Vertical Lines (The Vert Series Book 1) (13 page)

For the first time in forever, I’m not seeing the Mason who fronts and acts like the world is his oyster—so ready to show everyone how amazing and confident he is. I’m seeing the Mason who brought home a stray cat when he was ten, and hid it from Mom for an entire month while he snuck it food and brought it back to health. I’m seeing the Mason who held my hand the first day of kindergarten, walking me into my classroom and then standing up to the kid who made fun of my glasses and red hair.

Only, now it’s not an animal or his sister he’s taking care of—it’s Ash.

“Who the hell are you?”

Nala’s voice is ice cold. Mason’s face reflects the same.

“Her boyfriend. Who the fuck are you?”

“Her best friend.”

Ash rolls her head on Mason’s shoulder and mumbles something. He pulls her closer, glaring at Nala. “I doubt that.”

“I don’t give a shit what you doubt. You’ve known her for what, ten minutes? I’ve known her my whole life.”

“Then how come she’s never mentioned you? I’ve been with her every day for two weeks, and I was with her every day last year. Why don’t I know you?”

I watch Nala embrace the blow, her face barely showing her hurt while she pulls out her cell phone. “If you knew anything about her, you would know she can’t be drinking. Her heart can’t take it.”

Mason’s eyes widen slightly, but then Ashton moans before she leans over to vomit. Suddenly, we’re all moving—me to get towels from the bathroom, Nala and Mason both to hold onto Ashton.

“I’m calling her brother,” I hear Nala say when I come back.

“Like hell you are. I’m driving her home with me. She’ll be fine.”

They bicker back and forth, both ignoring the girl who is moaning between them. “Knock it off,” I snap out. Both Mason and Nala look at me, Mason’s eyes widening because he’s noticed it’s me, and Nala’s going to slits when she sees the recognition.

“Jordan, what are you doing here?”

I push past both of them and crouch down next to Ashton, who’s now sitting against the wall with her knees to her chest. Shifting her hair to the side, I wipe her face off with the damp towel before folding it and laying the clean, cool side on her neck.

“How do you two know each other?” Nala asks.

I don’t glance up. Keeping Ashton’s wrist in mine, I feel for her pulse and take count. “He’s my brother.” I shift, looking up at both of them. “Her pulse is really slow.”

Nala’s eyes flash. “That’s because she’s drunk. And high.” She looks to Mason. He swallows audibly, but he doesn’t deny it. “Jesus Christ!” Nala screams. “Do you know she’s sick? Being her boyfriend, you should know that. And not just kind of sick. Really sick. Hospitalized sick.
Close-to-death
sick.”

“Enough.” Mason wipes at his mouth, his upper lip now beaded with sweat. Crouching down, he lifts Ashton into his arms, her long limbs overflowing from his hold. He stumbles slightly when he stands. “I’m taking her home with me. She’ll be better after she sleeps.”

“You’re an idiot.” Nala spits the words out, but before Mason can respond, I stand and hold out my hand.

“Keys.” He glares at me, but I don’t budge. “I know you, Mason. You are not driving her home. You’re drunk. Both of you are high.” The words hurt to say, but I don’t back down, not even when his eyes burn angry holes through me.

“I don’t need your help,
sis
.” Ashton moans again, and his anger turns to panic.

“Yes, you do,” I say. “Keys. The faster you give them to me, the faster we can leave.”

In the end, he tosses them at me, storming past with Ashton in his arms. Nala follows me, only speaking once when we get to Mason’s G-Class. “Can you drive?”

I nod. “I only had the one beer when we were playing.” And this moment is suddenly sobering.

Mason cradles Ashton in his lap the entire way from the apartments to the house he shares with friends. It’s near the beach, like Brooklyn’s, but it’s twice the size. I pull into the driveway and park.

“She needs a hospital,” Nala says.

“She needs me.” Mason’s voice is angry. Nala scoffs and slams out. I follow suit, waiting for Mason while he carries Ashton around to the front door. I follow him inside, Nala on my heels. He sets her on a couch in the living room, covering her with a blanket. She rolls to her side, her long legs drawn up, knees to her chest. Her breathing is shallow.

Nala heads through the house. “I’m finding her some water.”

Mason scowls after her, but I grab his arm before he can follow.

“You can’t do this, Mason. If she’s as sick as Nala says, she does need a hospital.”

