It stayed there for a long time.
I emerged from the past much like a person would surface from the water after almost drowning: breathless and gasping for air. Swimming around back there wasn’t healthy.
I tipped my head back and welcomed my shot of tequila.
I’d lost count of how many.
Not enough or too much, obviously, with my little trip down memory lane.
I regarded the SIM card. I was fucked now, so why not make it another signature Rosie Fuck-Up?
I inserted the card, waiting for the screen to light up. Which it did. Missed calls, voice mails, texts. The list was long; I guessed I should’ve counted myself lucky to have that many people caring about me. That many people who loved me.
Gwen: Hey, sis, so the hubby is a little worried about you. And so am I. I need a drinking buddy. Your nephew is entering the terrible twos, and Amy is pregnant and can’t drink. Which means she’s almost worse than the toddler. Okay, she’s definitely worse than the toddler. Please come home. I miss you and love you.
Gwen: And by a little worried, I mean Cade has broken four pieces of furniture.
Amy: Everyone’s having babies. And now Brock wants one. Despite the damage it will do to my vagina. I need backup. Not just for the vagina stuff.
Ashley: Hey, my love. I know why you needed to go, even though you never said anything. I get it. Just remember you have an entire family that loves you. That needs you. You’re the crazy glue that holds us all together.
Polly: My sister is lost without you. Which means I’m lost without you. She moved to LA. You were supposed to do that together. Come home.
PS. I’m in love and his name is Jared.
Bex: I’m betting you’ve already ditched your phone, because you don’t want to be found and you’re not an idiot. What you did for Gabriel and me, for the club, there are no words. I know what it cost you. Heal, then come home. You’ve got a wedding to be in, bridesmaid. You can wear anything you like. As long as it’s not fucking pink.
Mia: Hey, honey. Know you’re out doing your thing. Being you. Your family is a little worried, and us girls are battling toddlers trying to get out alive. We need you to dole out the drinks and keep us insane.
Lily: Hey, Rosie, I don’t know if you’ll get this, and if you do, I’m sure it’s lost in between all Cade’s text versions of frenzied grunts, lol. But I just wanted to tell you that I’m pregnant too! Asher won’t let me find out what it is. He wants a surprise. I hate surprises. Must be something in the water around here. Maybe it’s a good thing you left, morning sickness sucks.
Lucy: I’ve sent a thousand and twenty-one texts and left as many voice mails but I’m still going to send a thousand more. You’re my best friend. No matter what. Even though you leave me behind without a word to navigate this shit show called life without my partner in crime. It’s your fault if I get locked up because I don’t have you to drive the getaway car.
Cade: Get back home. Now. This isn’t fucking funny, Roe.
Lucky: Hey, honey boo boo, come home please. I’m scared Cade will shoot me. Also I’m worried about you, little sis.
Evie: Steg here, don’t have a darned cell phone and don’t get this texting shit. But we love you, girl. Don’t hesitate to call home if you need backup. Though know you’re strong enough to figure it out alone. Just remember, you don’t have to. You have a big family with bigger guns at your back.
Luke: I’m looking for you. I’m not stopping. I fucked up, letting you leave. I’ll go to the ends of the earth to find you. And I won’t let you go this time.
Each and every single one of those messages hit me somewhere in my soul, leaving it in little more than tatters when I read what I missing out on, what I was causing. It was physical, my yearning for all of them. Which I’d been ignoring, blocking.
Luke’s message hit me square in the chest. Simple. Not saying much but saying everything at the same time.
There were dozens more of the same as I scrolled through. I decided to move to the flashing icon of my voice mail. There were a lot of those too, but I was already torturing myself, and it didn’t look like I was going to stop until I hit bone.
I may have craved Luke with a fierceness that I could barely survive, but that wasn’t the only kind of love that held me together. My family was everything to me; therefore, their absence in my life had a yawning chasm where my heart was supposed to be. And my girlfriends? Not having them? It was almost as bad as not having Luke. Because they were my true soul mates. So hearing Lucy’s voice was like phantom pain in a missing limb.
“Rosie, this is my twelve hundred and fifty-fourth message,” she joked, her voice saturated with a false lightness. “And I’ll leave twelve hundred and fifty-four more until you call me back.” I smiled a little, her words echoing the text she’d sent. “Tell me where you are. I’ll come and pick you up from the Dominican Republic, Australia, even Wisconsin.” I choked out a little laugh at that. “Just let me know my best friend is okay, please. I need you.” My laugh was stolen by the single tear that rolled down my cheek hearing the hurt in her voice. A loud sigh followed. “Just call me, okay? I—”
Instead of whatever threat she was going to make if I didn’t call her back, I heard a swift and bone-chilling intake of breath. Even through a shitty connection, thousands of miles away, I could hear the fear in my best friend’s gasp. I could taste it, because her fear was my own.
“Lucy,” I yelled, forgetting momentarily that this was a message, that whatever was happening had already happened. I could only listen, a spectator in the past.
“Please be okay. Please,” I begged as crashes echoed through the phone.
“Now don’t do anything stupid like run, darlin’. I’d hate to have to kill you before we get to play with you.”
Then the line went dead. Nothing more. I yanked it from my ear, looked at in in horror, and then slammed it down on the table.
“No!” I screamed as bottles and glasses shattered to the ground.
No one around me even looked up from their drinks.
I stood, snatching my phone with the screen I’d shattered, my chair scuttling to the ground as I pushed it back.
I prayed it would still work to book me a flight back home and to my best friend. I prayed even harder that she was okay.
But God had never listened to me before. Why should He start now?
Chapter Five
Rosie
Age Twenty-One
When you’re young and stupid—and old and stupid, for that matter—you ruin your life when you’re drunk.
Which was precisely what I did on the night of my twenty-first birthday. I’d partied a heck of a lot before that, so it wasn’t as wild as you would’ve thought. There was a big party, of course, but I mainly just sat with Bull and Laurie and watched their happiness. Not with jealously exactly, but seeing how different they were, how much they shouldn’t fit and how perfect that made them, it made me drunkenly decide that if they could do it, we could.
So after I’d been dropped home by the designated sober prospect, I got into the car and drove to the station. Yes, drinking and driving was supremely stupid, but what happened afterward was arguably more dangerous.