Falling From Disgrace

“People will say stupid things when they’re angry and hurt, Adrianna. That’s all that was.”

“No,” she answered him, pulling herself up and away from his embrace. She scooted herself back so that she was sitting on his knees and shook her head vehemently. “It was my fault, Jack. She was with me, she was in my car. I killed Rachel!”

Pissed off now, Jack looked at her angrily and shouted, “Would you stop it? Thinking like that is complete bullshit! Do you realize that your way of rationalizing this could in turn place all the blame on that guy you were waiting for, what’s his name, Ethan?”

Adrianna looked taken aback, confusion washing over her downtrodden expression. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let me ask you something?” Jack continued. “This Ethan, did he tell you he was going to be at that party?”

“What does that have to do with anything, Jack?”

“Just answer me.”

“Yes.”

“So you had gone to the party expecting Ethan to be there. If he had shown up would you have told Rachel to let Jason pick her up?”

Adrianna could see now where he was going with this and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like that he was trying to convince her that she was not responsible for her best friend’s death but she said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“So then the accident wasn’t your fault, it was Ethan’s,” Jack concluded.

“What? No! Jack that’s ridiculous!”

“I know it is!” he shouted back to her. “But can’t you see that just the same way you’re thinking that you are to blame here can easily be turned around so that all the responsibility would fall on Ethan’s shoulders?

“Ethan didn’t show up and so you asked your friend to wait around with you longer. If he had shown up, like he said he was going to, Rachel would have left with her boyfriend and she never would have been in the car with you during the accident. Shit, if he had shown up, there’s a chance you never would have even been in that accident in the first place, Ade! Or how about we blame the person that threw the party, huh? If he hadn’t thrown a party there wouldn’t have been an accident either! Do you see where I’m going with this? I understand that losing your best friend and being in an accident like that must have been horrible and you have every right to be fucked up over it. But don’t expect me to understand when you say you killed your best friend because it’s not true and it’s fucking bullshit.”

Adrianna’s sorrow evaporated and anger took root. She removed herself from the couch and quivered from the mixture of ire and craving for more meds. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, reaching for her purse that she had dropped on the floor upon arriving. “I should have known you wouldn’t understand this.”

When she moved towards the exit, Jack left the couch as well and stopped her, reaching out to hold on to her wrist. He softened a little and spoke to her more gently.

“It’s not that I don’t understand, Adrianna. I get it, I do. The results of that accident were horrific and no one who hasn’t gone through something like that could ever fully comprehend what it was like for you. It was traumatic and awful, I’m not trying to say it wasn’t. But saying you’re to blame, that you’re responsible for killing your friend, is completely unreasonable.”

Adrianna tried to think of something to say to refute that but her brain was unable to focus on anything but her turning stomach and shaking limbs. She needed a pill and needed one now.

Pulling out of Jack’s grasp, she marched to his kitchen and pulled her supply from her purse. To hell with not taking them in front of him. The lid of the plastic bottle released with a popping noise and she let one, single, solitary tablet fall into her hand and then brought it to her mouth. One pill would not do much to sate her but it would calm her long enough until she could get home and take more.

“How long has it been since you took one of those?” Jack asked as he watched her cup her hand under the running faucet to wash her pill down.