Boys Like You(15)

I thought of Rachel and how she had refused to come with me that first time, three months ago. She’d pulled out the big guns, had cried until her mascara made raccoon tracks down her cheeks, and she’d managed to make me feel worse than I already did. So I went without her, and it had turned out pretty much the way she thought it would.

It had sucked. If she knew I was here now, I’m sure she’d hit me in the shoulder and call me a loser.

But she wasn’t. I glanced down at my empty hand, and I was still staring down when the elevator doors slid open.

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The first thing I saw was the nurse’s station. The second?

Taylor’s fierce scowl and her wild, blond hair.

“Who the hell is that?” she pointed at Monroe.

“You don’t need to be such a bitch, Taylor. This is Monroe.

She’s just a…a friend.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “So she’s your ride?” I knew she was thinking about Rachel, and judging by the nasty look she gave Monroe, she thought there was a whole lot more going on between us.

“Yeah,” I answered, a little pissed at her attitude. “What else would she be?”

Monroe muttered something under her breath, and I guess I was glad I didn’t hear it, because I had the feeling it wasn’t nice.

“I’ll be waiting over there,” she pointed toward a tired-looking lounge just past the nurse’s station. “You know, when you need your ride home.”

Shit. She was pissed too. Seemed as if I was on a roll.

“Monroe,” I said softly.

“Forget it, Nathan. Go and do whatever it is you need to do, but I’m not sticking around all night.”

I watched her cross over to the lounge. Watched her sit on the sofa, a faded brown one that looked like it was leather but I knew was cold, slippery vinyl. She ignored me, grabbed a magazine, and turned the other way, making me feel like an even bigger shit.

“Are you coming?” Taylor grabbed my arm. “They’ll be back 59

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soon, and if you get caught, my ass will be toast and I don’t even want to know what he’ll do to yours.”

Taylor led me down the hall even though she didn’t need to.

I remembered the way. I saw it in my nightmares.

He was still in the same room, and as we walked by the nurse’s station, Taylor waved to them, which was a good thing, because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t let me in on my own.

When we reached 514, Taylor paused and shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. She looked tired, and the heavy black crap she put around her eyes didn’t do much to help. A year younger than Trevor and I, she was like a kid sister to me.

“I’ll let you,” she mumbled and glanced down the hall before clearing her throat, “have some time.”

I followed her gaze and caught Monroe looking our way. She stared at me for a few seconds and then flicked open her magazine again and disappeared behind it.

“Taylor, thanks.”

When she looked back to me, her brown eyes were filled with tears, and something inside me broke. I did this to her. I thought of her family. I did this to all of them.

“You don’t have long. They went for dinner at the Warehouse and their reservation was for seven.” She cleared her throat. “It’s seven-thirty now, so that gives you about an hour before Mom and Dad will be back, ’cuz you know, we live at the freaking hospital now, so…”

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“Thanks,” I said quietly.

She didn’t say anything. She just turned and leaned against the wall, her raccoon eyes closed, her breathing heavy.

The door slid open and I slipped inside, exhaling through my mouth because I hated the smell so much. The sick, stale, anti-septic smell that Trevor and his family lived with every single damn day.

The lights were low, and I turned toward the bed. Toward the machines and tubes and IV’s. Toward the big gray one that forced air into Trevor’s lungs and then sucked it back out. The one that allowed him to breathe. The one that allowed him to live.

I swallowed hard and stared at it. At the machine that allowed Trevor to exist in some weird, in-between place, and I wondered if he knew I was there. Was he hanging out, levitating below the ceiling, staring down at the idiot who had put him here?

Carefully I made my way over to him, one foot in front of the other as if I was creeping across the foyer in my house after a night of partying.

It was stupid, really. What was I afraid of? That Trevor would wake up? No, that’s what we all wanted. It was the stuff that came after that had me tied up in knots.

What if he told me to go screw myself and never come back?

What if he told me that he hated me?

Or even worse, what if he woke up and couldn’t say the things I knew were inside his head?

I paused at the edge of his bed. I took a moment to just look 61

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down at my best friend, and what I saw made my gut churn. It churned so badly that for a second I thought I was going to be sick, and it took everything I had to push the nausea away.