Love Like This

I hated hospitals. Always had (but really, who liked them?) They were the worst; the food sucked and they reeked of cleanliness that only reminded you of where you were, and those damn doctors that thought of themselves as gods because they held the lives of hundreds in their hands. And waiting rooms were always worse with the too-hard chairs and old magazines, people crying or looking like they were going to cry, there was the occasional impatient child that wanted to leave, but most of the time there weren’t.

Pete and Joe were waiting with two of the guys in No One Cares, Lizz’s band. I think it was Connor and Dave, but I was probably wrong. I sat by Dave (or was it Connor?) and Patrick sat on my other side.

“How is she?” Trick asked.

Joe shrugged halfheartedly. “Bitchy. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She wanted Ryan and Steve in there, though. That’s progress, I guess, because she didn’t want anyone near her after she woke up for the longest time. She kicked me out of the room earlier, threw her pillow at me.”

Connor (maybe it was Dave) nodded. “Yeah, she left to go see Garrett and then she just never came back.” I stared at him wide eyed. “She got in a car accident after, said she was crying.” He shrugged. “She wouldn’t really say much else.”

Pete had an unreadable expression on his face, maybe some combination of guilt and having to sneeze? I turned to Patrick. “Why didn’t you tell me any of that in the car?”

He frowned. “All I knew was that she’d gotten in a car accident.” He gently took my hand in his, lacing our fingers together. It calmed me slightly, but not enough. But I was past the panic attack I’d had in the car, at least.

The door opened and the other two members of her band came in. “She said she wants Claudia in there. Just Claudia,” Ryan, the drummer, said. I looked at Patrick nervously before I got up and left the room, counting the numbers till I found her room. I knocked lightly on the door then opened it and slipped in.

“Claudia?” she asked quietly. I walked in further to see Lizz lying in the hospital bed. Her face was cut up pretty bad on the left, but the right side was fine. I gave her a small smile. “Thanks for coming.”

I nodded and sat in the seat that was close to the foot of the bed. “Patrick woke me up at like three in the morning to get here,” I said softly, and if we weren’t sitting in a hospital room, I would’ve gave a small laugh.

“Everyone’s been looking at me funny,” she said slightly louder. “I hate it. I hate this hospital.” She frowned. “The doctors won’t tell me anything.”

I wondered if she was thinking the same thing that I had been for most of the car ride here. “How long have you been here?” I asked, picking at the chipped green polish on my thumb. I looked up at her, watching her expression change, eyes focusing on something across the room before she turned her attention to me.

“Sometime yesterday afternoon. Pete found out first, so he’s been here longest. He called everyone, I guess,” she said with a shrug then wincing in pain. She pulled the blanket up higher over her chest and smoothed out a wrinkle over her stomach.

I frowned. “Why’d it take so long to get to us?” I asked, wondering if it was more of Pete freaking out or if I was just less important. I decided it was the first option.

“Everyone was freaking out, I think. I’m hungry. Can you text Pete to go get like Sonic for me or something?”

*

When she had happily finished her burger and fries from Sonic we sat in a comfortable silence. A nurse came in and took Lizz’s temperature, writing something on a chart and asking a few questions before she left.

“Garrett and I aren’t together anymore,” she said after a few minutes. “Before I got in the accident.... then I was going to see Pete after I talked to Garrett...” She frowned. “Car came out of nowhere, I got run off the road.”

I stood awkwardly, not sure what to say. “What do you mean? Why’d you and Garrett break up?”

She shrugged. “It just wasn’t working anymore.” She set her jaw, teeth clenched. There was something she wasn’t telling me. I wasn’t one of those people that could just see through Lizz—like, if Joe were in here, he would’ve seen through right through her, known exactly what happened, but he wasn’t, so I had to make do myself.

“Why Pete? Why didn’t you call me or something?” I asked, knowing damn well that I probably didn’t want to know.

She turned her head the other way, still being overly stubborn. She’d never been like this with me before. “He understands this shit. He knew my relationship was going downhill for a long time. He was there when Garrett cheated. That broke me, Claudia. That fucking broke me.” Her eyes were watering and I knew she would start crying in a minute, still mad and not wanting to talk about it.

