Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
I was contemplating an hour-long nap as I opened our front door, but all thoughts of rearranging my schedule completely flew out of my mind when I found Rose waiting for me, two duffle bags at her feet.
“What happened?” I asked instantly, letting the door swing shut behind me. It was Friday. She’d worked the Thirsty Thursday shift the night before and there were very few things that would wake her at ten in the morning the next day.
“You have your wallet?” she asked, searching my face.
“Of course. What the hell?”
“First, you have to know that he’s okay,” she said, picking up the bags at her feet. “But we need to leave right now to catch our flight home.”
“Who’s okay?” I asked, starting to panic as she moved toward me.
“Come on,” she said as she steered me back out the front door, moving ahead of me as she practically jogged forward. “Your dad was in an accident last night.”
“Oh, God,” I murmured, stumbling as I tried to keep up with her descent down the stairs.
“He was in your mom’s SUV,” she clarified, instantly calming me a little. Motorcycle accidents were almost always significantly worse. “He was t-boned by some old guy that had a heart attack. Your mom called this morning. He’s in the hospital, and he’ll be okay, but she said it’s pretty bad.”
“How bad?” I asked as she climbed into the back of a waiting cab that I hadn’t even noticed as I’d entered our building five minutes before.
“Broken pelvis, broken ribs, broken arm and shoulder,” she said as I sat down next to her. “They’re doing surgery this morning to fix some internal bleeding.”
Her hand reached for mine and squeezed it hard as I tried to make sense of what she was telling me.
“Jesus Christ,” I rasped as she told the driver where to go. “The guy must’ve been going a hundred miles an hour.”
“Close to it, I think,” she said quietly, buckling my seatbelt as I sat there stunned.
I stared out the window in a daze as we cruised down now-familiar streets toward the airport. I’d gone home as often as I could afford, saving and scrimping so that I could spend Christmas and the summer with my parents, but all of a sudden, it felt like I’d abandoned them completely. I knew in my gut that a part of me had.
I’d been home. I’d celebrated holidays with them and had video chats with them at least once a week, but I’d made it very clear from the moment I left that I’d only wanted to see or hear about our little family. I hadn’t let them discuss the club with me, even though it was a huge part of their life.
I had to do it. I had to cut that part out completely, or I wouldn’t have been able to leave, and once I’d gotten to New Haven, I wouldn’t have been able to stay.
Over the past couple of years, I’d grown. I’d had a couple casual boyfriends. I’d dated and been to parties with Rose. I’d even lost my virginity in a lousy attempt at sex with a guy who lived in my dorm my freshman year. I’d done my best to move on and move forward, something I’d have been incapable of doing with constant reminders of what I’d left behind.
My parents understood. I think they’d even been proud of the decisions I’d made. However, thinking about the way I’d left almost everyone behind made my stomach tighten into knots. It had been self-preservation, plain and simple, but I couldn’t help but wonder if somewhere along the line it had turned into something else. Maybe it had just become easier to pretend that half of my life didn’t exist anymore.
I’d grown comfortable with the absence of people that had loved me for my entire life, and I was suddenly ashamed of that. I knew with a certainty born of eighteen years of support that in that very moment, there were people flooding the waiting room of the hospital waiting for news, and for the past two years I’d completely ignored those people’s very existence.
Rose kept up with all of it. I’d overheard her regular calls home to the people I’d ignored. Even Trix, my sister-in-law that had loved me for as long as I could remember, had felt the sting of my indifference. She was Leo’s sister, and though I’d been kind and had always been happy to see her and my nephews, looking at her was just plain painful for me. I hadn’t been able to pretend.
It took us two hours before we were on our first flight, and I’d spent most of the time quietly stuck in my own head. I couldn’t stop thinking about how my dad would look, what he was going through, and whether he was in any pain. I’d tried to call my mom twice, but her phone must have been turned off. I called my brother and got no answer.