The One Who Lived

Chapter Twenty-One

The whole town knows what a current spiraling mess that Vanderbilt Grey has become.

I mean, it isn't hard to miss his blood shot eyes, wobbly walk, and slurring words. Nor miss his constant need to be taken care of by someone which always turns into a gossiping story because it is usually women who have to take care of him and the ones who want to be able to say they screwed Vanderbilt Grey – sober or not.

They just don't realize that after he fucks them and fulfills their fanaticizes – that he calls me. It is my number that he dials, and my voice that he begs to talk him to sleep.

Every. Single. Night.

The first time that it happened, I was confused as hell. It was two AM, and I swore that he must have mistaken my name for someone else's, but then my phone rang again – over and over until I finally answered.

Ander was plastered and simply 'wanted to hear my voice.'

He did it again a few nights later, and then again, a few nights after that. It has become routine that almost every other night he calls me from two to three am when he is drunk. I personally think that when Ander is drunk, he is his loneliest. He starts to get into his head and the only person who can drag him out is me.

The worst part is that I always swear not to answer.

Then it rings again.

I can usually resist for the first two calls, but it is always the third that gets me. The third one is the one where I can't resist the scramble around my sheets until I find the thing that never seems to stay silent.

I am currently making it through the third ring. I am not going to answer this time because I know better.

Please don't call again. Please, Vanderbilt. Don't call again.

Then the phone rings for the fourth phone call of the night.

I know I shouldn't answer – trust me, I know – but I can't help it. I swear the phone is my drug and his voice is the best hit.

"Hello?" I whisper as low as I can because I naïvely believe that he won't talk if he can't hear me.

"Ada?" Hawkins's voice startles me because I was expecting Anders. "I need you to come to Clinton's. Like right now." Hawkins says with so much urgency that my heart starts to speed up.

I force myself into a sitting position. "Why? What's wrong, Hawkins?" I ask knowing that it is probably nothing, and I can't get myself psyched out because my PTSD and inability to control everyone's lives and safety for forever.

"Just come, Ada." He sighs and I can easily imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's Ander." Hawkins says pulling me straight out of my sleep haze and basically launches me across the room.

I am pulling on pants and grabbing a jacket before I even respond to him. "What is wrong with him, Hawkins?" He doesn't immediately answer. "Hawkins! What the fuck is wrong with my boyfriend?!" I demand, slipping and calling Ander my boyfriend when he hasn't been that in over a month.

"I don't know, Ada." Hawkins starts sounding completely shocked at my attitude. "I just know that he isn't listening to any of us, and I know that the only person he will listen to is you." Hawkins says as I slide into my car and drive the same five-minute drive that Anni drove that night, and the same drive I have made trying to ruin my life because Anni ruined my hope.

I hang up on Hawkins in anger because he hasn't really been answering me, and I am on my way anyway. I know that Ander is probably okay. I know that he is currently falling into the pit of self-anger and frustration that I fell into after Anni, but I don't know what his Anni is. No one knows what has caused him to spiral so quickly and so hard.