Lost and Found Read online

  “Oh yeah?” I say, grinning at her.

  She nods, moving her mouth towards mine. “Yeah,” she whispers.

  I lean toward her, but the one sober part of my brain screams at me. If you do this, it says, you’ll ruin any chance you have of ever being with Gemma again.

  I take my hands off Natalie’s hips and step away from her. She looks annoyed.

  “I can’t,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Yes you can,” she says, tugging at my shirt.

  “No,” I push her hands off me. “I have a girlfriend.”

  “What?” she says, shock and anger registering on her face.

  “I mean, I had a girlfriend,” I say, and that achey feeling in my chest comes back. “We broke up.”

  “Okay,” she says slowly. “Are we doing this or not?”

  “Not,” I say, stepping away from her. “I’m sorry.”

  I leave Natalie looking pissed off and look for Lucas. I’m feeling extremely drunk. Putting one foot in front of the other is a struggle. Lucas is sitting at the table where he’s been all night, looking put out. His expression changes to concern when he sees me.

  “Spence, you all right?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I need to go home. Take me home.”

  Lucas jumps up. “Okay, let’s go. Let me close out the tab.”

  He leaves and goes over to the bar to pay. I lean against the table with my head in my hands, trying to get the room to stop spinning. I want to talk to Gemma. It takes a couple tries, but I get my phone out of my pocket and pull up her contact info. I look at the picture of her I have saved so it shows up every time she calls. I haven’t seen it in almost a week. Seeing it now causes the stabbing pain in my chest to get worse.

  “No, nope, not doing that.” Lucas reappears at my side and yanks the phone out of my hands.

  “Hey!” I protest, but I currently lack the strength and coordination to get the phone back from him. He puts it in his pocket.

  “You’ll only regret it,” he says, shaking his head. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “I want Gemma,” I whine.

  “I know you do,” he says.

  “Take me to Gemma.”

  “Sure thing pal,” he tells me.

  I nod and follow him out of the bar. He keeps having to grab me to keep me from wandering into the street or falling over. I feel like shit. I get in the car and lean my head against the window.

  “You okay man?” Lucas asks.

  I nod, rolling my forehead against the window.

  “Are you going to be sick?”

  I shake my head, rolling my forehead the other way. Lucas starts driving. The second the car moves I feel sick. I sit up and take a few deep breaths.

  “Do not puke in my car,” Lucas says.

  “I’m not going to puke,” I tell him. He takes a corner too tight and I make a strangled choking noise.

  “Seriously dude, do not puke in my car!”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I assure him. But I’m not so sure I am. Beads of sweat are forming on my forehead and I clamp my mouth shut.

  “Spence?” Lucas says.

  “You’re gonna need to pull over,” I tell him, and he does. I get the door open just in time to spill my guts all over the sidewalk.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Spence

  I blink my eyes open and take a minute to get my bearings. I’m on the couch. I have no recollection of getting home last night. My mouth feels like it’s filled with sand, my head is pounding, and my stomach feels vaguely queasy. I’m lying there, thinking about how I’d rather drop dead than feel like this, when the front door opens.

  “Oh hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Lucas says coming inside. He holds up a McDonald’s bag. “Figured you’d want this when you finally woke up. Big Mac, fries, fountain soda. And I got some Gatorade, too.”

  I carefully sit up, the pain in my head making me wince.

  “Fuck women,” I say. “You’re the love of my life, Lucas.”

  He laughs and puts the food in front of me, then goes to get me some ibuprofen, too.

  “You were a mess last night,” he tells me.

  “Whose fault is that?” I say, shoveling fries in my mouth.

  “Don’t blame me.” Lucas flops down on the couch next to me. “I tried to stop you.”

  I shake my head, wincing at the pain. “I barely remember anything.”

  “Oh, so you don’t remember almost puking in my car?”

  I take a big bite of my burger. “Nope,” I say, mouth full.

  Lucas leans back with his hands behind his head, his expression full of glee. “Well, let me fill you in,” he says.

  “I think I’d rather you didn’t,” I tell him, but he ignores me.

  “You spent the whole night hitting on some girl. I honestly thought you’d end up going home with her. I expected you to pull a typical Spence and leave me alone at the bar.”

  “No,” I say, not believing him.

  “Oh yes.” He grins. “I don’t know what happened to the girl, but you must have ditched her, because you came stumbling over begging me to take you to Gemma.”

  I put the burger down, suddenly feeling sick again.

  “Then you almost puked in my car on the way home. I had to pull over like three times getting back to the apartment. No idea how I got you up here, honestly. I almost left you on the stairs at one point. But somehow you made it. Then you kept puking, and if you weren’t puking you were crying and asking for Gemma.”

  “I was not crying,” I say, indignant.

  “Oh, but you were,” Lucas says, getting way more amusement out of this than I’d like. “‘Where’s Gemma?’ you kept saying. ‘I need Gemma’. You were so pathetic I almost called her, but then I remembered how much she hates puke and figured I should stay out of it.”

  “You’re making this up,” I say.

  Lucas shakes his head, laughing. “Scout’s honor. You were in bad shape.”

