Lost: A New Adult Contemporary Romance Part 12

By the time I push past the crowd of students and get out into the hallway, he's long gone.

"Okay... now what?" I mutter to myself as I try to collect my thoughts.

Do I just let him go? It's none of my business what's going on with him; maybe he wants to be left alone.

"No way! Something's really wrong with him!" my mind screams back at me. I'm really worried about him.

Maybe Tina's right... maybe I do have a crush on him.

No. It has nothing to do with crushes and everything to do with that look in his eyes. I've seen it in the mirror almost every day since I was fifteen.

Owen is lost just like me, and he needs my help.

I pull out my cell phone, and this time it's easy for me to call him. No fear or awkwardness is going to hold me back today-not when he needs help.

The call goes straight to his voicemail, and I hang up without leaving a message. He turned off his phone.

Tina is next. I pace nervously up and down the hall, dodging students as they wander out of the cla.s.sroom, and she finally answers five rings later.

"Hi Maria! I'm just about to go to cla.s.s. Can I call you back?"

"You have Craig's phone number, right?" I ask, ignoring her question.

"Umm... what?"

"Tina, it's important."

"Yeah, I have it," she finally answers. "I have cla.s.s, though. Can it..."

"Call him. I need you to get Owen's address and text it to me."

"But..."

"Please! This is really important!" I beg, cutting her off again.

"Maria, what's going on?"

Tina sounds nervous, and I wish I knew what was wrong so that I could ease her mind.

"Everything's okay," I lie. "I'll explain it tonight, okay? I promise."

Friday, March 1 4:30 PM.

Maria.

I hurry down the long, icy staircase toward my apartment, but this time, instead of going all the way to the bottom and turning left, I only go down two flights and then turn right.

Owen and Craig live in apartment twenty at the far end of the row. How did I never once see him in the two years I've lived here?

My knuckles ache from the cold as I rap on the door, and I stick my hands inside my coat pockets as I wait. n.o.body answers.

"Owen?"

I bang on the door again and s.h.i.+ft my weight back and forth between my cold feet. I'll wait out here all night if I have to, but I hope it doesn't come to that. It's only four-thirty, but it's already getting dark.

Just as I'm about to knock again, I hear footsteps inside. The lock clicks, and then Owen opens the door. He has an ice pack wrapped around his right hand and he looks like he's been crying.

"Can I come in?" I ask as he stares at me in silence.

He shakes his head indecisively. For a moment, I think he's going to close the door in my face, but then he finally breaks down and invites me in.

"Thanks," I tell him, and I take off my boots and coat as he closes the door and silently walks past me.

The downstairs of his apartment is exactly like mine, except it's cleaner and better organized. With four girls living in my apartment, it's hard to keep things tidy. Tiny potted plants line the kitchen window sill, and the living room walls are practically covered with framed photographs.

"Um... do you want a drink?" he finally asks, heading into the kitchen.

"No, but thank you," I answer. "I want to know what happened to your hand, and I want to see it."

"I just hurt it a little," he protests. "It's not a big deal."

"Bulls.h.i.+t it's not a big deal!" I fire back at him.

I don't know where all this energy and confidence came from, but I feel like I could stare down even Tina right now. Maybe Tina's a little bit of a stretch, but I'm doing really well by my standards, at least.

"I'm fine, Maria," he tries to tell me, but the pained look on his face gives him away.

"Oh come on already! Show me your hand!" I snap, glaring angrily at him.

He finally gives in and removes the ice pack. I feel sick to my stomach as I see the bulging bandages around his thumb. The swelling is horrible even with ice and bandages, and I almost throw up as I carefully unwrap it and see that his skin is turning black.

"Can you move your thumb at all?" I ask, and he shakes his head.

"That settles it, then," I say. "Come on-I'm taking you to the hospital."

"It's just bruised, Maria!"

"It's f.u.c.king broken, Owen!" I shout at him, and he winces and shrinks back from me as if I've just struck him across the face.

I back away from him and go silent, uncertain about what just happened. Did I just do something wrong? n.o.body likes to be yelled at, but something about how he reacted doesn't feel right.

"It's not the first time I've broken a bone. I'll be okay," he says quietly, trying not to look at me.

"Owen... I'm not leaving until you come with me," I tell him as gently as I can. There's no way I'm letting him try to wait out a broken bone.

He tries to argue, but I'm not taking 'no' for an answer tonight.

"You have to go to a doctor! I'll even drive you. We can take Tina's car," I push, hoping he'll give in to pressure.

