Page 80 of The Girlfriend Agreement (Conwick U #1)

My emotional state today is like a fraction. My numerator is panic, and my denominator is dread.

I wake up Saturday morning feeling A) like trash, B) confused about how I ended up in Ronnie and Andie’s room, and C) with a bone-deep dread that I did something stupid last night.

I groan, a headache splitting my skull in half, as I sluggishly force myself into a sitting position on the coral pink futon the cousins keep in their room just for me—for movie nights and the rare occasion they convince me to go out with them, because it’s easier to crash here than make the short walk home.

After fumbling around for my glasses (which I locate on the small table beside my makeshift bed), I slide them on to find Ronnie and Andie are already awake; Ronnie is primping herself at her desk-turned-vanity, while Andie is curled up on her baby blue bean bag, reading Dune for what must be the eight hundredth time.

They both stop what they’re doing the moment I’m upright. Andie puts down her book and jumps up to hand me a much-needed bottle of water. As for Ronnie, she grabs her sunglasses off a hook on the side of her vanity mirror, kneels before me, and slides them onto my face in front of my glasses.

“Here, sweetness,” she coos. “You’ll need these.”

After gulping down half the water and inhaling the painkillers Andie benevolently folds into my hand, I glance between the cousins, finally ready to ask them about last night.

Their answers are frustratingly vague. They make sense—that I was drinking alone at Grape Expectations (again, oof), that I called them, and they rushed over to get me—but it still feels like I’m missing something important.

Some memory of the previous evening that my alcohol-addled brain refuses to conjure.

Ronnie and Andie are both appropriately sympathetic to my Gin Eyre-induced hangover, and they even convince me to go to breakfast with them. I don’t bother informing the cousins that the thought of eating anything turns my stomach.

The campus cafeteria reeks of scrambled eggs and bacon—a smell that would normally have me salivating, but which only exacerbates my queasiness today.

I’m quiet as we eat, poking at the food on my plate as Ronnie and Andie chat animatedly about topics I only half listen to, my eyes drifting instead between the surrounding tables.

Though it’s not a fully conscious intention, I know I’m scanning those tables for Damian.

Weirdly, I don’t really know if I’m looking for him because I want to see him, or because I want to hide from him.

I feel bad about yesterday—about being too much of a coward to own up to the truth—but the lie has been going on for so long now that I don’t know how to broach the subject.

Part of me thinks it would be easier to just…

not. But when I consider where the road I’m on will lead if I continue down it this way, the future I imagine is lonely.

In theory, Past Lexi might have been okay with that since, at least that way, I wouldn’t get hurt… but that was before Damian.

He’s infuriating sometimes, cocky beyond belief, and annoyingly smug, but under all that sarcasm, he’s thoughtful and genuine in a way I didn’t know he could be—in a way that makes me want to lower my walls.

And while I want to strangle him more often than I don’t, he’s brought an excitement into my life these last few months that was missing before.

And that scares me. Because now, when I look at that distant future, I struggle to separate him from it.

If Ronnie and Andie notice my quiet contemplation, they don’t comment on it.

Nor do they pry. They do, however, walk me home (“The fresh air will do you good!” Ronnie had insisted), and while I don’t say more than maybe five words collectively between breakfast and that brief stroll, I’m grateful for their company and for the distraction.

By the time we turn onto my street, I’m even starting to feel better.

I might not engage in their conversation beyond a snort at something Ronnie says about a date that went horribly wrong on whatever reality TV show she’s currently watching, but it’s enough to take my mind off other matters, at least momentarily.

When we reach my house, the only car parked outside is my mom’s. Relief slams into me at that, but I’m surprised by the tinge of disappointment that follows. I shake it off and take the porch steps two at a time, trying my best to think of absolutely anything else as I unlock the front door.

When I step inside, the house is quiet, which is my first sign that something is wrong.

I don’t expect to hear Gina—she told me yesterday she has a shift at the hospital today—but I would have expected to hear something since Mom usually spends the days following her treatments on the sofa wrapped in a blanket watching TV.

It’s possible she’s napping, but she doesn’t like to sleep in silence, and there is no other word to describe the sheer soundlessness pervading the house.

“Mom?” I call out, a tremor of unease distorting my voice.

