asked, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her shirt.
“I want you to go back home to your parents, okay?”
Realization drew her brows together tight. “What? No.” She shook her head. “I'm not ... If it has to do with, with ...” She lifted her hand to delicately touch her tender cheek. “I understand w-why you did it. I don't—”
“I fucked up, okay?” I cut her off. “I fucked up and I accept that, 'cause I'm used to it. But I won't keep draggin' you down with me. I would rather fuckin' die than watch you kill yourself with this shit, and I know that if you stay with me, that's exactly what's gonna happen. I love you too much to wanna do that. I can't do that.”
I pushed past her with determination charging my bones, and began to collect her things. Anything I could find, I gathered into a pile on the table, all while she followed at my heels, grappling at my arms and begging for me to stop. But I wouldn't stop. I couldn't. Not when her life was on the line.
“I'm gonna call you an Uber,” I told her, surprised by the calmness in my tone. “You can take all this stuff with you now, or I'll have it sent to your parents' place, but either way—”
“You just need time to adjust,” she tried to reason as I took my phone out. “You, you need to wrap your head around it, I get it. S-So, I'll go back and stay overnight and give you some space, okay? But tomorrow, I'll—”
“No,” I interrupted gently.
“Yes! I'll come back and we can talk about everything, okay? W-We can get help together. We'll go to rehab, we'll go to therapy, we'll ... we'll ...”
Her eyes roamed the apartment, searching for the thing that would convince me to back away from my resolve. She was panicking and I understood why, because sometimes the hardest things are the right things to do. And this, letting her go, was the rightest thing I'd ever done.
“Andy,” I said, pocketing my phone and knowing the car was on its way. “Listen. I don't want—”
“What about what I want?” she cried, her face a mess of tears and snot. “When the fuck do I get to choose what I want?”
“You can choose whatever you want, sweetheart,” I said, reaching out to pull her against me one last time. “But you don't get to choose me.”
***
When the car arrived, I didn't have to drag her from the apartment building. I had thought I might need to, but she went willingly, with the promise that she would be back—or was it a threat? But what she hadn't realized, when she stormed out like a kid being forced onto the school bus, was there would be nothing to come back to.
“So, this is rock bottom,” I said to the empty apartment later on, as I sat down in front of the pile of coke, now back on the coffee table.
After Andy left, I'd had the sense to clean up a bit, because Zach had been right. The place was a fucking mess, and if there'd been any truth to Andy's psychobabble and Pops really was here, I could only imagine how pissed he was.
“Zach hates me,” I said, opening five of the bags and dumping them together on the largest shard of mirror I could find. “Jenna will, too, if she doesn't already.” I cut the lines thick, using more than I normally did. “I can't run the restaurant. I'm too irresponsible, or fucked up, or somethin'.”
I clasped my hands together to hover over the three, fat lines, like I was praying over my last supper, and tipped my head back to look at the ceiling. I wasn't sure if I needed to, in order for Pops to hear me, if what Andy said was true, but I did it anyway.
“You asked me why I did it,” I said. “You wanted to know, but I wouldn't tell you then, 'cause I didn't want you to feel bad. But now, I got nothin' to feel bad for. It's just the truth, nothin' more than that.”
I pointed a finger at a splotchy, old water stain. “You did this. And look,” I shrugged, “I made my choices, that's all on me, but none of this ever would've happened if it weren't for you. You drove Ma away. You were never there for us. You gave us the need to run away from