  “Lucas,” I say, giving him the most serious look I can muster considering the state I’m in. “If you tell anyone about this, ever, I will kill you.”

  Lucas laughs.

  “I swear to god, Lucas. I will murder you. I will go to jail for murdering you. Do not tell anyone.”

  “Okay, okay,” he says.

  “Did I hook up with that girl?” I ask, dreading the answer.

  Lucas shakes his head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. You didn’t do anything.”

  I nod, but I still feel like shit. I’m exactly who Gemma thinks I am. I’m disgusted with myself. I know I was drunk, but that’s no excuse for thinking a rebound hookup was a good idea. I’m glad Lucas took my phone away last night. It would have been a disaster if I’d called Gemma.

  Lucas gets up and heads into his room, and I shove the food away from me. I pop the ibuprofen he got me and lay back down on the couch. If I’m lucky I’ll sleep the day away and wake up miraculously over Gemma.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Gemma

  It’s been four days. Four days since Spence broke up with me. Four days since I’ve left the apartment. Or showered. Or eaten any more than I have to in order to keep myself alive.

  At some point I’m going to have to leave and go to class and work, but I’ve been telling everyone I have the flu. The way I feel is close enough to flu-like symptoms. What happened with Spence makes me feel nauseas. Thinking about going on without him in my life makes me feverish. The only thing I want to do is sleep, because when I’m sleeping I’m not thinking.

  Amanda comes in around dinner time on the fifth day of my self-imposed quarantine. Or at least I think it’s dinner time. It’s hard to say, since the shades are closed and my room stays dark all the time now.

  “That’s it. I’ve had it. You’ve got to get up.”

  She walks to the window and opens the shades. The light blares in and I groan and pull the covers over my head. “Go away!”
<
br />   “No, I’ve given you almost a week and I’m done. Please at least take a shower and eat a real meal. Better yet, cook a real meal. Just because you’re starving yourself doesn’t mean I should have to suffer.”

  “Go away.”

  She climbs up on the bed and yanks the covers away from my face. “You need fresh air.”

  “I don’t.”

  She sighs and sits back. “You’ve grieved long enough. It’s time to get back in the world.”

  Grieved? This isn’t grieving. Grieving is Liam after our dad died. You think a few days of me not leaving my room is bad? He made it nearly three weeks. Macy was force feeding him and checking to make sure he was still alive every few hours. He lost twenty pounds and grew a beard.

  One day, I came home to find Macy in hysterics sitting outside their bedroom door. He’d locked it and went to sleep with noise-canceling earplugs in, so he couldn’t hear her relentless pounding. We’d been too scared to call 9-1-1, I don’t know why. Maybe because if we needed to call in professionals it meant the situation was more serious than either one of us was willing to admit. I ended up pulling a ladder out of the garage and breaking in through the bedroom window, scaring Liam half to death.

  So no, I wouldn’t call what I’m doing “grieving”, just wallowing. And I’m entitled to that after having my heart broken. I yank the blankets away from Amanda and pull them back over my head.

  “Tell me what happened,” she requests.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It might make you feel better.”

  “It won’t.”

  I’ve been refusing to talk about what happened because every time I even think about it I burst into tears. I’m sure Amanda already got the whole horrible story from Lucas, anyway.

  After I got home from Kincaid’s that night I’d collapsed into my bed, numb. I picked up my phone a thousand times to call Spence and beg him to forgive me, but I never went through with it.

  Then I spent the entire next day obsessively checking my phone, hoping he would call or text, but he didn’t.

  It’s my fault. I pushed him into this. So now I’ll suffer with my pain, because I deserve it. There’s an ache in my chest that won’t go away.

  “Gemma, come on.” Amanda prods at me with a finger.

  “We broke up,” I tell her, my voice muffled under the blanket.

  “I gathered as much, but what happened?”

  “Didn’t Lucas already tell you?”

  “No,” Amanda whines. “Because Spence won’t tell him. All I know is Fiona showed up at Kincaid’s, and then Spence got mad.”

  I sigh. “That’s basically the whole story. I messed everything up, so he broke up with me.”

  “I need more than that.”

  I groan and toss the blanket off my face and tell Amanda the whole pathetic story.

  When I’m finished, Amanda frowns at me. “So you got mad at him because he might do something wrong?”

  I don’t answer her.

  She sighs. “Are you pushing him away because you don’t trust him, or because you’re afraid of letting him get too close?”

  “Don’t start,” I warn.

  “I’m not trying to start anything. I just know how you are.”

  I cross my arms and look away from her.

  “Spence is the most serious relationship you’ve had in a long time. And that’s a scary thing, I get it. But there’s no sense making yourself miserable for no reason.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be, okay?” I sniffle and wipe my nose on the back of my hand and Amanda cringes. Things must be pretty bad if I’m grossing Amanda out. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  Amanda is silent for a minute and I think she’s going to let it go and leave me alone. Then she says, “He’s miserable too, you know. Lucas said he’s never seen him like this.”

  It’s terrible of me, but this information makes me feel slightly better. I’ve spent the last several days imagining Spence out sleeping with a new girl every night.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I shake my head. “He’ll never take me back. The band is going on tour. He won’t want a girlfriend for that. Honestly, he probably would have broken up with me before they left anyway.”

