Believe

Chapter Sixteen Robin

I was dreaming that my grandmother was sitting at the head of the table, shaking her finger at me and calling me a gringo whore, and I was crying because it wasn’t true . . . was it? Maybe it was. I turned, like someone behind me knew the answer to that question, and I saw Phoenix lying on a tattoo table. He was getting a 3-D tattoo, the letters popping up off of his flesh into the air, a marquis sign that blinked over and over. VODKA.

Why was he getting a vodka tattoo?

He turned to look at me, and the tattoo on his chest started to bleed for real, the blood rolling down his rib cage and onto the floor, and his hand went limp, and his eyes stared straight through me.

“Where am I?” I asked him, my words silent in the empty room, the light from his tattoo blinding.

But he didn’t answer.

When my eyes opened, I still didn’t know where I was. Jerking awake, I glanced around the room frantically. There was beeping behind my ear and glowing lights to my right and I squinted. That was a countertop. And I was in a hospital bed. I tried to sit up and realized I had an IV in my arm.

Phoenix was in a chair next to the fluorescent tube light on the underside of the wall cabinets. “Hey,” he said, and his voice sounded strained, hoarse.

“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to prop myself up but feeling nauseated. My head was pounding, and I couldn’t form a coherent thought. The confusion moved through my head like an aggressive fog. “Is this the ER?” The curtain behind Phoenix didn’t mask the sound of nurses and other people moving on the other side, a sense of hustle to their movements. “What happened?”

“You have blood alcohol poisoning,” he told me. “But you’re going to be okay.”

Then I remembered. The text from Nathan. Kylie’s horrible reaction. Being left alone, in the silence. With the vodka bottle. Drinking the first shot. Then another. And another.

Phoenix looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, his back bent, elbows on his thighs holding him up.

“How did I end up here?” It wasn’t like I hadn’t done multiple shots before, but blood alcohol poisoning sounded serious. Like almost died kind of serious. I swallowed hard and shifted my head slightly. There was a trailer effect, like I was leaving pieces of my skull behind at one-inch intervals as I turned. I didn’t remember anything beyond checking my phone as I downed the vodka.

“Rory and I found you passed out, covered in vomit. There was an empty bottle next to you and your lips were blue, your heart rate way slower than normal.”

With each word he spoke, I was more and more shocked. “What? Oh my God. I didn’t think . . . I didn’t mean.”

Fear gripped me in an icy hold. “I’m going to be sick.”

Phoenix was up on his feet as I scrambled to sit all the way up, leaning over the metal bedrail. He shoved a pan off the counter under my mouth just in time to catch a spray of vomit. “Oh, God,” I groaned, as my stomach heaved.

His free hand stroked the back of my head. “It’s okay. You’re okay, baby. Just puke it out.”

My eyes were filled with water, and I tried to wipe the snot away from my nose, but I fell forward. “Why do I have an IV?”

“They’re flushing your system with fluids and giving you glucose.”

“Oh.” I hugged the rail, my shoulders shaking. “I’m sorry,” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Why would you do this?” he asked, and his voice cracked. “I know you were upset, but when I saw you like that . . . holy shit, it was one of the worst moments of my life.”

“I didn’t mean to.” How could I explain to him the pain of knowing how badly I had hurt Kylie? How seeing her rage at me had sliced every wound that had started to heal wide open? “I was alone and no one was answering their phone. It was sitting there and I wasn’t going to, but then I just wanted to dull the anxiety a little. Only when I did a shot, nothing happened. The room was so quiet and I felt so anxious . . . I took another shot. Then I started to feel a little rush, and it was such a relief that I had one more and I tried to paint and then I don’t know . . .”

I didn’t know.

It was just like before, only this time I had risked never waking up.

I started to cry, and Phoenix set the pan down and pulled me against his chest. “Baby. Shh.”

His arms felt good, strong, and I breathed in his scent. “You might have saved my life.”

His fingers gripped me tighter, but he didn’t respond.

“Kylie knows, and she hates me,” I said.

“She’ll get over it. Just give her some time.” He rubbed my back. “Now I’m going to go get the doctor and tell him you’re awake, so hang tight, okay? I’ll send Rory in.”