"Is this really why you came over?" he asks after a long silence.

"It's a start," I answer. "We can talk more later."

"Alright, I'll go," he finally gives in, and he sighs dejectedly as he fetches his coat.

The sun has long since gone down when I finally get Owen back to our apartment complex. It took the doctors less than an hour to set his thumb and get him into a cast, but we still had to wait in the emergency room for three hours before that.

"How are you holding up back there?" I call back to him as I pull into the parking spot.

"I... wow, really dizzy," slurs Owen from the back seat. The doctor gave him some Vicodin to stop the pain, and it's. .h.i.tting him like a truck.

"Don't worry; it's just the painkillers," I tell him as I help him out of the car. He wraps his arm around mine and wobbles across the parking lot as I support him "This way. Careful, don't trip," I say gently, guiding him slowly, step by difficult step, down the staircase toward his apartment. I imagine that if I let go of him, he'd flop head over heels all the way to the bottom like a human slinky.

It takes me almost half an hour to get him down to the door of his apartment and another five minutes until he figures out where his keys are. He's so loopy from the painkillers that he's practically helpless.

Finally, he finds his keys. After the third time he drops them in the snow, I s.n.a.t.c.h them away from him, unlock the door, and then sigh happily as the welcoming warmth of the apartment washes over me.

"You want anything to drink?" I ask him after getting him comfortable on the couch.

"Um... any beer in the fridge?"

"You're on Vicodin. You can't have any."

"I like tea... can I have tea?"

"Where is it?"

"Top cabinet above the stove."

I hunt through four cabinets before finally finding the one with all his mugs, and then repeat the process with drawers and spoons while the water heats up in the microwave. In goes the teabag, and then I head to the fridge to get something for myself while his tea steeps.

My attention immediately latches onto the lumpy red piece of fruit sitting on top of a Tupperware full of leftovers. He has a pomegranate!

"And it's all mine," I think excitedly.

I take it and the tea back to the couch and sit down next to him.

"Do you mind if I have this?" I ask, holding up the pomegranate.

"Planning on being here for a while? They take forever to eat."

"I'll be here as long as you want me to be."

"Go ahead, then. I... I really want the company," he answers awkwardly.

I watch him closely as he sips his tea. He looks much better now that the doctor put it in a cast. The bone is set correctly and the swelling in his hand has mostly gone away.

"Owen... what happened to your hand?"

"I got angry," he answers succinctly.

I silently glare at him. That's not going to cut it tonight.

"I... well, I got really angry, and I hit the table," he confesses, pointing to the dining room table.

"You hit the table so hard that you broke your hand?" I ask in shock, gaping at him.

He nods sheepishly.

"Why?" I gasp, shaking my head. "What on earth could possibly get you that angry?"

Owen struggles to his feet without a word and wobbles across the living room away from me. I leap to my feet and hurry after him, worried that he'll fall and hurt himself.

"I'm okay! Let go of me," he protests, his voice slurring as he tries to extract his arm from my grip. I shake my head and hold tightly to him, and he quickly gives up. Instead, he leads me up to the wall of photographs and points to one near the sliding gla.s.s door to the balcony.

I immediately recognize him in the picture. He was handsome even as a teenager. A young, brown-haired girl stands next to him in the picture and waves to the camera.

"This is my family," he tells me, his voice calm and quiet.

His father is a gruff, bearded man built like a lumberjack and with about as much fas.h.i.+on sense. Owen clearly inherited most of his genes from his mother. She is slender and beautiful, with long, straight blond hair and a narrow nose. His father has brown hair like the little girl.

"You all look very happy," I say, not sure what else is appropriate.

"Every last one of us is faking that smile," he tells me, and the sadness in his voice nearly breaks my heart.

"If I didn't smile in that picture-if I didn't act like we were a perfectly normal family-I'd have been in deep, deep s.h.i.+t when we got home," he continues.

I squeeze his arm softly and lean in closer to him as he stares at the picture. I can't bring myself to say anything, but I hope he knows that I'm listening. I want to hear his story.

He takes a deep breath and turns to face me.

"Those broken bones I told you I'd had before..."

He cuts himself off and starts to turn away from me, but I reach up and gently put my hand on his shoulder to stop him.

"Please tell me," I whisper.

"They're all from Dad," he says, his voice cracking. "He's why I never go home. He's still back there, and it'll be just like it always has been if I ever go back there."

Without a second thought, I wrap my arms around him and hug him. I've never seen someone need to be held so badly in my life.