Page 53 of Before You
“Dad, it’s fine. It’s the same thing I wear to practice, which is exactly what we’re doing.”
He frowns, and I feel a bead of sweat roll down my neck. “Bria—”
Bria hooks her arm with mine, pulling me out of the apartment. “We’ll be back soon! Love you!” she calls over her shoulder, shutting the door behind us.
My jaw drops and I look at her in astonishment. “What the hell just happened? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me your parents were here.”
“Yeah, ’cause you really care about meeting my parents,” she teases, smirking over her shoulder before jogging down thestairs. “If it makes it better, I really did forget we were supposed to go running after my parents showed up, but how was I supposed to know you’d show up shirtless?”
“You think this is funny?” I ask, following her quick pace.
“Actually, kind of. The look on your face after Hayes asked who you were was priceless. I promise he’s not always scary,” Bria says, laughing. I think we’ll have to disagree, because I feel like he could crush me under his shoe like a bug without thinking twice about it. “You have nice clothes here, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because I know for a fact you earned yourself an invitation to dinner tonight. Wearing something nice could help erase the fact you walked in shirtless.”
“Maybe if you locked your door, I wouldn’t have walked in,” I grumble under my breath. Maybe I’ll get lucky and these intervals will in fact kill me before Marley’s father can.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marley
LYING IN JJ’S arms, focusing on the steady rise and fall of his chest is the most relaxed I feel I’ve been in a while. One of the reasons Bria’s mom brought me on this trip was to give me a chance to breathe without feeling the weight of everyone’s attention on me.
Every couple of years, there’s rumors that pop up from a close source of our family claiming my mother has relapsed, and while I know they’re not true, they bring up awful memories for me of the last time she did.
I’m proud of my mom and the progress she’s made over the last six years, but it doesn’t get easier to hear the media speculate about her drug addiction.
“What are you thinking about?” JJ asks, the low timbre of his voice reverberating through me.
“Do you really want to know?” I ask, curling my fingers in the soft fabric of his shirt. It’s tempting to stay here forever—hiding in the mountains.
“If you want to tell me, but you don’t have to,” he says, and I want to laugh at how easy it is to be with him. It would be my luck I would meet the perfect guy, but somehow I have to be perfectly content with never seeing him again after tomorrow.
I’ve never told this story before. I haven’t needed to. My circle of trusted friends in New York are all children of my parents’ friends, and they were all around then when it happened. Everyone else knew what happened from the gossip magazines and countless articles detailing the worst day of my life thanks to the cleaning crew who saw everything after hearing me scream. My dad was too busy scrambling for the Narcan he kept hidden away, hoping he’d never have a reason to use it, to send them home.
“It’s not a pretty story.”
JJ’s fingers twist through the ends of my hair. “Not all stories are. They don’t have to be perfect, but if it’s real, it doesn’t matter. The right people will still want to hear it.”
It’s a different side of him, and I guess I’ll know if he scares easily, but there’s something telling me JJ doesn’t. Being here with him feels like I’ve found something I never even knew was missing, and even if it’s only for tonight, I want to be myself.
“I was twelve when I walked into my parents’ bedroom and found my mom unconscious on the floor from a drug overdose. She’s an addict, and she’d been clean for a really long time. Mom aggravated an old injury, and didn’t want to take the time to rest, so she saw a doctor who prescribed her a couple pills without knowing her history, and that was that.”
“I can’t imagine what that would have been like, especially at twelve. Is she doing okay now?”
“She is, but people like to bring up her worst moments to tear her down when everything is going well.” Maybe I should be used to people using my family’s pain as another way to get ahead, but it never gets easier. I guess I haven’t grown thick enough skin yet. “I feel like I’m right back in the moment, but my mom just smiles and shrugs it off like it doesn’t bother her. Then I feel selfish letting it bother me when she doesn’t, but I don’t know how to pretend it doesn’t.”
“Why do you have to pretend like it doesn’t bother you?” JJ asks, his voice a soothing rumble.
It’s a good question, but I don’t have an answer. “I’m not sure,” I admit. “I think because I don’t want her to feel like I’m worrying about her. I don’t doubt whether she can stay clean, but I do worry about her.”
“I think all it means is you love her, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
I lift my head to look at JJ, and I’m not sure how I ever could have thought going with him this morning would be a bad idea. In fact, it feels like I’ve found something I never even knew was missing.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and JJ tilts his head to look at me.