For a second I gripped him tighter, not wanting to let go, but then I fell back against the pillows and nodded. My body felt shaky and weak.

When Rory came in a minute later, I tried to smile, but I was too embarrassed to say anything, do anything. “Hey,” was all I managed.

“Hey,” she said, her face concerned, hair slipping out of its ponytail. “I’m so freaking glad to see you awake and talking. You really scared me, Robin.”

“Thanks for taking care of me.” I picked at the tape on my IV. It was pulling my skin. “I wasn’t trying to pass out, I just want you to know that. I just didn’t want to hurt so much. Seeing Kylie’s face . . . I just wanted that image to go away.”

“I know.” Rory took my hand in both of hers and squeezed my fingers. “We shouldn’t have left you alone with a bottle of vodka. That was stupid.”

But I shrugged. My problem wasn’t anyone else’s. “It’s not your job to babysit me. And everyone left in an unexpected hurry. Did Kylie confront Nathan? Is she okay?” I couldn’t get the picture of her screaming and crying out of my head.

“No, she’s not exactly okay, but truthfully, I think she is way more hurt by Nathan than by you. I mean, those texts were brutal. He was just blatant in his desire to cheat.” Rory looked behind her at the curtain separately us from the staff area of the ER. “Listen, just so you know everything that went down, Phoenix hit Nathan. He would have probably put him in the hospital if Tyler hadn’t dragged Nathan away. Then he took a tire iron to Nathan’s car. He smashed literally every window and light and left dents and scrapes all over it. We all saw him doing it and it was actually kind of scary, I’m not going to lie. It was like he wasn’t in control of himself.”

I remembered him telling me that he only beat the shit out of people who deserved it, and I knew he hated Nathan on principle, but I didn’t entirely get the rage. Maybe my brain was still too foggy. “He knew about Nathan. I told him a few weeks ago. So I have no idea why he would go ballistic like that. He didn’t get in trouble, did he?” That was my main concern, if anyone had called the cops. Phoenix would go back to jail, no question about it.

“No. It’s okay. But my God, what a night. I think we need to stop doing Girls’ Night.” She gave me a smile. “Too much drama.”

“It wasn’t Girls’ Night. It was me. All of it.”

“No, it wasn’t all you. Don’t take Nathan’s guilt on to yourself.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I said, because I didn’t. Guilt had become so familiar to me, it was odd and scary to have my secret shame out there in the open, for my friends to discuss and question.

I already knew what I had to do—what I had been planning originally, before I had met Phoenix and let Tyler convince me that I needed to pretend nothing had happened. I needed to move out. There was no place in that apartment for me while Kylie was trying to recover.

“You didn’t call my parents, did you?” I asked, the thought sending me into a panic. My mother would be shocked, my father would be so disappointed. My grandmother, well, she would be disgusted. “What time is it anyway?”

“It’s six a.m., and no, I didn’t call your parents. We left your phone at the apartment by accident, and it was the middle of the night and it looked like you were going to be okay, so I didn’t go back for it. Should we have?”

I shook my head. “God, no. This would destroy them.”

Phoenix came back around the curtain with a nurse then, and Rory stepped back to let her check my vitals.

After she went through a whole round of questions, she said, “The doctor needs to stop in, but you can leave at any time if you’d like to go home. We’ll go over the instruction list for home care, and I have some information for you to take home about the dangers of binge drinking and resources available to you.”

There was no judgment in her voice. She was smiling and rubbing my arm. It actually made me feel worse. If she were bitchy about it, I could get defensive. But there was nothing there but the kind concern of a total stranger.

“Thanks,” I said, as she gently pulled the tape back on my IV. She had short, spiky red hair and hot pink scrubs.

“I have kids who are in their late twenties. College has too many keg parties. Hopefully this was a lesson learned for you.”

“Yeah,” I said, because I was supposed to. And it was a lesson. But then so had waking up naked with Nathan, and yet I’d done it again. That scared me to the point that I felt numb. I wanted to ignore all of it, I wanted to lie on my couch for a week straight, eating cereal and watching TV, painting every canvas I could get my hands on with shades of deep, bruised purple.

“It won’t happen again,” Phoenix said, and something about his tone had me glancing toward him. That sounded weird. Like he planned to put an ankle bracelet on me or something.

