When in Paris... (Language of Love) (41 page)

“Drive safe. Call me if you need me. I’ll be driving back first thing in the morning. Oh and tell Zach I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him but another time I’m sure.”

Nodding, I reply, “Yeah, another time. Bye, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

***

ZACH

I’ve been on the road for almost two hours when my cell rings. Without taking the time to note the caller, I snatch it up and slam it against my ear, praying to God it’s Olivia.

Before I can utter a word, I hear a panicked, “Zach, Zach?” My pulse spikes. Mrs. Crawford, Ashley’s mom.

“
Yes, Mrs. Crawford, it’s Zach. I’m on my way.” She’s got to understand it’s going to take me at least four hours to get there. And I pretty much left right after she called.

“
Ashley left a note. She’s on her way to you.” The panic in her voice becomes more pronounced.

What the fuck?

“
You mean…?” My brain feels like it’s functioning in slow motion, maybe because a very promising day has turned to complete shit.

“
To New York,” she screams but it ends on a sob.

Damn, she needs to calm down.

“
Oh shit!” It comes out before I can check myself. I immediately apologize.

“
We’re on our way,” she says, sounding now as if she’s on the brink of hysteria.

“
Then I’ll head back.” I’m already looking for the exit to turn around and head back north. The evening just keeps getting better and better. Ashley’s having a fucking meltdown, Olivia won’t pick up my calls, didn’t even give me a chance to explain. I’ve missed one of the most important events in her freshman year. Right now I don’t know whether I’m in the doghouse or whether that hasn’t already been torched. The only thing I know is that I can’t lose her—am not going to lose her over this thing with Ashley. After this I’m out.

***

OLIVIA

I get back to my dorm by eleven thirty. Still early for a Friday night. I was supposed to go with April and Rebecca to a non-Greek party (wow, didn’t know those existed) but I got out of it by pleading fatigue, which is now more fact than fiction. The dorm is pretty quiet except for the murmur of the TV in the lounge.

I’m slipping my key into the lock on my door when I feel the presence of someone behind me. Startled, I whip around the same moment she calls my name.

“Olivia.”

I can’t talk for a couple beats with my heart lodged in my throat.

Ashley.

And she’s a sight: bloodshot eyes, sharply protruding collarbones beneath the vee of her winter coat. In high school, her hair reminded me of a mink’s coat, that thick, gorgeous silky red-brown color. Today it looks flat and dull and her face too thin, making her pretty features too angular.

She’s standing about four feet from me, her arms wrapped around herself. But it’s her eyes that alarm me the most. I’ve never seen eyes so lost and empty.

“Ashley.” We barely spoke in high school so I know exactly why she’s here.

“Zach told me you guys ar-are going out. Is th-that true?” Her voice is scratchy and breaks as she talks.

Zach said she has emotional problems so I’m hesitant to answer. It’s pretty obvious something’s wrong with her.

I turn to face her, pulling the key out of the lock. “Ashley, what are you doing here?” More important, how did she find me?

“He said he was coming home this week. He knew I was going to be home.” Her arms tighten around herself and in her left hand, she’s clutching car keys. But I don’t see a purse.

“Are you going out with him?”

When I fail to answer, she continues. “He told me not to call him anymore. Did you know that?”

“Does anyone know you’re here? Did you tell your parents?” Did you tell Zach? I’m thinking not since he’s on his way to her.

When she begins to sway, I instinctively grab her arm, and even with the bulk of her coat, I can feel how skinny she’s gotten. Quickly, I open the door and usher her in.

The way she’s behaving, the emptiness of her eyes, her slightly slurred speech and her overall sluggishness tells me something is seriously wrong with her. More than just being drunk or hung over. I steer her toward the bed and gently sit her down. The funny thing is, she lets me.

No, the scary thing is she lets me.

“Ashley, have you taken anything?” Pulse hammering and breathing quickening, I study her eyes.

“Where’s Zach?” she asks, averting her gaze from mine, her eyes scouring the room as if she expects him to jump out of his hiding place.

It’s really weird. The entire time I’d gone to school with her, she always looked so put together, flawless. Her hair, her nails, her make-up. She was one of those girls everyone knew would do well—presumably by marrying well. Working? No, not Ashley. She was the kind of girl who went to school not so much for a degree in pursuit of a career, but because being only a high-school graduate would not be tolerated by her husband or his family. So to see her like this, broken, disheveled and looking so horribly distraught takes every drop of air out of my anger with Zach. And her.

It’s not that I didn’t believe him when he claimed there was absolutely nothing going on between them. Or that he was basically tolerating her calls because she was emotionally fragile. I had to a degree. But how can you think of someone as emotionally fragile when your only memory of them is as this gorgeous totally put-together person, who was used to getting whatever she wanted in life. She’d wanted Zach and she’d gotten him. People used to say they’d end up married because Zach had gone out with her longer than any of the other girls he’d dated.

But sitting on my bed, eyes glazed over, is the Ashley Zach had been trying to tell me about. Here sits
that
emotional wreck. I never thought I ever would, but I truly feel sorry for her.

“I have to talk to Zach,” she slurs, still not looking at me. She moves to rise from the bed and before I can move fast enough to catch her, she wobbles and promptly crumples to the floor.

I’m in a full-blown panic as I drop to my knees beside her. My heart’s thundering in my chest as I check to make sure she’s breathing and has a pulse. She has both.

