have a million more days exactly like this.

"Meg, come on, open up," I yell through the door.

We've been standing outside of her apartment pounding on the door for five minutes,
and she has yet to answer.

"I know you're in there. I saw your car out front."

Zander casually leans his shoulder against the wall next to the door and crosses his
arms over his chest. "Want me to check with the super and see if he can let us in?"

I sigh in frustration and continue staring at the door, willing it to open.

"I don't know. She's probably just in there sleeping with her ear buds in and her
iPod cranked as loud as it will go. She'll kick my ass if we just walk in on her."

I pull up her number again on my phone, and just as I get ready to hit send and call
her for the fifth time, we hear a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass from
inside. Zander quickly pushes off the wall and moves next to me.

"Stand back, Sugar," he tells me, and I get behind him.

With a powerful thrust of his leg, he kicks in the door and it flies open, banging
against the inside wall of her apartment. Rushing around him, I race inside shouting
Meg's name as I go.

"MEG! WHERE ARE YOU? MEG!"

Zander is close on my heels and bumps into the back of me when I come to a dead stop
in her bedroom doorway.

"Meg? Oh Jesus, what the hell?"

I can't force my feet to move even though I need to.

No, no, no. Please, God, no. She wouldn't do this again. She wouldn't.

I need to go to her and check on her, but I can't. My friend is crumpled in a ball
on the floor of her room, surrounded by broken glass, and there's blood covering her
arms in several different places, and I can't make myself go to her.

Zander pushes past me and races to her side, crouching down next to her, not even
caring that he's stepping and kneeling in glass and blood.

"Hey there, sunshine, wake up. Come on, look at me, wake up," Zander tells her softly
as he puts both of his hands on either side of her face and turns her head towards
him.

I don't even realize I'm holding my breath until her eyes slowly blink open and she
smiles up at him.

"Hey there, hot stuff," she slurs weakly.

Something's not right. Aside from the obvious, she's lying in a pile of broken lamps,
picture frames, and God knows what else, her voice is off. I glance quickly around
the room and my gaze zeroes in on several empty prescription bottles on top of her
bed.

"Addison, call 9-1-1," Zander tells me quietly as he gently moves Meg's hair out of
her eyes with his fingers.

I hear him, but I can't do anything other than stare at the bottles of pills. I count
three bottles, and I don't see any stray pills anywhere. Did she take them all? What
did she take? Why would she do this? I know she's done this before. Jesus! We met
in the psych ward of the hospital with matching wrist bandages to cover our matching
vertical scars, but she's fine now. We're both fine now. We're both living our lives
and know that single weak moment in time was a one-shot-deal. We aren't going to do
it again because we don't really want to die.

But maybe that's not true. I know it's true for me, but what about her? It's not like
we ever talked about things like that with each other. Our friendship was based on
not prying into each other's lives, and it worked.

As I stare at Zander while he softly talks to Meg and tries to keep her awake and
focused on him, I realize that it didn't work. It never worked. It was a stupid idea,
and it's not what friendship is about at all. Friendship is about being there for
someone else, helping them through the hard times and celebrating the good times with
them. It's about knowing everything about the other person and still loving them and
sticking by their side. I didn't do any of this with Meg. I kept her at a distance
and had no idea what she went through, what she was
still
going through. Standing here watching her struggle to keep her eyes open, I'm thrown
back in time to the day I walked into my parent's home after my dad's frantic phone
call.

I raced into the house and ran into my aunt in my parent's kitchen.

"Stay here, sweetie. The coroner is back in the bedroom right now," she told me, resting
her hands on my shoulders.

I shrugged them off and tried to move past her.

"I need to go back there. I need to see her."

She wrapped her arms around me from behind and held me against her as I struggled
to be free. I needed to get down the hallway; I needed to see that this was all a
joke. It couldn't be real. It wasn't real.

"Addison, sweetie, you don't want to go back there," she whispered softly in my ear.

"LET ME GO! I NEED TO SEE HER!" I screamed as loud as I could, finally escaping from
her grasp and rushing down the narrow hallway to my parents' bedroom, ignoring the
view of my father crying in the living room, slumped against the wall.

I stopped in the doorway as a man in a black suit moved away from the bed and nodded
at me.

"She's sleeping. She's just sleeping," I mumbled to myself as I caught my first glimpse
of my mother lying on her side under the covers, facing away from me.

The man in the suit walked over to me and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I'm
sorry for your loss."

I didn't even look at him; I couldn't take my eyes off of my mom.

As he walked by me and left the room, my feet slowly carried me closer to the bed,
closer to where she lay sleeping, just sleeping.

I rounded the end of the bed and finally saw her face—so peaceful and calm.

"Mom?"

There was no reply and I took another step closer to the bed, looking for signs of
life, movement, anything—something to tell me that this wasn't happening.

"No, no, no, no, no," I mumbled through my tears as I stood next to the bed just staring
down at her, unable to make my feet move.

My chest hurt and my vision is blurred from all of the tears pouring out of my eyes.
I wrapped my arms around my waist and continued to chant my denial until I was screaming
the words over and over.

"NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!"

"No, no, no, no."

The sound of my own voice pulls me back to the present, and I try to get my brain
to catch up with what's happening right now.

"ADDISON!"

Zander's shout makes me jump, and I realize I've been staring at the empty pill bottles
thinking about the past instead of doing what I need to do to help Meg.

With shaking hands I dial 9-1-1 and tell the dispatcher with a monotone voice that
I think my friend just tried to kill herself.

Zander leaves me alone with Meg to go outside and wait for the ambulance once he's
made sure that I'm okay and not going to stand here doing nothing but wish things
had been different between her and I. I'm sitting by her side with her head in my
lap, trying not to cry as she looks up at me. Her eyes are glazed over with what I
now know are sleeping pills that were prescribed by her doctor to help keep the nightmares
away.