“You can change back into your clothes.” She put a bandage where the needle had punctured my wrist. “Be back in a flash with the doctor.”

Rory reached for the clothes they had obviously removed from me at some point. I was still wearing my bra and panties, so I sat up and tried to slip out of the arms of the gown without flashing both Phoenix and Rory.

“Oh, God, this dress is still wet,” Rory said, blanching a little.

I was so exhausted, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home and sleep. Except that it stunk. “Gross.” But I pulled it on anyway, because I didn’t really have a choice, and hey, it was my own puke. I supposed I deserved it. The gown fell away as the dress slid down into place, damp and smelly.

Phoenix, who had been standing there silently, his body completely still, suddenly started and yanked the curtain back with more power than was needed. “I’ll go pull the car around. Rory, let me have the keys.”

It was totally obvious that he wasn’t processing any of this any better than I was.

Ten minutes later I was climbing into the back of Riley’s car on shaky legs, sighing as I sunk down, my eyes closing. The physical discomforts—the pounding head, the dry mouth, the tremor—gave me a focus on something other than my thoughts.

But one kept coming to the forefront anyway—that I didn’t want to risk death. That if guilt drove me to that place, then I was going to have to figure out how to let go of the guilt.

To forgive myself.

Ultimately, I couldn’t control if Kylie or my other friends did or not. But I could control my own feelings. And I could control my actions.

But first I wanted to sleep, for days and days, until my head no longer felt so heavy and my thoughts so sluggish.

Phoenix helped me up the stairs to the apartment and into the living room, his firm arm around me, taking the bulk of my weight as I leaned heavily on him. The two flights of stairs wiped me out, and I said, “I can’t walk to my room. I need to rest on the couch.”

Nausea was crawling up my throat, and I was out of breath. As I sank down I saw Rory scrambling to grab the empty vodka bottle. She slipped it into her ever-present messenger bag.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Can I get you anything? I should take Riley’s car back soon, but I can run to the store if there’s anything special you want, like Gatorade or Popsicles or soup?”

I was about to speak, but Phoenix beat me to it. “I can get her whatever she needs. You should get the car back to Riley. Thanks for everything, Rory.”

“Yeah, thank you.” I wanted a hug but wasn’t sure if I could ask for one.

“Sure. I’ll talk to you soon.” She looked at Phoenix. “Take care of her.”

He nodded.

Once we were alone, I curled up on the couch and tugged at the hem of the dress, trying to pull it up without much luck. I wanted the smell away from me. It wasn’t helping my squirrely stomach. Suddenly Phoenix’s hands were pulling it up over my hips and past my ribs. He wasn’t being particularly gentle and I protested. “I got it.”

“Let me help,” he said gruffly, sliding a hand behind me and forcing me up into a sitting position.

My head spun from the motion, and my face went hot. “Phoenix, stop.”

But the dress was already over my head, and I sank back. I closed my eyes briefly, then I looked up at him. “That’s a little rough,” I complained. “I don’t feel good.”

“Whose fault is that?” he asked, and the anger in his voice shocked me.

Using the lower half of my dress to cover myself, suddenly cold and feeling way too exposed in just my underwear, I stared at him. He wasn’t making eye contact with me. “Tell me how you really feel,” I said, annoyed and exhausted.

I didn’t really mean it as an invitation. I meant it as a warning that he was being a jerk, but he sat on the coffee table across from me, his knees touching the edge of the sofa.

“You know what, I will, Robin. I’m not doing this again. I’m not. I can’t.”

“Do what?” I asked, not liking the sound of that at all.

“This.” He pointed up and down my body. “You almost died, and you don’t seem particularly upset about that fact. But I can’t be constantly afraid that this will happen again. I can’t live with another addict.”

His words were like a slap. “I’m not an addict,” I said, recoiling. “And I know what I did was stupid. I have no intention of ever doing it again.”

“You said that two days ago, too.”

That gaze was accusatory, and I shrank back, ashamed, but at the same time angry. How the hell did he consider this being supportive? Hadn’t he told me he would always be there for me? “Last night was one of the worst nights of my life. I’ve lost at least one really good friend and caused her a ton of pain. I will probably have to move, and I don’t really know how Jess and Rory feel about me. It was a terrible way to deal with it, I admit that, but it was an unusually terrible night.”

