We Found Love (24 page)

His feet touched down, but Mountain Man didn’t move from his spot.

“He’s dead,” Wally said.

Mountain Man turned his head to get a second look.

Riley saw his chance to steal a peek and immediately wished he hadn’t. He didn’t have to see Bubba’s entire body to know what happened. The white foot with light blue toes poking into view told a tale without anyone needing to say the words. Bubba was dead.

Oh shit.

Fighting the sinking feeling in his chest, he backed away, doing his level best to keep his breathing even. He’d never claimed to give two shits about Bubba, but the last thing he wanted was this.

“Was it suicide?” the big guy asked without an ounce of sympathetic inflection.

“Yeah,” Wally said. His tone was just as empty, and Riley hated them both for being so nonchalant about someone being dead. They didn’t give a shit, just like they hadn’t given a shit about Andy. Another one bites the dust.

“You wanna call the coroner?” Wally said to the new guy. “I can’t stand talking to him. He creeps me out.”

“I don’t wanna call him either.”

“For fuck’s sake!” Riley yelled. When Andy had died, he’d been reduced to blubbering incoherently. The fact he could form words surprised the shit out of him. His demanding tone surprised him even more. “Don’t be so goddamn cold. He was a person. People are going to mourn this shit. Can you two idiots be less cruel?”

“Calm down,” the new guy said, holding up a hand.

“Fuck you. Stop treating him like he was a nobody. That’s what’s wrong with this place.” Riley stabbed his finger in the air. “None of you really care. He’s just another nutcase who offed himself. Just like Andy. Well, fuck y’all. Hartfield can’t have me.”

Footfalls stormed by him, medics racing in with a gurney. It was too late, though. Riley could tell by the bruised color of the foot he’d seen that there was no going back for Bubba.

He turned away, hiding his view from the chaos going down in Bubba’s room. For some stupid reason, he couldn’t make himself walk away, like he needed a chance to say sorry to the black bag they would soon be hauling Bubba out in.
Sorry I didn’t say something. Sorry I didn’t see this coming. Sorry I wasn’t nicer.

Sorry I never listened.

The latter was meant for more than the dead guy he was trying to sever himself from in his head. He was doing his best to compartmentalize Bubba into one of those boxes Humming Guy belonged in, but he couldn’t do it. Like Andy, Bubba had shown him attention, shown interest, and for the briefest insignificant moments, actually seemed to care. And like Andy, Bubba was gone. At least he hadn’t seen Andy’s body like he had Bubba’s. A breakdown of epic proportions would’ve followed had he been one of the ones to find the first real friend he’d ever had. No going back from some shit like that. He only regretted not being able to tell Andy good-bye. He regretted not being well enough to go to the funeral and thank Andy’s family for creating someone so kind and caring. He regretted not seeing the signs before Andy permanently closed the curtain on life.

“I can’t deal with this shit,” Riley mumbled, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. He padded through the forest of frozen bodies, all staring into Bubba’s room as if the circus had come to town for the first time. He walked straight into his room and closed the door, and no one bothered to follow him. No one bothered to ask if he was okay.

Instead of his normal bed, he climbed atop the one on the right side of the room and tucked the pillow against his gut. None of it smelled like Hunter anymore, but Riley didn’t feel disconnected. Not at all. It gave him the comfort he needed to keep from heading back into the abyss of his past. He didn’t want to talk to anyone or face anyone, just like he hadn’t the night they’d told him about Andy. He had a little more composure now, but not much. He wasn’t staring at a wall, sobbing like a two-year-old and babbling like the guy who always played checkers alone, but he was close enough.

A soft tap preceded a familiar voice saying, “Mr. Connors?” The door opened, and Dr. Landers poked his head inside. For the first time since therapy with him had started, Riley could honestly say he was happy to see the guy. “I was making the last of my notes for the day when I heard….”

“Yeah.”

“May I?” Dr. Landers nodded at the opposite bed, probably unaware Riley normally slept there. He’d keep that little tidbit to himself.

“Sure.”

“Do you need to talk about what happened next door?” He took a seat, hands clenched between his legs. His glasses slipped to the end of his nose. With the tips of his fingers, he raked a few rowdy gray hairs back into place.

“Someone killed themselves,” Riley said with a shrug. “Happens a lot here.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Riley’s face deadpanned. He hated that question. “Honestly?”

“Always.”

“I want to call him a fucking idiot for doing it,” Riley said. “I want to kick his ass and tell him he’s a coward. I mean, he got out of here. All he had to do was stay out. He had his freedom, but nooooo, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t hack it in the big bad world.”

“And you think you can?”

“Yeah,” Riley blurted. His eyes widened when he realized what he’d said. Even more startling was the conviction he still felt after the shock wore off. “I don’t want to die.” And unlike all the other times he’d made that same statement, he left off the
in this place
.

“That’s a good start, Riley. But what happens when the nightmares come back? What happens when someone hurts your feelings? What happens when someone pisses you off? Are you going to attack? Are you going to hide in a room because it’s easier than dealing with the world? Are you going to lock yourself in the bathroom and cut your wrists open again?”

“No. Goddamn it. No.”

“I don’t believe you, Riley.”

“You don’t matter, Doc. I believe it.”

The slow smile stretching the doctor’s face told Riley he’d said something Dr. Landers had been waiting a long time to hear. It wasn’t until Riley rewound the whole conversation in his head that he understood what had happened.

“We’ll talk tomorrow, Riley.” The doctor stood and went straight for the door. He stopped just shy of walking through, and he said, “Tomorrow, you should make an effort in group.” And with that, he left Riley alone to marinate in everything that had happened in the last ten years of his life.

