It was almost peaceful shopping with Adam. Of the three men, he had been the first I had found comfort and security in, and that had only grown with my time there. Collin, he had a sweet heart, but was always making comments and innuendos. And though they usually made me laugh, it was nice to not have him making them while my body was still trying to recollect itself. Logan too, though he had always seemed to have my best interests in mind, was extremely bipolar and I don't know I'd be able to handle it right now.

Adam, however, was trailing along beside me, spending most of his time with his face in his phone as he texted someone.

"Okay, who's got you smiling like that?" I asked, stopping in the produce section of the store. "Who is she?"

His cheeks flushed a little as he looked away. "I. . . um. . . I don't know what you're talking about."

I leaned against the cart. "Adam, come on, talk to me. I'm a girl, I may be able to help you out."

"Lea." The minute my best friend's name left his mouth; sI was both shocked and not surprised all at once. I had seen how they were when she'd stopped by, all flirtatious and embarrassed. What was a little shocking as she hadn't been talking to me much, but had been talking to Adam this entire time.

"That's great!" I said before he could question my silence. "I'm happy for you guys, really. She deserves a nice guy for once, someone who understands her. And you. . . you're a really sweet guy and deserve only the best too."

I made mental note to call Lea later as he bagged apples a few feet away.

"Yeah, I guess." He shrugged. "She probably deserves better than me."

"Adam, don't be so hard on yourself." I tried to be encouraging. "I know I can't say a lot, but you've been nothing but kind and selfless since I walked through the front door of that condo."

He laughed. "That's because the one thing my mother actually did do was teach me how to respect women."

The mention of his mother forced him into a shell of silence until we were back in his car in the parking lot. He stared out the window with a sad expression, as if he were staring somewhere far beyond the rows of cars.

"You know," My voice broke through the quietness. "I know Logan's family and a decent amount about his past, I met Collin's family. But I know nothing about you, Adam."

"It's because there's not much to know. I didn't have a family." He spat the words bitterly. "No brothers or sisters, just my rich parents who decided I wasn't the child they had "prayed" for. I was a disappointment because I wasn't interested in religion, or sports, or their little business dinners. It got to the point where I was starting to get suicidal. Didn't have any friends, girls kinda walked the other way in the halls, chasing after guys like Collin and Logan. I was a lot like Jesse, I suppose, in being the outcast. As soon as I had my diploma in my hands I packed my shit and left. Haven't spoke to them since and don't plan to."

I knew better than to try and comfort him, but found words leaving my mouth before I could stop them. "I'm sorry, Adam, though I know that doesn't help. I'm assuming my brother found you once you showed up on campus?"

"Yeah." Adam nodded. "We shared some History class together and he noted he'd seen me jumping from dorm room to dorm room with a few of the guys I'd met, and asked if I needed a place to crash for a while. As soon as I started sleeping here, I got a job so I could help him out with rent. Then Logan showed up, in all his doped up glory, and things got heated for a while between him and Jesse. But it was Collin who never really got along with your brother. They always kind of. . . I guess they just had a different thought process. Collin was always happy and optimistic, hated being labeled as Jesse's friend after the reputation he sparked up on campus. He wanted out, but he's here on a Basketball scholarship, so he didn't really have anywhere to go. I love and hate them in different ways. But now that Jesse's gone, everything just feels off."

I sent him a quick sideways glance as he slowed to a stop at a redlight, but couldn't think of anything to say.

"I'm scared too, you know. I've seen Collin and Logan get into it before and its not pretty. But Jesse was always here to break it up." Adam tapped the steering wheel anxiously. "Now you're here and you're stirring feelings in both of them, which I'm sure you can probably see. What I've never seen is Collin act the way he is. He usually has a new girl every weekend. He hasn't slept with anyone since the first week you spent at the condo. He likes you, clearly, but I suspect you don't share those feelings."

"What makes you say that?" I breathed.

He laughed. "I don't know, Emily, maybe the fact that you are the one that kissed Logan that night. Or the fact that you have slept in the same bed as him twice. How your thoughts always revolve around him."

"It doesn't matter." I tore my eyes from him and stared out my window and on to the crowded street. "Logan told me to find comfort in you and Collin. Maybe it's best I try and make things work with Collin."