“So what, every time you have a crisis, you’re going to reach for the bottle?”

Ouch. That hurt. That just hurt. Even though I knew he came from a background of broken promises and addiction, damn it, it still hurt. It was insulting. It felt like he was lashing out at me, and so I lashed back, still physically ill and needing a kiss, not condemnation.

So I said, “Like you reach for the tire iron? Yeah, I heard about what you did to Nathan’s car. And that you started to beat the shit out of him but were stopped. Am I going to have to worry that you’ll lose your shit and wind up back in jail? What if you kill someone next time?”

It was so the wrong thing to say.

He exploded, leaping off the table and flipping it onto its side. “Oh, so this is my fault? Is that what you’re saying? My crazy draws out the worst in people?”

That was not what I meant at all, and it felt like he was purposefully misunderstanding me. “Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down.” His hands raked through his hair back and forth with a rapid urgency. He paced across the room, his fists clenching and unclenching. “And you know what? I wish I had killed that asshole who was raping my mother. I wanted to. Another five minutes and I would have. And I wouldn’t have been sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear? You want to hear that I’m fucked in the head? Well, I am. There you go.”

Completely unsure what to say to him, I just stared at him in disbelief, my heart beating so fast I felt short of breath. I didn’t even know this side of him, and it was a little scary. “No one is saying there’s anything wrong with you.”

“My mother did. She always did. And I know there is. But I can control it. But not when I see the girl I love unconscious on the fucking floor!” He made a sound of pure frustration and kicked the side of the table he’d turned.

I was too tired to do this. I smelled like stale vomit and hospital antiseptic, and my hand still shook when I held it out. I didn’t want to do this. “Maybe we’re not good for each other,” I murmured, weary. “You said that when we started dating, and maybe you were right.”

Because all I was hearing was that I reminded him too much of his mother and that he couldn’t deal with that. Well, I couldn’t deal with being put in the same category as her. It felt like in that case, love was altogether too close to hate.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, looking wounded.

“It means I want you to drive me home, to my parents’ house. I’m going to tell them I have the flu and I’m going to stay there for a few days. You can drive my car back here. I’ll get a ride when I’m ready to come back.”

“You’re leaving me?” he asked, sounding bewildered.

“You just got done telling me I stress you out, so this will be a good break for both of us.” There was a lump in my throat, and I didn’t think it was really going to be any sort of good for me, but I couldn’t stay there. Not with Kylie exiled to Tyler and Riley’s and Phoenix looking at me like I disgusted him.

“I don’t want you to go.”

Ignoring him, I stood up, shooing away his arm when he tried to help me. It was about an hour too damn late to be suddenly considerate. I was pissed and hurt and I wanted to be alone. Honest to God, truly alone.

Maybe I could finish what I had started this summer, figuring out who I was, in a safe place.

Without a word, I went into my room and started packing a bag, my head still spinning, but adrenaline pushing me through. I stepped into giant pajama pants and pulled on a tank top.

He stood in the doorway. “Robin. Baby. Are you breaking up with me?”

“No.” Exasperated and light-headed, I sat down on my bed. “Unless you want me too.” So passive-aggressive, but I needed a freakin’ bone here. I was tired of being the bad person. Worn down from the guilt. I needed him to say he loved me no matter what.

“Of course not. Unless you want me to.”

This was stupid. “Just get my keys. They’re in my purse. And seriously, Phoenix, do not tell my parents what happened. It will scare them.”

He snorted.

“What?” Enough with the attitude.

“Nothing.” He put his hands out, which further irritated me. “It’s just that you don’t seem particularly worried about the fact that you scared the shit out of me.”

“This isn’t about you!” I screamed. “This is about me! Me! About my feelings! For once, just once, it’s fucking about me!”

I’m not even sure where that came from. But it just felt like the scream I’d been holding in all summer came roaring out.

And it kind of felt good to get it out, to hear my voice, strong and loud again.

Phoenix just reached out and yanked my bag out of my hand to carry for me, and turned and stalked off.

“Thanks,” I said, and yes, that was sarcasm.