Chapter 23

Five Months Later

“H
ELLO
,
MY
name’s Hunter, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said clearly into the microphone on the podium he stood behind, facing a small crowd of fellow alcoholics, familiar and unfamiliar alike.

“Hello, Hunter,” the group said in unison.

“I’ve been sober for ten months.” He paused for the obligatory smattering of applause. His face scanned the crowd, noticing his sponsor, Gianna, giving him a thumbs-up from the back. “In the last months I’ve been hospitalized, jumped through the hoops to work on my recovery, lost a friend—well, friends.” He closed his eyes and felt a moment of grief for Bubba, another of loss for Riley, who he hadn’t seen in months.

“I’ve completed rigorous therapy,” he continued, directing his attention back to the faces in the crowd. “I think the scariest part has been working to stay sober and make amends with people who didn’t deserve the crap I’ve passed around over the last six years.”

A deep breath. “Not long ago, someone said to me, ‘Live your life.’ That really resonated with me, because so many people I know
didn’t
live their lives. Some died too young.” Riley came to mind, blurrier at the edges than ever thanks to too much time having passed. Hunter couldn’t even remember the man’s voice, just the slightest memories of his laugh. “Some just can’t because of their circumstances. So I realized what a huge freakin’ blessing this chance was for me.

“This isn’t a second chance. No way. More like my ninth life. I hate thinking it’s my last, but it feels that way sometimes. So I’m gonna keep going. Hopefully I’ll see them again, but I’m sure as hell gonna keep living, for myself and for them.” He stepped back from the podium, signaling the end of his sharing. The applause this round was a little more heartfelt than obligatory. Gianna stood up in the back, clapping her hands above her head for him but keeping it at a respectful volume.

He walked back to the seat Gianna had saved for him, getting a playful punch in the arm as he sat down. Her sparkling eyes beamed with pride. “Good job,” she whispered. He gave a single nod with a wink of appreciation. He wouldn’t pat himself on the back too much. It had definitely been a long, hard road. He’d even wandered into a bar after a particularly ugly disagreement with his brother two months earlier. But he hadn’t had more than a Diet Coke before heading back to his apartment to sift through his letters from Riley.

He kept each and every one, safely tucked away in a box under his bed. He’d read them all a hundred times. They’d become fewer and farther between in the last couple of months, due to Hunter’s increasingly busy work schedule and their reliance on the postal service. Riley had become more succinct in each letter since Bubba’s death.

God, but that was still such a surprising thought. The day he’d heard the news he hadn’t been able to believe it. Bubba’s brother had come to him, begging him to finish the car, hysterical and attempting to vibrate out of his skin from the misery. Hunter, for the first time in a long time, hadn’t even considered a drink. He picked up his tools and finished that fucking car. He even collected the parts to do the bodywork on his own. He’d put the Camaro back together in a matter of weeks, on his own time, for free.

When he’d turned over the keys, Bubba’s brother had been so grateful, trying to pay out his ass, but Hunter had simply said this was his thanks for Bubba being a good friend when he’d needed someone to talk to in Hartfield. The car was also a thanks for Bubba having given him something to do with his grief other than fall into a bottle.

When Gianna nudged him with an elbow, Hunter realized he’d drifted off with his thoughts, rude to the others who’d listened to him share. He noticed everyone else clapping, so he joined in, feeling like a heel.

The meeting was soon over, and he wandered out into the brisk night air with Gianna. They shook hands with others leaving the meeting, regulars he’d befriended and shy newbies who looked lost and desperate. He always felt for them. He’d been lucky that in his early days when he was wild-eyed and new to it all, he’d been in the hospital. Coming to a meeting had been a cakewalk compared to that shit. He couldn’t imagine sitting through the meetings with the shakes or that overwhelming nausea. He’d never have made it ten days sober, much less ten months, had that been the case.

“Shit, it’s cold,” Gianna bitched, buttoning up her black peacoat. Hunter shoved her playfully.

“You’re such a puss, Florida girl. You think you’re gonna survive a winter in Boston if you can’t make it through forty-five degree nights in February?” Hunter tried not to think too much on the fact that his sponsor was moving so far away in less than four months. They’d become fast friends, doing dinner at least once a week. He was good friends with her girlfriend of four years. They wanted to move somewhere they could legally marry. It must have been in the cards for them, because they both landed jobs—Gianna was an accountant, her fiancée, Melody, a dietitian—within weeks of each other, so the move date had been set.

“Shut up. I don’t know how you walk around without a coat.”

“Hot natured,” he said, eyes scanning the parking lot of the church they met in. “Why can I never remember where I parked?”

Gianna snorted. “If your dick wasn’t attached, you’d leave that fucker lying on a table in a restaurant.”

Hunter waggled his eyebrows. “I love it when you talk about my dick.”

“You’re a dumbass.” When they’d made it to her car, she unlocked it. “You doing okay? Need to hug anything out?”

“Naw. Feelin’ good.” And that was the truth. Aside from the dull ache that had taken up permanent residence in his heart for all the people he missed, he was healthy, and his job was going great. His brother was talking about letting him buy in to the shop. It wasn’t going to be a majority ownership, but he’d get profit sharing, which was great since the business had started growing now that he was actually productive.

“Tell Mel I said hey,” he said.

“Will do,” she said as they bro hugged. “She said to remind you about dinner Saturday night. She’s insistent, so gird your loins. She has some guy she’s been talking up a lot, so if he’s there I had
nothing
to do with it.”

Hunter backed away a step, eyes wide in surprise. “I thought you told her….”

“I did. No relationships for the first year. Apparently ten months is close enough in her mind.” Gianna rolled her eyes, smiling fondly when she spoke of her fiancée. “I’ll try to talk her out of it. But please come. You know we love having you.”

“I will,” he promised.