Lurching to my feet, I grab my cell phone from my coat pocket and call 9-1-1.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
N
INE

OLIVIA

The next hour is a blur, like a disjointed dream. In the two minutes it takes the ambulance to get here, I’ve alerted the RA—if that’s what you call pounding hysterically on her door—who then calls the campus police.

The scary thing is Ashley hasn’t regained consciousness and I can’t provide anyone information as to why she passed out. I do tell them I don’t think it’s alcohol. It’s only when I’m sitting at the hospital, in the emergency waiting room that I have time to call Zach.

He answers before the second ring.

“Liv, I’m on my way back.”

“Zach, I’m at the hospital.”

It’s only upon hearing the panic in his voice when he practically yells into the phone, “Hospital?” that I wish I’d phrased it better.

“Not me,” I rush to assure him. “It’s Ashley. She’s here—in New York. She came to my dorm.”

“
Shit!”
His voice is low and fierce. “Are you okay?”

My heart pinches at the concern in his voice.

“I’m fine. She didn’t do anything—at least not to me. But I think she must have taken something because she passed out. I-I think I heard them say something about pumping her stomach but they’re not telling me much.”

I know the hospital is trying to get in contact with her parents, which I convey to Zach.

“They’re on their way up there. I’ll call and let them know she’s in the hospital.”

I nod quietly, my gaze busily darting around the waiting room, hoping that at any moment someone will come out and tell me
something
. Anything.

“Where are you?” I ask, wishing he were here with me now.

“I should be there in about thirty minutes.”

He’s almost here.

I let out a huge sigh of relief. “Okay. I’ll see you soon then. Don’t break any speed limits getting here. I want you here safe and sound.”

There’s a long stretch of silence before he replies softly, “I’ll see you soon, babe.”

Zach does one better, arriving at the hospital twenty-five minutes later, striding through the automatic glass doors, his gaze scouring the room before falling on me.

The next thing I know, I’m on my feet and his arms are wrapped around me, his mouth on mine. The kiss is short but a welcome mixture of hunger and sweetness. Both I sorely need right now.

“Have you heard anything?” he asks, staring tenderly down at me.

I shake my head. “Were you able to get in touch with her parents?”

Clasping my hand in his, he takes a seat beside the one I’d just vacated and tugs me down. He then drapes his arms around my shoulders and pulls me toward him until I’m nestled tight against his side.

“Yeah, they should be here in another hour or so. Her mother took it bad.”

I can only imagine. My mother would be totally freaking out. My dad doesn’t freak and would be the levelheaded of the two, more wanting to get to the bottom of the matter before expending his time worrying.

I miss my mom. I don’t want to but I do.

“Is that what you meant when you said Ashley has emotional issues? Is—has she done stuff like this before?”

His chest falls and rises beneath the hand I have splayed on his chest. “I tried to break up with her halfway through senior year and she overdosed. Sleeping pills.”

I angle my head back as my eyes go wide. “Oh my God,” I exclaim in a hushed whisper. It’s worse than I actually thought but everything clicks with that revelation. Why he’d been so reluctant to ignore her calls. Why he refused to cut her off. But eventually he had. He’d told her about me.

“So that’s why…” My voice trails off at his grim nod.

“Two hours before your play, I got a call from her mother. She told me Ashley flew in from California two days ago and has gone missing and that they’re getting a search party together. It was my fault. I’m the one who told her not to call me anymore. That I was dating you.”

He winces as if recalling the phone call. “I didn’t mean to tell her over the phone but that night she just wouldn’t stop. She was talking about transferring here so we could be together. I had to tell her. I was actually surprised because she didn’t flip out like I thought she would. She was just like, oh, said she understood and hung up. I honestly thought that was it. I called her mom to let her know what happened and to make sure she checked up on her. And then this happened.”

I swallow a huge lump in my throat. For me. He did this for me.

“I’m sorry for being such a bitch about you not coming to opening night.”

He gives me a rueful half-smile. “No, I get why you were upset. I probably would’ve reacted the same way if the situation were reversed.”

We spend the next forty minutes, me snuggled in his arms, discussing the situation, Ashley (how he was cutting her off completely after this) and us in muted tones. I relish being close to him, breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne and the feel of his strong arms around me.

Ashley’s parents arrive an hour later, both rushing in with the same frantic look in their eyes. My heart immediately goes out to them.

In appearance, they are the complete opposite than I’d imagined them. Everyone who’d ever met my parents would always tell me how young and attractive they were. While I knew it intellectually, to me they were just Mom and Dad. Well that’s what I expected Ashley’s parents to look like. Young, somewhat urbane and attractive. Instead, her mother reminds me of one of those old-fashioned schoolmarms I’d only read about. Skinny instead of slim, her dark-brown hair twisted up in a bun tight enough to strangle, a high-neck collar with lace trim, a thick wool black skirt near ankle length and a dowdy-looking beige coat that falls just below her knees.

Mrs. Crawford has sharp features, just like her husband, who’s the same height as his wife, five-nine if I had to guess. And like his wife, his black pants and stiff-collared shirt are conservative and staid. Neither would be considered attractive, which begs the question, where had Ashley gotten her looks from.

I try to hang back when Zach goes to talk to them but Zach won’t let me, keeping me firmly hitched at his side.

Mrs. Crawford eyes me nervously but once Zach explains I was the one who called the ambulance and in whose room Ashley collapsed, both thank me profusely.

I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t have done.

The conversation lasts only a couple minutes before they leave in search of the attending doctor treating their daughter. After they’re gone, we resume our seats, this time content to just hold each other in silence while we wait for word of Ashley’s condition.