the restaurant parking lot, searching everywhere as I run through the parked cars. “Han!”
A couple passes me on their way in, the man with his hand on the woman’s lower back, guiding her along.
“D-did you see a girl? Black hair”—I wave my hands frantically thinking of her outfit—“black and yellow dress, boots?!”
“No.” The woman shakes her head, her eyes nervous for me. “No, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”
I take off running again before she can finish her sentence. After scouring the entire parking lot with no sight of her, I run to my car to check for her there. But it’s empty.
“Fuck!” I yell, slamming my fists on the hood.
I take a breath, blowing it out as I rack my brain for where she could’ve gone so fast. Did she hitch a ride with someone random? I wouldn’t put it past her in this situation. She needed an out and was going to find it however she could.
I brace myself on the hood with my palms, my head dropping between my shoulders. I look up, peering inside my vehicle, seeing a sight that stops my heart.
“Oh, fuck no! No!” I scream to myself, my hands dragging along the hood as I scramble for the door.
I pull it open, diving into the passenger seat, inspecting the damage. She ripped into my center console, opening the secret hatch. The baggie of coke…
It’s gone.
And not just any coke. The coke I got from Tarah.
I scream out, hitting the dash with ultimate force at every curse, my knuckles finally splitting on the last hit.
She was the only other person who knew where I hid it. And now, with her sister finding out the one thing she couldn’t have her knowing, she was on the edge of risking it all to numb her torturous pain, needing to find a way to erase the lifetime of guilt she’s been forced to endure.
But she has no idea what’s in that baggie. No idea what kind of danger she’s in.
I have to find her.
Jumping into the driver’s seat, I peel outta the parking lot, rushing towards her place. I call her phone, only to hear it ringing on the floor beneath the passenger seat beside me. I punch the steering wheel with my bloody fist, making the horn honk unintentionally.
Ok, Kai. Calm down. I take a deep breath, letting it out as I race down the road. Where would she go? How would she get there? We came together in my car. She couldn’t call anyone without her phone.
My tires squeal into her parking lot, the car fishtailing wildly. I escape the vehicle, not even taking the time to park properly or shut my door before I’m running to the main entrance of her apartment. Han’s van is still there in the lot, and I make a mental note of that as I race up the dim cement stairwell to her front door. I knock frantically, feeling a sickening nauseousness permeating throughout my core after no response.
“Jo, baby.” I fist my hair. “Where are you?!” I whisper breathlessly to myself, slinking my back down against her apartment door, feeling defeat.
My phone rings in my back pocket, making me stir with hope. I pull it out, seeing Hawke’s name.
“Where is she? Is she there?” I rush out.
“No, no sign of her. Cole’s been taken to the hospital. She’s fine, but where are you?”
My stomach drops and my hands shake. “At Han’s place. Her car’s here, she’s not.”
He curses into the receiver. “Where would she be?”
“She’s in trouble, Cam. She’s in trouble!” I say quickly, panting as my voice cracks at the end of my sentence.
I’m panicking.
“Alright, alright.” He takes a breath, calming himself as if he senses I need it right now. “Where does she go when she runs away?”
“Her van is here! I told you that! She didn’t run! She’s…” I pause for a second, my brain working to solve this. Where else would she be? Our spots? Where are our spots? Where could she have gone without a vehicle?
“The cove,” I say. “She’s at the cove.”
I hang up the phone, running back out to my car. How stupid of me to not think she’d find her way there. The driver’s door is still open and the engine still running, so I slide in and peel out of her parking lot, heading towards the place she frequents alone.
It’s getting dark now. The sun has set, and trudging through the sand in these clunky boots helps nothing. But I run. I run as fast as I can, hoping I’m not too late.
“Jo!” I scream at the top of my lungs, the echoes being swallowed by the wild waves of the ocean before me.
Stumbling down the boulders, I pause at a little ledge, peering down into the darkness of the tiny cove. The moonlight does nothing to help me visualize her form amongst the jagged cuts of the shadowed rocks.
And yet, there beneath me, I see the tiniest hint of a red and black-fringed blanket on the sand near the water, just barely poking out.
It’s hers.
“Han!” I scream.
Without thinking, I jump down a rock the size of a car. I stumble and roll my ankle to the side, feeling an immediate snap. I hiss, grabbing for the pain that’s now searing through my lower leg. Breathing through it, I hobble my way over to the edge of the blanket. The closer I become, the more I see.
The blanket.
The edge of her boots.
Her bare legs.
Her seemingly lifeless body.
My stomach sinks as a wave of terror sweeps over me.
It’s too late.
