Find Me I'm Yours (23 page)

“You got roofied,” S.H.A.R.I. explained.

Jason walked up tentatively to the bed.

“Seriously?” I asked, more about Jason being there than about getting drugged. I dried my tears on my hospital gown sleeve and lay back down. “It had to have been that motherfucker with the eye patch. Where's Mark?”

“When I got to your apartment he was helping you out of a cab,” Jason answered. “But he was as shitfaced as you were. So I got you upstairs.”

“Then,” S.H.A.R.I. added, tag-teaming like a couple, “you got real bad. You couldn't stop throwing up and you passed out and we couldn't wake you so Jason called 911.”

“No way. Jesus.”

“Yes way, Jesus,” S.H.A.R.I. responded inanely.

“And Mom? When? How?”

“I was worried. You never called me back the other morning and then I couldn't reach you all day yesterday, so I jumped on a red-eye last night. I wanted to see if I could convince you to come home and help with Cooper.”

Ah, yeah. Clearly the worried part was trumped by Narcie's needs.

“When I got to your apartment this morning Shari told me what had happened, so I rushed down here.”

Suddenly Jason took charge. It wasn't something he did often, so I was pretty damn impressed.

“Would you guys mind giving me a few minutes alone with Mags?”

“Sure,” my mom said. S.H.A.R.I. echoed the same, but in a much different tone.

Jason took my hand. He saw the scrapes on it from my wipeout. “This is all my fault, isn't it?” he asked.

It would have been so easy to say, yes, you caused a potent chain reaction of crap. But Mr. WTF was making me see for the first time that maybe Jason and I weren't so good together after all. And that didn't have anything to do with the cheating. He was basically a good guy, but if I were being honest—he wasn't the guy of my dreams. There wasn't anything that creative about Jason. Anything adventurous or really funny, mad crazy, or even inspiring to me. I wanted a partner who would elevate me, and I would do the same for him. I mean, coming up with I Fcked Up was very cool, but that was so after the fact, and not at all indicative of our one and a half years together. Maybe I had been settling the whole time, letting myself think it was good enough. The same way I settled for working in an unfulfilling job, and clung on to a terrible living situation. Maybe I just didn't know anything else was possible.

Until Mr. WTF.

“It's not your fault at all. And if you weren't at my apartment last night, who knows what would have happened to me.”

“Well, I'm glad I was there. And not for Shari. I was never glad about that.”

And as if on cue (probably the only time in her entire career), the Hacktress walked in with my mother.

“Looks like we'll be getting out of here in a few minutes,” Mom said. “It's not exactly the place I want to spend my first morning in L.A.!”

If she was so bent on taking everything I had, why couldn't S.H.A.R.I. do me a favor and just take Narcie?!

DAY 10—MORNING

Nine-grain pancakes with melting butter and warmed maple syrup. Eggs Benedict on homemade biscuits with turkey bacon and fresh avocado. Tropical fruit salad with fresh lavender and mint. These are all things I DIDN'T have for breakfast.

Though Mom offered to take me and S.H.A.R.I. and Jason out to eat on our way home from the hospital (in her PT Cruiser rental car), as much as I would have killed for a real meal, I couldn't bear to sit there with those three.

Since I couldn't risk S.H.A.R.I. finding out about K & C Donut and taking that from me, too, instead we picked up some stuff from Winchell's. What is it with logo revamps? Why do companies whose brands are solid and everlasting feel compelled to update and always add a WISP? It's like they each had the same one designer redo their logos, and they directed the artist to “include that ultra-modern wisp!” Case in point:

(Wisps worked into BOTH updated hairdo and collar!)

Which do you prefer?

Click here to take my poll:

(If you didn't go to my poll, here's what I asked:)

When we got home, the kids were so glad to see me that they knocked my unsteady self onto the ground. I thanked Jason and S.H.A.R.I. for their help—the first nice words I had ever felt compelled to say to my roomie since the day I moved in and she stole my favorite lipstick then lied about having it, though I saw it tucked into her cleavage… a sight one doesn't easily forget. When Jason said he had to go and kissed Boo, Toupee, and me goodbye, but not S.H.A.R.I., I felt some relief. Then I took my dogs, my mom, coffee, and donuts into my lair and closed the door.

“I'm so happy you have such a fantastic roommate,” Mom said.

I couldn't help doing a spit take with my coffee.

“What?” she asked. “She's great!”

I decided to leave it at that. If my mom saw that my entire life had fallen apart, I would like her to think there was at least one positive thing in it, and if it appeared to be S.H.A.R.I., however the fuck THAT happened, I'd go with it.

“I'll be right back.” I locked myself in the bathroom and called Mark. For all I knew he got roofied, too, and was lying in some alley.

“Hello?” A totally groggy voice answered.

“It's Mags. You OK?”

“Definitely hungover. I just woke up. You? We got pretty wasted.”

“You don't even know…” is all I said.

“Well,” Mark was trying to sound all sexy, “don't we need to go get some coffee?”

Even though I still totally didn't trust him, I really did like Mark. And it was hard to erase our very hot night together AND our very drunk night together—pre-roofie. But I couldn't let him be a distraction at this point, and he could have so easily become that and more.

“My mom came to town to surprise me, so I'm gonna spend time with her,” I answered. “Let's talk in a few days.”

I should have said FOUR days, to be exact. After 12:00 noon.

“OK, I can deal. It might take me that long to get rid of this hangover,” he joked.

We said goodbye and I returned to my room to eat donuts with my mom.

I heard about everything going on in her life, finally ending (almost an hour later) with how embarrassed she was about Cooper. She used the word
embarrassed
. Not
worried
. She had no idea about the mortification that was bound to come once she found out Cooper got a girl pregnant.

“I really need some air and the kids have to be walked,” I said.

“I'll go with you.”

Acch. Seeing as she just flew across the country to visit me for the first time since I moved out here, even if it was to lure me back home to make her life easier, I couldn't have very well said I preferred to be alone. So we put the leashes on Boo and Toupee and headed out the door together.

We walked down Sunset, me waving to some of the locals, including Lady Macmeth. Then I turned right on Micheltorena. I had to do a walk-by and see if Coco went to Florida or not. Why? Not a fucking clue, since I was hating on her now.

“Hey, Mags.”

Blake was in the driveway packing things into his pickup truck.

“Hey, how ya doing?” We walked up to him. “My mom surprised me with a visit from New York. This is Nar—uh, MARcie.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

“You, too.”

“What's up?” I asked.

“Um… I'm moving out. Thought it would be easier to do while Coco's in Florida.”

“WHAT?!?! Are you serious?”

“Dead.”

Oh, shit. It hit me. “You know, don't you?”

Blake just nodded.

“OK, remember what you said to me about Jason? About giving second chances? I know how much Coco loves you. She just got so frustrated.”

“Well, that's some way to deal with it, isn't it?”

“I know,” I said, not exactly Coco's biggest fan at this point. “So are you going back to Chicago?”

“I'm not sure. Gonna go stay with a friend in Hollywood for now.”

“You can work it out, I know you can.”

“We'll see.”

I hugged Blake goodbye; both of us had tears welling up in our eyes. “I have faith in you guys,” I whispered.

“Well, at least one person does,” he said, putting his guitar on the front seat.

We walked some more and I told Mom about Coco and Blake and what had gone down with Mark. And, to her credit, she actually listened. Probably for the first time ever, she didn't interject things about HER and make it all about HER. So I decided to go for broke. Before I did, however, I had some conditions.