When no one answered, I tugged her out of the way and smashed my fist on the door. “Open this door, or I swear I’ll break it down.”
I leaned in, pressing my ear against the surface, and I heard someone swearing inside. “I’m serious,” I yelled. “Open up. We’re here for Ivy.”
At last, the handle turned with a metallic creak, and a girl with a pink pixie cut stood glaring at us from the threshold. “Yell a bit louder, will ya?”
I pushed past her, noting a guy smoking a joint in an armchair in the corner of the room. My eyes narrowed at him. “Where is Ivy?”
“The neighbor?” the guy drawled. “She’s in the bedroom.”
The girl who let us in jumped in front of me and put her palms against my chest. “She didn’t want to see anyone.”
“I don’t care,” I said, moving past her to push open the first door I saw.
Ivy was lying on a bed, passed out.
“Mimi, what the fuck?” Zoey hissed behind me. “What did you do to her?”
“You all need to check yourself. She came tome.”
I kneeled on the ground beside the bed, touching Ivy’s face with my hands, but she didn’t wake. Everything was falling into place inside my head. Mimi. I’d heard that name before. This was the “friend” that left Ivy alone in a club when she was high, and now, it looked like she’d given her something else.
“What did you give her?” I demanded, piercing Mimi with a hard look.
Zoey looked horrified. “Youdruggedher?”
“Oh my God, relax, you psychos,” Mimi said with a scowl. “I gave her an Ambien. I ran into her a few hours ago. She was crying and needed something to help her calm down.”
I dropped my head on Ivy’s stomach and let out a relieved sigh.
“Is she going to be okay?” Zoey asked.
“Yes. She’ll wake up in a few hours,” I said.
Mimi scoffed. “Did you think I was going to murder her or something? Jesus Christ. Get the fuck out of my place, would you?”
I grabbed Ivy under her shoulders and knees, lifted her off the bed, and carried her out the room. Zoey kept arguing with Mimi, but I tuned them out, focused on getting Ivy into her own bed. She looked so sorrowful in my arms, her face pale and unhappy. God, I wanted to talk to her so fucking badly.
When I emerged from Ivy’s bedroom, Zoey was waiting for me in their living room, her expression a mix of relief and apprehension. She sat on the armchair with her legs folded in front of her.
“I feel so stupid,” she said, shaking her head. “I should have known she might be at Mimi’s. It’s what she did the last time she was upset.”
“Upset about what?”
Ivy’s friend let out a long breath and cast me a weary look. “The situation with Oliver. She was finally ready to get over him. He’s lived inside her head for years, Jamie, and fuck, maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I can see that you really like her, and I don’t want you to give up on her. She’s been noticeably happier since you started seeing each other.”
Sitting down on the sofa across from her, I put my elbows on my knees and leaned forward. “Tell me what’s been going between them.”
She winced. “I—”
“Please, Zoey. You don’t need to get into the details, but I’m flying blind right now. All I’ve been able to gather so far is that they somehow stayed in touch over the years. What was he trying to do? I want to know what I’m going to be dealing with when she wakes up.”
Zoey unfolded her legs and put her feet down on the ground. “She really hasn’t said anything to you?”
“It’s our rule. We don’t talk about Oliver to each other. He was a shadow that would appear from time to time, but we did our best to ignore it. We were both afraid what talking about him would do to us,” I admitted.
It had been a mistake, and the look in Zoey’s eyes told me she thought the same thing. I’d been so focused on protecting the happiness I had with Ivy, that I’d turned a blind eye to something I shouldn’t have. Real relationships didn’t work that way. Real relationships could withstand a storm.
“When she returned from that tour, she was heartbroken,” Zoey began. “Ivy told Sophie and I everything that had happened between her and Oliver. She fell madly in love with him, but it was more than the typical madness that comes with someone’s first love. Her feelings for him bordered on obsession. He was the only thing she’d talk about. She was very angry at you for a long time, blaming you for interfering, but I think in many ways she was projecting her own anger at herself on you. She thought it was her fault that things ended the way they did.”