I frowned. “Lizz, we’re best friends. You can tell me anything. You know that. I would never judge you.” I crossed my arms over my chest. If she was going to put up her walls, I was too. She blinked hard, staring at me. And then I understood everything she wouldn’t say. “How many times?”

“Does it matter?” she asked in a whisper. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

“How many times did you fuck Pete while you were with Garrett?” I asked, raising my voice. Because I knew that when I left the room and had to go into the waiting room to say the next two people could go see her, I wanted to be able to look at Pete with the right amount of disapproval and disappointment and hatred.

Lizz dropped her hands and opened her eyes slowly, her jaw still set and a look of defiance burning hot in her eyes. “Why does it matter?” she asked her voice more harsh than I had ever heard before.

I narrowed my eyes. “It matters because you were with Garrett and he fucking loved you,” I hissed. My hands balled into fists and I knew I would be leaving the room with a bitter taste in my mouth.

“Not everything is as great as it looks, Claudia. Garrett and I were never going to last. I was okay with that. I’m not good in relationships, he knew that, he knew that something would happen and we would break up.” She drew in a shaky breath. “Garrett and I haven’t been really happy for a long time. And actors are fucking babies. We were fighting a lot behind closed doors. That’s why we never lived together. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great guy…”

“How many times, god dammit?”

She leaned forward, covering her face with her hands. “You’re going to be mad,” she murmured. “You’re going to be mad and you’re gonna storm out of the room and leave me and you won’t want to talk to me again.” Her voice broke. “And then, when it’s all over and the insults and bitchy remarks and comebacks are made and you get over it… well, not completely over it… and you’re in bed while I’m still stuck in this stupid hospital, you’re gonna realize that it was a stupid fight, but I’ll still be pretty pissed and god knows you will be, too, even if you don’t admit it to anyone, and we just won’t talk again… Please don’t let that happen, please, Claudia. Don’t make me say.”

She uncovered her face, looking up at me, tears running down her cheeks. It was harder to be pissed when she was crying, but I couldn’t let her have her way that easily. If she wouldn’t answer that question, there was at least one other thing I needed to know. “Was the baby even Garrett’s?” She had that deer in the headlights look. I had my answer.

I sat back down in the ugly green seat that wasn’t even comfortable and looked away from her towards the door. My hair fell over my face but I could care less. “Twenty-three,” she said quietly, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear. And then I started to cry. She’d fucked Pete twenty-three times, but that wasn’t what got to me most. The worst part was that she had lied to me, lied to my face without giving it a second thought and didn’t realize that I wouldn’t have cared at all if she had just told me when I first went to visit her in her apartment.

“Whatever,” I mumbled before I got up and left the room. I walked down the hallway, slowly, not wanting the guys to see that I had been crying. I wiped my eyes and stood outside the door to the waiting room for a few minutes recomposing myself. When I finally sucked it up, I opened the door and went in.

“Next two can go in,” I said softly. “Joe, will you take me to the hotel?” My older brother looked at me, surprised that I had picked him over Patrick. I gave Trick a smile as Pete and one of the guys in Lizz’s band got up. I stopped Pete when he was a foot away. “Did you know?”

“What?” Pete asked, genuinely confused.

“Fucking asshole. Did you know? Are you why they aren’t together anymore?” I hissed. Joe and Patrick were beside me, holding me back—God, I wanted to hit Pete so bad.

Pete eyed me cautiously. “She only told me the day of the accident. They were heading for a breakup for the past few months. I don’t know how they lasted. I had nothing to do with any of it,” he said before quickly leaving the room. I struggled to get out of their grip and then left the room, fuming. I marched to the car wordlessly, Patrick and Joe behind me a few feet.

I sat in the back, not wanting to be beside anybody. I glared out the window as Patrick and Joe sat in the front. “You know, I’m really glad you’re here,” Joe said. “Because I came in a taxi.”