Fearless

“JAZMINE,” Rachel exclaimed excitedly as she burst through the front door.

I jumped, getting shocked out of whatever serene state of relaxation I was in before. My jolt made my head snap back, firmly smashing into Niall’s jaw.

“Aw, shit,” he muttered, making a grotesque, disgusted face. “I just bit my tongue, and it’s bleeding.”

My eyes turned to saucers as I backed up and stared at him. “Check if you bit a part off,” I demanded as my heart increased about a hundred beats a minute.

His gaze drifted toward the ceiling thoughtfully for a second before he shook his head. “It’s all there.”

“Then you’re going to be fine,” I assured him.

I didn’t notice until then that Rachel was standing over us, her arms crossed. She definitely meant business.

“Okay, I can’t do this. The blood is, like, pooling in my mouth,” Niall garbled before hurrying off to the bathroom.

“This better be good,” I warned her, considering I might have just murdered Niall. “What’s up?”

“I’ve made an important life decision tonight, and I want you to be a part of it,” she told me gravely as she sat next to me on the couch, leaving Niall’s previous spot for when he returned. “So you know how I went out with Caroline, right?”

I smiled as I nodded. As I’d hoped, not long after I disappeared back into my room to write my paper, Caroline had texted Rachel, asking her out. In the nearly four months that followed, they were inseparable. It was all very perfect.

“Okay, so she and I had a heart-to-heart, and she told me that she really wishes that I’d get myself help. She said that I’m reaching a point in my life where alcohol is going to do nothing but hold me back. And I think she’s right.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Finally, Rachel was seeing the light. Granted, I felt a little pang, since I’d been trying to tell Rachel a similar thing for years, and she never listened to me. But I was her younger cousin, while Caroline was her girlfriend. It was pretty much given that she’d listen to her girlfriend and take those thoughts into consideration before she’d do the same for me.

“Does that mean you’re going to go?” I questioned, trying not to sound too forceful about it.

Rachel paused for a minute. “I don’t know. I mean, hearing it from her made sense to me, you know? It made everything real.”

“What did I miss?” Niall voiced as he walked in. His face looked freshly washed, so I figured he probably dribbled some blood on himself while he was cleaning up. Somehow, that didn’t gross me out.

“Nothing that concerns you,” Rachel told him with an edge.

“Hey,” I chastised, reaching out and slapping her knee. “Don’t be mean to him.”

“I wasn’t being mean!” she defended. “I was stating a fact. He doesn’t have to know about this.”

Niall shot a confused look at me, but I just sighed. “Nialler, can you wait in my room for a couple minutes? I’ll be there in a bit.”

He got a kind of twinkle in his eye, and I knew what he was thinking. Too bad it wasn’t going to happen. Like I’d do that with my cousin home.

“My only concern,” Rachel continued from where she left off before Niall interrupted, “is the cost. We really don’t have the money to do it.”

“I told you before,” I reminded her, “that I did research, and lots of places will allow us to pay off over time, like rent. Once I get my job, I can pay it all off at once. But I still think it’ll be a good idea for you.”

She let out a long breath, her eyes fixed on the worn fabric of the couch. “I don’t know,” she expressed finally. “I just don’t know.”

“What’s holding you back?” I asked her. “Because you seem to know that this is the right thing to do...so...I’m confused as to what the problem is.”

“The problem is that I’m scared,” she snapped without hesitating. “I don’t know what goes on in rehab. And what am I going to do when I get out? People around me are going to drink. How do I keep myself from joining them? And what if I get out, and I fail? I really don’t want to fail at another thing in my life.”

I sighed. “Rachel, you’re not a failure at anything. You do the best you can with what you have. And right now, what you could have is a chance at healing yourself. Don’t you want to take that?”

She stayed quiet, so I took another breath and started a kind of motivational speech. “Picture yourself after you get out of rehab. You won’t feel the need to go to parties every other night and get trashed out of your mind. You won’t get taken advantage of. You and Caroline could have a really brilliant life together. Maybe marriage, since that’s legalized here? Maybe adopting a kid?”

Rachel turned to me and smiled, just to let me know that those were options she’d want for her life.

“But there’s no way you could do any of those things while you’re still an alcoholic. Caroline wouldn’t allow it to happen. But if you take that small step forward...you can do it.”

There was a long silence while Rachel pondered everything I’d said. I sat back, crossing my legs, waiting anxiously for her answer. Finally, there was progress being made.

“But what would you do?” Rachel mumbled.

I stopped for a second, kind of surprised, though I tried to shield the emotion from reaching my face. I couldn’t remember a time when Rachel had been concerned about me, what I would do, what my future held. It was always about her. It had always been about her.

Not that I really had anything against that. I made my whole life revolve around her, too. It was just the way the two of us were.

“Um,” I voiced after a while, hoping that it hadn’t been too much of an awkward pause, “I’ll be okay. I can get a job on campus that I can juggle with my schoolwork. It might mean less time with Niall, but I’ll make it work.”

Rachel leaped forward and planted a kiss on my cheek. “You’re so strong, Jazzy.”

I didn’t exactly know what to say to that.

“I’m going to call Caroline and tell her that I made my final decision. That I’m going to rehab.” She stood up and shook her head as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. “God, that sounds so weird. Me, going to rehab. Who ever would have thought, huh?”

“All it took was the right girl,” I smiled, trying to keep the excitement as hidden as possible. If I showed just how thrilled I was that Rachel was finally, after all those years, taking a step to help herself, she would definitely get freaked out and change her mind.

But once she disappeared into her room, I got up and darted off the couch, straight into my room.

Niall was sitting on my bed, twiddling his thumbs and biting his lip. “How’d it go?” he asked me, noticing the light in my eyes.

I just crashed into him, wrapping my arms around his neck, burying my face into his shoulder.

“You okay?” His voice was worried, like he thought something terrible had just happened.

“She’s going to do it,” was all I had to say for Niall to let out a sigh of relief.

“I’m happy for you,” he told me honestly, running a hand down my back. “You deserve it.”

The hope bubbled inside of me that, for once, things would go according to plan.