No response.

That’s my second sign that something isn’t right.

My heart is a jackhammer against my ribs, and behind me, Andie barely gets out the words, “What’s wrong?” before I tear Ronnie’s sunglasses from my face and fling them aside, lunging forward. Ice-cold terror consumes me the moment the front room comes into my eyeline.

“Mom!” I scream at the sight of her prone figure on the ground.

She’s unconscious on the floor next to the sofa, and I drop to my knees beside her, pressing a shaking hand to her throat. Thankfully, I feel a pulse, but it’s weak.

Too weak.

Behind me, I hear an audible gasp, and I snap my head in the direction of the cousins, who stand at the threshold of the room, terror etched across their faces.

Andie is already yanking her phone from her pocket when the command rips from my airway, fast and forceful, like the nausea surging up my esophagus.

“Call an ambulance!”

I pace the ER waiting room at Newport Hospital, one arm curled around my middle, while the other remains in the same place it has for the better part of the past hour—with my hand to my lips as my teeth gnaw unconsciously at the tip of my thumbnail.

The ambulance arrived seven minutes and three seconds after Andie called 911, and in another ten minutes, my mom was being triaged, and I was diverted outside to wait for an update where I’ve spent the entire time on the verge of a meltdown.

My anxiety is like a hand—not just around my throat but pushing at me everywhere from within until I feel too big for my skin. My breaths come in short bursts, and I’m sweating from how overheated I am. Is the thermostat cranked up in here or something?

Ronnie and Andie—who stayed with me until the ambulance arrived, then went back to campus to get Ronnie’s car so they could follow me here—sit nearby, and though I rarely meet their gazes, I can sense them watching me.

“Lex,” Ronnie says carefully, her tone persuasive but not pushy, “maybe sit down for a bit. Wearing a hole in the floor isn’t doing you or your mom any good.”

Before I can respond, Andie pipes in, “Hey, there’s Gina.”

My head snaps to the side, in the direction of the ER doors, and sure enough, I spot my aunt clad in her usual ceil blue scrubs. She gives me a hesitant smile when our eyes lock as she crosses the busy waiting room to meet me.

“Hi, honey,” she calls out once I’m within earshot.

Her curly hair, which is usually kempt in its work bun, is a tangled mess, and her eyes are bloodshot as if she’s been crying.

“Mom?” I croak, unable to form any other comprehensible words with the way my heart is pounding violently in my throat.

Gina must realize how she looks because she quickly shakes her head. “Don’t worry, she’s fine?—”

“She didn’t look fine,” I retort, my fear evident in my quavering voice.

That image in my head—the one of my mom on the floor, unmoving—is something I don’t think I’ll ever shake for as long as I live.

Though I can’t bring myself to say the words aloud, there was a moment when I thought she was dead.

That’s the opposite of fine .

“I know,” Gina murmurs, giving my arm a consoling rub. “ But she is going to be okay.”

Guilt claws at my insides. While I was out throwing a hissy fit and getting drunk alone, then waking up hungover in my friends’ room, my mom was suffering. She could have died . She very well might have if I didn’t arrive home when I did.

“What’s wrong with her?” Ronnie asks when I don’t respond to Gina, and I jolt at her sudden appearance at my side.

When I glance at her, she reaches out and takes hold of my hand when she catches me trying to touch my glasses, and proceeds to give it a gentle squeeze.

With a tremulous breath, I squeeze hers back.

My aunt, who adores my best friend, gives Ronnie a grateful smile, and I know she’s relieved that I didn’t have to face not only finding my mom but this last hour alone.

“The simple answer?” Gina says after a pause. “Anemia. The medical explanation: her hemoglobin levels were critically low. It’s not uncommon for them to fluctuate after infusions, especially this far into treatment, and especially with a cancer like CLL, which can suppress bone marrow function.”

“But she seemed fine yesterday,” I protest. “Better than normal, even.” While I was busy worrying about Damian, I should have been more focused on that .

I should have been concerned that she was different instead of elated at the prospect of gorging myself on fucking chow mein.

“And this has never happened after an infusion before,” I add.

While that may be true, it’s also an excuse—a way to sidestep the guilt now threatening to tear me in two.