I can barely breathe as I fall next to her, my knees in the wet sand, grabbing her limp body with her barely open eyes, and holding her to my chest. Tears flood my face, and my mouth opens, attempting to gasp for air.
“Han, baby…no,” I cry out, seeing the opened baggie lying next to her.
I’m too late.
Quickly scanning her face, I see streaks of dried tears down her cheeks, her pupils fully dilated. I kick the shit with my free leg, sending it into the sand, the contents now immersed with the tiny rocks of the beach where we once sat, finding out who we were before we knew anything. A time when tragedies were left uncovered and our only focus was exploring how to bend time together.
I curse out at the moon, cradling her in my grasp as my palm holds her cheek and my tears obstruct my vision. She’s cold and clammy in my grasp, but then her chest expands.
She’s still breathing.
I feel for her pulse as my heart pounds in my chest. It’s barely beating through her delicate little neck, but it’s still there. Her breaths are few and far between.
“Stay with me, baby! Please stay with me, Han!”
Standing on my bum leg, I hoist her up into my arms, frantically making my way up the rocks. I turn when I hear the echo of my name being called.
“Kai!” It’s Hawke. “Kai!”
Fighting through the pain, I carry her little, limp frame up the side of the rocks, meeting Hawke who’s running backwards towards the car, shouting questions out at me right and left.
“Did she take something?!”
“Yes!”
“Do you know what it is?!”
“No, not sure!”
“Was she trying to ki—”
“No! Fuck off!”
I won’t even let him finish that sentence. She wouldn’t. Would she? She’d never leave me. She couldn’t. She didn’t know.
He takes my keys, and I get into the backseat of the car with Han, racing to the hospital while Hawke transfers the information from me to the awaiting staff on the phone.
They take her from me as soon as we hit the drive-up, the scramble of nurses muttering off about an apparent overdose. It angers the fuck out of me.
She’s not just some druggie chick who overdosed while partying it up on the beach. She’s an intelligent, beautifully broken woman, who cares deeply for the living, yet feels like life is too heavy at times. Because, guess what? It fucking is. I hate their assumptions as they look at her.
My fingers sweep across her cold cheek once more before they rush her between the doors to the emergency room. And then she’s gone.
I stand there for a moment, mud on my boots, sand on my knees, and a bum leg, just watching as they take her away from me. The chaos, the wild scattering of people swarming us, the spouting off of blood pressure numbers and random medical terminology…all of it, suddenly quiet.
I’m left standing there in utter silence, with nothing but a loud mind. The smells of alcohol and plastic fill my nose from the sterile environment. It’s deprived of any heart or home, leaving me feeling like the closest person I’ve ever known is now lost to it.
Anger, regret, and heartbreak hit me all at once, and I can’t take it anymore.
I slam my forehead against the wall, my fists pounding into the cement above me as my chest heaves.
We were so close. We’d come so far.
“Kai, keep cool. She’s where she needs to be,” Hawke says, coming up behind me. “They’ll take care—”
“I did this!” I interrupt him. “I fucking did this! I’m careless and so fucking stupid!” I slam my fists above me again. Getting frustrated by the lack of destruction into the cool wall, I find a corkboard nearby, ripping off all the flyers and papers hanging on it, scattering them across the hallway.
“Kai,” Hawke says again, reaching out for me.
“No, fuck off! It’s my fault!” I yell again, brushing him off as he closes in on me, pushing him in the chest before my fingers find their way back into my hair and I pull. I curse again, my back sliding down the wall until I hit the floor. “Why am I like this?! What was I thinking?! What’s wrong with me?!”
I drop my face into my hands, raking the pain that’s radiating in my head down with my fingers. I feel the weight of my mistakes in life catching up to me by affecting the only one I’ve ever loved enough to change for. I broke her open, only to shatter her.
The squeak of rubber shoes on the speckled tile floor approach us, but Hawke tells them to go away, and that he’s got it under control.
I can’t get the visual of the lifeless look in her eyes out of my mind. It’s only been minutes since I saw her, and I already know the image will haunt me for a lifetime. How she handled seeing her mother and keeping it in so long is beyond me. The potential loss of her is eating me alive.
“Don’t fall now,” he whispers beside me. “You’ve come so far.”
I take a few breaths, trying to calm myself as I turn my broken gaze to Hawke. His jaw is clenched, holding in the pain as his eyes search through me, staring at the friend he’s been silently watching and rooting for all along.
Sometimes I think he knows me better than I know myself.
He throws his arm around me, pulling me into his chest, his hand grasping the back of my neck as he comforts me.
And I cry.