“Your friend doesn’t know shit. I have her—I’m with her.”

“That’s not an answer,” I say, raising my voice. “If you had her, you wouldn’t be high. What would you have done if I hadn’t been there, Mase? Driven her home? Let her keep drinking? Would
you
have kept drinking?”

“Fuck off, Jordan.”

“Grow up, Mason,” I shoot back. We’re standing in the hall between the main living room and a dining room. Our voices echo off the blank walls. “You can barely take care of yourself.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re just like Mom.” He turns to face me fully, his hands pulling through his hair before he gestures to me. “Does it make you feel better to see me like this, sis? Does it comfort you to look down on me and see how much better you are than me? How much smarter? How much
more
?” He steps closer, his face livid, his brows drawn. “You want to know what I think of you?” I shake my head, ashamed when I step back. He only comes closer. “Nothing. I think nothing of you. You don’t fucking matter. You never have. Go be Mom’s dog somewhere else—or better yet, get a goddamn life and stop interrupting mine.”

Nala is headed our way, a towel in her hand. Mason snatches it from her. “Get the hell out, both of you.”

I’m shaking. I hate it—hate that he somehow got to me, somehow made me feel as though I’m just as cold and judgmental as our mother. Without a word, I turn and leave. Nala tosses off another remark, and then I hear her footsteps behind me.

The door slams, and she calls my name. I keep going.

“Jordan, wait.”

I shake my head, making it all the way down the small drive to the curb before I stop and put my hands on my knees. “Hey, are you okay?”

I nod, and then I pause because honestly, I’m not sure.

Giving in, I sit down. A second later, Nala sits next to me. We don’t speak right away, both of us lost in thought.

“Did you know?” she asks after a minute. “Did you know your brother was dating Ashton?”

I shake my head. “No. But I’m not sure I really know anything about Mason.” I don’t know why his words hit me so hard—why they matter—only that they do.

“She’s Brooklyn’s sister? And your best friend. The one you mentioned before?” Nala nods her head
yes
. “What’s wrong with her?”

This time, Nala looks at the ground, picking up a small pebble and throwing it. “Self-loathing. Years of physical abuse and deprivation by her own hand. Take your pick.”

I wait a second. “Why won’t she talk to you?”

“Because the last time I saw her, she was in a hospital bed. Brooks and I signed her in. About a month later, she signed herself out before her treatment was through. Both Brooks and I have tried calling and talking to her about it.” She shakes her head, eyes on the ground still. “When Ashton doesn’t want to acknowledge that she’s sick, it means she doesn’t acknowledge Brooklyn or me either.”

It’s what I figured. And still, it’s worse. Somehow watching her reject Nala and cling to Mason, watching how much he tried to shield her… I know it’s not going to end well. Mason cares too much to walk away and force her into treatment; from the sound of Nala’s voice, Ashton is too sick for Mason to save.

Nala’s silence tells me she knows the same.

“Do we call a cab?” I ask. We’re too far from campus to make the walk home, and there’s no way I’m asking Mason for his keys again.

“Brooks doesn’t live far from here.” I glance at the house behind us.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“We’ll walk to him. I have to tell him, Jordan.”

She’s right—he deserves to know. And I can’t worry about what he may feel for me afterward.

“I know. I just wish it was different.”

“Me too. For the record,” she says as we start to walk, “your brother’s wrong. You’re not a person who shoves things in people’s faces. You can’t help being smart and motivated—any more than he can help being an asshole.”

I smile, but it feels stiff. “I don’t know why his words hit me that way—and after everything, I just stood there and let him yell.” The shame of that washes over me. “After all of my bravado and demands, I stood there. You yelled, you said what was on your mind… what did I do?”

She shakes her head. “Sometimes, we learn the hard way how to be strong. I already told you I was a mess in high school,” she explains. “I guess that’s where Ashton and I were the same. No party was too big, no high too great. I wanted Malcolm from the first second I saw him. Even after he rejected me, I worked hard to make him regret it. When I knew he was going to be somewhere, I went there, too. I made a scene, got the drunkest, did the most stunts because I needed him to notice me.”

