Page 91 of The Truth About Love

It’s this that’s going through my mind when the doctor calls to say that Summer-Raine’s test results came back. I’m sitting in my armchair and looking her straight in the eye when he says he found traces of Ambien in her blood. A prescription drug that she doesn’t have a prescription for.

Substance abuse, he says.

The illness she’s been suffering with for over a week turns out not to be an illness at all, but symptoms of withdrawal. Her trembling, sweating, nausea, insomnia, it all points to the same thing. She’s been buying and taking sleeping pills that should only ever be used under the supervision of a doctor and only on a short-term basis.

All the colour drains from my face. I’ve been here for over a month now and not once did I notice that she’s been self-medicating. I had one job. To keep an eye on her and make sure she’s not doing anything to hurt herself. And I failed.

The phone slips out my hand onto the cream shaggy rug. I’m not even sure I disconnected the call. The doctor could still be on the other end of the line for all I know. But I don’t care.

Summer-Raine stares at me with terror on her face. She watches me in silence, tracing every minuscule movement and flinch my body makes. She’s holding her breath and I realise that I am too.

“Is there anything else I need to know?” My voice is numb with shock.

She shakes her head vehemently. Her eyes bulge in fear of my reaction, like a child who’s been caught out in a lie. She looks so small like this. She’s visibly shrunk in on herself, her shoulders hunched as she tries to sink into the back of the sofa. It’s the first time since I’ve been here that I realise how ill she really is.

I’ve been naïve up until now. I thought that I could still read her well enough to know what’s going on in her head. That I still knew her enough to know what she’s thinking without needing her to tell me.

Now, I see that I really don’t know her at all.

It’s a realisation that’s as stark as it is devastating.

“Please don’t look at me like that,” she whispers.

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t recognise me anymore.”

I shake my head. “I don’t.”

She shoots up out her seat and rushes to me. There are already tears falling down her cheeks when she reaches me and climbs onto my lap in blind panic. She’s frenzied, her eyes wild as she clutches my face in her hands and forces me to look at her.

“Yes, you do, Auden,” she sobs. “You know me. You’re the only one who has ever known me.”

My eyes close. I’ve always felt the same about her. When we were younger, she saw me in a way no one ever had before and no one ever has since. Even Cara, for as much as I believe she loved me, she didn’t know me in the way Summer-Raine did. But this feels so much like a betrayal.

“I feel like you’ve lied to me.”

“No, no, no. I haven’t.I haven’t.”

Tears splash onto my skin as she presses her forehead to mine, pleading for me to look at her. But I can’t. It hurts too much. This is all just too reminiscent of the way I felt after she left me. It’s like I’m losing her all over again.

“You have, Summer-Raine.” I sigh. “You let me believe you were doing better.”

“Iamdoing better, Auden, don’t you know that? This is the best I’ve been in five years.”

“How can I believe that when you’ve been taking prescription drugs this whole time and hiding it from me?”

She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t buy any more because I didn’t want to keep doing it, I wanted to get better for you.”

“Can you look me in the eye right now and tell me that you haven’t lied about anything else?” I ask, finally opening my eyes to look into hers, desperately hoping that she keeps the connection, that she doesn’t look away.

But she does. And my heart shatters all over again.

“I’m sorry,” she stutters, fresh tears falling freely down her crestfallen face. She climbs off my lap and stumbles backwards, her hands covering her mouth as she fights to calm herself down. “I’m so sorry.”

I’m as devastated as she is, but it doesn’t show on my face. I’m rigid, my expression stony. My voice, too, is cold and Summer-Raine shivers when I speak. “Tell me.”

But she shows me instead.

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