  “You should talk to him,” Amanda says.

  “No.”

  “Well whatever you do, the wallowing needs to stop. I’m tired of feeding myself.”

  And with that Amanda flounces off the bed and out of my room.

  Friday after the breakup I have to go back to work. There’s no one to cover my shift and being around Amanda is becoming unbearable. Every morning she comes in and opens the shades and brings me a cup of coffee. She’s learned to pick the lock on my bedroom door, which is a real problem. I know she’s only doing it to help me, and I guess it worked because here I am about to leave for Kincaid’s.

  I’m in the parking lot, almost to my car, when I see him.

  He must be coming back from a run because he’s all sweaty and wearing headphones. Our eyes meet and my stomach drops to my feet. We both stop for a second, looking at each other. I almost open my mouth to say something. My feet want to walk over to him, and it takes all my willpower to stay where I am. I look away and hurry to my car, forcing myself to avoid looking in the rearview mirror at him. My heart thumps a million beats a second, and I take a deep breath to calm myself down before I start driving.

  I think I’m going to have to move.

  Liam is in the back room when I get to Kincaid’s and I say a quick hello as I pass before heading out to the bar.

  “Hey,” Liam says, following me. When I stop he envelops me in a hug, catching me off guard. “Are you okay?” he asks.

  I stiffen. “What are you talking about? I’m fine. I had the flu.”

  He lets go of me and steps away, his face full of sympathy. “I know you didn’t have the flu, Gem.”

  “Who said I didn’t have the flu?”

  “I came by,” Liam says. “Macy made you soup. You were sleeping. Amanda told me what happened.”

  My face is getting warm with rage and a little embarrassment. The last thing I want is everyone knowing what happened. “I’m going to kill her.”

  “She meant well. She knew I’d keep checking on you if you really did have the flu.”

  I walk away from him and busy myself getting the bar ready. “That’s great, but I don’t want to hear your lecture right now. I know you didn’t want me to have anything to do with Spence in the first place, so I’ll save you the trouble—you were right, I should have listened to you.”

  Liam follows behind me. “That’s actually not what I was going to say.”

  “What?” I turn to look at him, shocked. “I figured you’d be thrilled.”

  “No, I’m not thrilled you’re hurting. Honestly, when Amanda told me what happened I wanted to go downstairs and throttle the kid.”

  “Liam, don’t,” I groan. “Don’t make this any worse than it already is. The last thing I need is my big brother getting involved.”

  Liam holds his hands up. “I won’t get involved unless you ask me to. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to fire them?”

  “No, don’t fire them.” Not that I hadn’t thought about it. When I wasn’t feeling sad about Spence this past week, I was feeling pissed off and hell bent on revenge. But firing them would be too petty. And considering Spence didn’t actually do anything wrong, it wouldn’t even be fair.

  “Are you sure?” Liam seems disappointed. I’m sure he was looking forward to throwing Spence out of his bar.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. But I’m not working on the nights they’re playing. At least not for awhile.”

  Liam nods. “Fine. We’ll work something out.”

  “This isn’t his fault, just so you know,” I tell Liam. “I don’t want you to take this whole situation out on him.”

  “What happened? Things seemed good between you two.”

  “Things were good,” I admi
t. “I guess that was part of the problem. It felt too good to be true. Like it was only a matter of time before I got hurt. And I did get hurt, but I did it to myself.”

  Liam is quiet for a second, thinking. Then he says, “Did I ever tell you about the time I broke up with Macy?”

  “What?” I say, my brow knitting in surprise. “When did you break up with Macy?”

  “Not long after we first started dating. Looking back, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but at the time it felt like it made sense. We were in college, we were young, I didn’t want to be tied down.” Liam pauses. “And, yeah, maybe I was afraid that the longer we stayed together, the harder it would be if I lost her. So I get what you’re going through.”

  “So what happened? Obviously you guys got back together.”

  He nods. “We did. Macy wouldn’t take no for an answer. She knew what I was doing even if I didn’t. She basically harassed me until I took her back.”

  “Macy has always been smarter than you,” I say.

  Liam laughs. “No shit. Thank god for that, because I don’t know where I would be without her.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Are you suggesting I harass Spence until he takes me back?”

  “No, not if you don’t want him back. But as much as it pains me to say it, Spence is a good guy. I saw how he was around you, and he surprised me.”

  I manage to bark out a laugh. “That’s something I never thought I’d hear you say.”

  He sighs and shakes his head, but he’s grinning. “Yeah, me either. But he grew on me, that little shit.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to work.”

  “Think about it, okay? You can’t live your life scared all the time that something will go wrong. It takes away from all the times things go right.”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about,” I say, steeling myself.

  “I’m listening,” Liam says.

  “I want more responsibility around here. This bar belongs to both of us, right? I want to help.” In hindsight I should have prepared a better delivery. I sound like a whiny little kid. But in truth, I’m not sure what I’m asking for. After Spence brought this up the other day I thought about it. I have some rough ideas, but they seem so pie-in-the-sky I doubt Liam would go for it.