There’s a little bit of heartbreak in her voice, a memory that she lives with, but still isn’t fond of. “Brooks was the first person to tell me to back off and grow the fuck up. I was fifteen, they were sixteen, almost seventeen, and Ashton and I followed Brooks, Malcolm, and Hunter to a party at some random’s house. Malcolm saw me there—dressed like I was twenty-one instead of fifteen—shook his head, and told me to go home. Then he found another girl and made it clear I wasn’t on his radar. So, I found another boy, several, in fact, and made sure he knew I didn’t give two fucks who or what he did.”

Her voice isn’t hollow, but there is a heaviness to it, one that makes me wish I could go back in time with her and change what happened. “No one tried to stop you?”

“Oh, people tried. Hunter tried, Brooks tried. Ashton even tried, but I was stronger in personality than she was and I knew I could get her to bend to me. The night I’m talking about, though, I think Malcolm did the only thing he knew how to do: he showed me it was never going to be me.”

I hate the thought of that, hate the idea of Nala—brave, independent, fierce, Nala—ever giving away pieces of herself because the one person she wanted rejected her. Yet, I understand, too. I understand Malcolm’s decision, however painful, and I understand her reaction. If I’d been bolder in high school, that might have been me. Instead, my rebellion was taking classes I kept a secret from my mother, and joining charity organizations so I could travel and live a life free of rules and structure for a while.

Mason comes to my mind and briefly, I wonder if this is what he’s doing.

“You said Brooks was the first person to tell you… to stop?”

She smiles, ever-amused at my inability to cuss. “The night of that party, I got hammered. I mean, I’d been drunk before, but this was an entirely different level. I’d been smoking, downing shots, you name it. Nothing was going to stop me from proving I was fine, that I was desirable. Except for Ezra Shields.”

The sudden change in her tone has me glancing over quickly. Her eyes are focused on the ground, a crease marring her forehead as she thinks back. “Ezra Shields—best friend of the host, all-around-rich-kid with no morals—who was at a high school party, even though he attended SDSU. He saw me, I saw him, he looked good, I responded to his charms… I don’t remember much after that. I do remember struggling, I remember vomiting, and I remember his godawful laughter. Jesus, the laughter.”

She picks up a rock and throws it; we continue walking in silence. For the first time in my life, I want to give comfort. Not just reassurance or a kind word, but comfort. The kind that means wrapping someone in a hug and holding on, holding them up, so they know I am there. I understand, though, offering her a hug will only help me. Whatever Nala is doing with this story, she has to be standing on her own to get through it. So I wait, instead, knowing patience can be just as comforting.

Finally, Nala looks up and into my eyes. “Ezra… he took everything that night. Despite all of my antics and partying before that, I was a virgin. I’d gone down on guys, let them touch me, but I’d never gone all the way. I don’t remember all of it, I just remember the pain, the laughter, the rough side of the house I was facing as he took what he wanted.” Her eyes are wide and dry, her voice harsh, unforgiving. “And I remember waking up in my own vomit, a fire in my core, bruises on my body, blood on my legs. And it broke me.

“I’d never been an angel, but somehow, the thought of not remembering, of being so… intimate with someone and
not remembering
, of knowing I’d always wanted it to be Malcolm, was too much. It lit a fire of shame in me and I combated that by partying more, always out to prove that I was okay. I wasn’t yet sixteen when I got arrested the first time for possession. I got slapped with a misdemeanor, and Ashton went into the hospital with her first heart scare.

“Malcolm and Hunter left for the pro circuit, and Brooks was my only friend left. My mom put me into group counseling, something I hated but I think helped.” She shrugs her shoulders. “But it was Brooks more than anything. One day after school, I walk out and he’s there, in the parking lot, waiting for me. It was the first time I’d really seen him in a while, and I was scared shitless. But he just looked at me, sitting in the high school parking lot, that goddamn intensity of his spilling all over me until I’m sobbing and apologizing. Finally, he gives me a hug. ‘I’m losing one sister. Don’t fucking make me lose another.’”

A smile creases across her face, small but there, and the closeness between Brooklyn and her finally makes sense. They aren’t just friends, they’re family. “I still struggled after that, but between my mom and Brooks, even Ashton, I decided enough was enough. I didn’t want to be a statistic before I was sixteen, and I didn’t want to disappoint my family. My real family. Hunt and Mal, they had to go and travel and compete… when they left, something inside of Brooks and me left with them. Between that and Ashton—me and my shit—I finally realized just how strong Brooks was. Made me realize I wanted to be strong, too.”