Page 16 of Salvaged Heart

16

BECKHAM

P anic swept through me, and by the time I forced my legs into motion, Anders had disappeared into the crowd. I weaved through the dancing bodies, desperately trying to get my eyes on him, trying to find some clue of the way he’d headed, but it was like he’d evaporated into thin air.

What had I done? What in the world was I thinking?

I had been so overcome with this primal urge to protect him and this fierce, unexplainable jealousy that I’d turned around and done the exact thing I had been trying to protect him from in the first place. Anders had been walking a delicate line as it was, and the dark pit of dread forming in my stomach told me I just pushed him over the edge of it. I had to find him before he made a mistake. I needed to find him before he undid the weeks of hard work to get sober.

I asked the bartender, checked the bathrooms, and practically screamed at the people closer to the stage, but as my gaze whipped around the dance floor, it was clear that wherever Anders disappeared to, it wasn’t here.

I scrambled for my phone, not sure who I planned on calling, having almost no contacts in the area. My thumb clicked Kara’s name out of habit, and I pressed the phone to my ear. I hated asking for help, but how many times had she told me I could contact her for anything? I had to trust she meant it.

She answered on the second ring, “Is everything okay?”

What a loaded question.

Five minutes ago, everything had felt so incredibly right, but now the world was crashing down around me, and fear like I'd never felt before gripped my chest. “No,” was all I could manage. My feet were moving quickly to the exit, and I burst into the parking lot, eyes tracking automatically over to where Anders had parked his bike, but it was gone. I had expected it, but the sight still jarred me to my core.

“Did he slip up?”

“Not yet, but he ran off upset. I have no idea where he went. His bike’s gone.”

“Text me the address where you are, and I’ll be right there.”

The jingle of keys in the background as she hung up the phone was reassuring, but every minute that passed waiting for her to arrive felt like an eternity. When the headlights of her blue Jetta finally appeared in the turn-in, I took off running towards her and dove into the passenger seat. Words fell from my mouth like a confession, everything that happened before and in the alley, followed by the look of complete agony that had overcome Anders’ face when he ran from me. To her credit, she didn’t bat an eye or even bother with the lecture of how foolish I'd been. She just put the car in drive and pulled off, taking the turn back towards town.

I let out a frustrated groan, gripping my hair in fists, almost pulling it from the root. A reassuring hand rubbed at my shoulder.

“Would he have gone back to his Aunt’s place?”

I had no idea. But I also didn’t have an alternative to suggest. The few possessions Anders owned were there, and while I knew he shared very little attachment to material things, he also couldn’t take off with nothing. Could he?

“Possibly. We should at least start there. It would make the most sense.” A new wave of terror wracked through me. “Kara, I didn’t throw out the drugs. They’re upstairs, hidden under the floorboards in my room.”

She flashed me a look confirming I was a complete fool, and her subtle increase in speed was not lost on me. All I could do was throw up a silent prayer that we got there before he could tear the house apart. A fragile plea that he hadn’t known where I hid everything to begin with.

Less than twenty minutes later, we turned onto Arbor Ct, and I didn’t even have to enter the house to know Anders wasn’t here. Kara’s sigh confirmed she felt it, too. We'd chosen wrong, and by now, Anders could be anywhere.

“Let me text some of the others from AA. Maybe he found a way to contact someone.”

It was unlikely, and she knew it. I'd tried to give Anders a list of contact details on several occasions since he joined the group, but each time, he'd either ripped it up in front of my face or I'd found it lying in the trash a day later. The closest to an argument the two of us had ever gotten into was over his unwillingness to connect with anyone else. Still, it had become clear to me that Anders did not trust easily, and the fact that he allowed me to help him in the first place was a rare gift—a gift I had taken advantage of and destroyed less than an hour ago.

How could I have been so stupid?

“We'll find him, don’t worry, Beckham.”

I wanted to scream at the false confidence in her tone. There were a million places he could be by now, the worst of which was dead.

No, I couldn’t let myself even consider that possibility.

Kara turned her phone on full volume, placed it in the cup holder, and backed out of the driveway at a startling speed. “I have no idea where else he'd go,” I confessed.

“I know a few spots.” I didn’t need to question her to know what she meant. She knew where dealers hung out, where Anders would immediately gravitate towards if he wanted to score.

“Will you be okay? I don’t want to…” I let my voice trail off. I needed Kara’s help more than anything right now, but if it came at the cost of risking her sobriety, I didn’t know if I could do it. I had already messed with one person’s tonight. I couldn’t risk another.

“I will be fine. I've been clean for a long time. You don’t need to worry about me, but I will tell you if it becomes too much.” I just nodded in understanding.

We pulled up on a couple of spots on this side of town, and each time, Kara jumped out of the car, disappearing to speak with someone she recognized, showing them the picture I'd texted her of Anders on her phone. It was shitty of me to hide in the car while she did all the talking, especially when it put her face to face with people who'd enabled the addiction that had almost taken her life. But we both knew if I left the car, I couldn’t be trusted not to put someone on their ass if we found out they had sold to Anders. By the fourth stop, I was growing frantic, and my entire body was shaking with an uncontrollable need to do something more. Kara’s soft shake of the head as she walked back in my direction killed me, but I tried to reassure myself that another non-sighting meant another person Anders hadn't bought from, and the greater the chance he hadn’t broken his sobriety. It was a feeble hope, but it was all I had to cling to.

“That was the last one I can think of.” She sighed as she slipped back into the car, hands flexing over the wheel. “We should go back to the house. Perhaps he returned while we were gone. Maybe he just went for a ride?”

“Maybe…” Kara’s phone rang loudly from where she had left it in the cup holder, and my breath caught. It had beeped many times while we drove all over the town, but the news had been the same each time. No one had seen him, no one had heard from him, but everyone promised they would contact us if they did.

“Mark, hey.” She listened intently to whatever he was saying, a look of relief blooming on her face. My heart started, but I forced myself to breathe deeply, calming my racing pulse in case the news wasn’t what I thought it was. “We will be right there, thank you.” She hung up and flashed me a smile. “Mark has him. He’s safe.”

“Is he…?”

“He turned up at an AA meeting a little over thirty minutes ago. Mark just happened to be there.”

I pressed my head into the seat rest behind me and drew in the first full breath I'd taken since Anders had pressed his lips to mine. The wave of relief was staggering, but so was the crash of guilt that followed closely behind it. I'd been so quick to presume that Anders would have run off to get high, so sure, in fact, I had spent hours tearing all over town in a desperate need to find him. Instead, he sought help and guidance from the only resource he had, that wasn’t me. He had chosen to stay clean even when he'd been betrayed by the person who was supposed to keep him safe. He had still chosen life.

My heart squeezed painfully in my chest, and I pressed my eyes tightly closed, refusing to let the tears that had been brewing all night finally fall.

He was okay. He was okay. He would be okay.