Page 40 of In the Net
The first thing I notice is the picture. Bryce in a hospital bed, tubes sticking out of him, hooked up to machines.
Then I read the text. It explains that it’s his mom writing. Hours ago, Bryce was in a car accident, hit by a distracted driver, and he’s currently fighting for his life in critical condition.
Heat sears at the corners of my eyes. I was never close friends with Bryce, but I always liked him. We always got along. The thought of this happening to him makes me want to cry.
I’m now on my feet next to Sebastian on the bed. He turns his head to me. “You saw?”
I pull in a breath, my nose sniffling. “Yeah, I saw.” My voice is a squeak.
“Fuck, Harper,” Sebastian says, his voice almost a wail. His eyes clench tight, his fingers steepled at the bridge of his nose. “If he dies, he’ll never know …” His voice cracks, and there’s nothing but heavy silence in the room for a stretch of time.
I sit next to him on the edge of the mattress. “Don’t talk about Bryce dying, Sebastian. He’s alive, and he’s fighting.”
Sebastian sniffles loudly. “When I saw … I had to have a drink to keep myself from going crazy. Then I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stand the thought of … of him never knowing how fucking sorry I am.” He turns to me, and our eyes lock, the look in them going right to my heart. “Then I came here, because where else was I supposed to go?”
So many emotions are rocketing through me I can’t begin to catalogue them.
“Sorry?” I ask, latching onto that word he used.
His throat works hard on a swallow. “For how I treated him the whole last year we were friends. For how I lashed out at him when he called me out on it. For letting our fight last so damn long when I was the one who needed to apologize. For not reaching out even though I miss our friendship every day.”
The pain he’s in rolls off him in waves, in a way I can physically feel. Every line on his face is etched with it, and every glimmer in his watery, red-rimmed eyes broadcasts it.
It has me questioning some of the judgments I’ve held about him for years. I always assumed he just dropped Bryce like a hot potato, not caring about him once he had his rich prep school friends to hang around with.
I thought he was an egotist who was only too eager to cut ties with the people he grew up with once he felt he’d risen above them.
Maybe the truth is a lot more complicated than that.
It has to be, because if that were the truth, Sebastian wouldn’t be in the kind of agony he is now.
“I need some water.” Sebastian’s words are garbled. When he rises from the bed, he only makes it one step toward the bathroom before he stumbles and falls to the floor.
“Sebastian!” I exclaim. I try to help him up, but he’s too heavy. His limbs are like noodles, and he can’t even get his own feet under him. I settle for letting him sit on the floor, back propped against the bed. I get him a glass of water and hold it to his lips for him to sip, just like he did for me yesterday.
“I’m the worst friend ever,” he groans, voice coated with guilt.
I frown. “You know that’s not true.” Sebastian’s attitude has pissed me off a lot over the last couple years, sure. But I know he’s grown up from who he was freshman year, even if that old personality of his always shines through whenever we’re interacting.
Not to mention, an actual bad person wouldn’t spend his day looking after me like Sebastian did yesterday.
“It is. I treated Bryce like he didn’t matter to me because my prep school friends made me feel like I was some big shot. But you know what? I don’t even talk to any of them anymore. I don’t even try to. When we graduated high school, I just wanted to cut ties. To leave my whole past behind me and start new in college. I kicked my best friend in the world to the curb for them, for people who didn’t even mean enough for me to stay in touch with. What does that say about me?”
I frown, looking at his emotion-worn face with sympathy. “It means you were a dumb kid who made some mistakes. Your life wasn’t what you wanted it to be, and you screwed up a couple times trying to change it.”
“So what? A lot of people’s lives aren’t what they want them to be. They don’t treat the people they grew up with like crap.”
I sigh. “Actually, a lot of people do.”
“You don’t.”
Something about his words makes my heart pulse.
“Well, I treat you like crap,” I say, trying to force the weakest smile onto my face to lighten the mood.
Sebastian just shakes his head, his eyes softening. “No you don’t. You just give me back what I deserve, because no one else will.”
A long silence stretches between us. Sebastian’s lids are droopy, his eyes unfocused and drifting around the room, while mine stay locked on him.