"Just be careful." He warned. "I know that no matter how this ends, they will clash and it won't be pretty. But I don't want you to be caught in the midst of that war."

**

Collin was stretched out along the couch when I walked out of the room to make up some dinner, tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable.

"Did you guys ever consider getting a new couch?" I questioned.

Collin sat up, grinning. "Adam's been trying to get us to get rid of the piece of crap for years. Jesse just refused because it held so many memories. But now. . . I'd say yeah, it's probably time for a new one."

"I'll talk to Adam." I responded. "Maybe we can all pitch in and you two can go grab one tomorrow."

"Sure, yeah." Collin agreed, deciding to abandon his uncomfortable position on the couch and join me in the kitchen. He sat himself on the counter, watching as I threw a salad together for myself, too lazy to cook any real food.

"I'm sorry about last night. I. . . we really should have thought it through." He apologized. "You shouldn't have had to spend this morning over the toilet. Or with Logan for that matter."

I found myself defending him before I could stop. "He's not really that bad, Collin. He did a lot for me last night and this morning."

"I know he's not that bad, Emily. But you deserve better than what he is." His shoulder's slumped forward a little. "I've seen him act perfectly normal while using. He walks and talks normal, but the second he starts jonesing, he's a completely different person. I don't want you to have to be a victim of that person. I don't want you to have to see him like that."

I looked up from my food and at Collin. "He's not using. When I was at the gym. . . when I kissed him, I looked into his eyes. He wasn't using. You forget I grew up with him around. My brother used to talk about his withdraws, Collin. He brought him back to our place once during one too. I've been victim to it already."

"It's different now." Collin insisted, jumping off the counter.

"How so?"

He fell back a step, ready to turn on his heel and walk out as he responded. "Because he's in love with you now."

*

As I sat in the middle of Jesse's bed after midnight, staring at the door, waiting for Logan, I couldn't help but let Collin's words get to me. Even a little bit of my conversation with Adam this morning was starting to eat at me. I pushed myself from the bed and headed for the bathroom I'd spent a lot of this morning in, but stepping into it now, without the company of Logan, I felt coldness starting to spread through my chest. I started to grab torn fragments of paper from on top of the sink and tried piecing them together. I felt my stomach start churning reading the words.

Nobody understands.

They're better off without me.

She'll understand. She won't hate me. She'll have Logan.

It's better this way

Scooping the paper into my hand, I tossed it into the wastebasket, feeling my hand trembling. I started pulling the sticky notes, all full of similar words of self-hate, and tossed them in the bin. I gripped the edge of the sink and lifted my head to stare into the broken mirror, my heart leaping in my chest when Jesse appeared behind me.

He looked miserable. His usually lively green eyes full of anger and hatred, bloodshot and puffy from excessive amounts of crying. His face was scarred with jagged cuts, looking as if they'd come from the blade of a knife, soot smeared across his sunken cheekbones. He reached out and tried to grasp my shoulder, but when I blinked again, Logan stood in his place, staring at me with worry.

"I've been saying your name for five minutes." He said. It wasn't until he looked down that pain started to shoot through my hand. There was a shard of the mirror in my fist, blood seeping from my palm on to my wrist and rolling down it like fresh tears.

"Logan." I whimpered, watching him pry the glass from my hand. "Logan, he was so depressed."

He didn't look at me as he led me out of the bathroom and out of the room. He helped me up on to the counter Collin had been occupying earlier this evening, digging in one of the cupboards for a first-aid-kit.

"Logan." I breathed again. "Those notes, the torn page, they were—"

"I know, Emily." He snapped, cutting me off. "I'm the one who tore the paper up and broke the mirror. I saw all the post-its, I saw the shit he'd write in that dumb journal his phycologist made him write in. I don't even know how he passed the Psyche eval to get into the military."

I didn't even try to hold back the tears that stung my eyes. "He was so broken, so sick, and I just ignored it. I blew it off like everyone else. He was sick, Logan."

"Emmy." He finished wrapping my hand and took my face in between his own. "You did nothing wrong. If anything, I failed him. I lived here with him for almost three years for fucksake, and did nothing but shoot up instead of being there for him."

"I could have helped him." I repeated. "I could have done something, anything. I knew there was something wrong, even when we were kids he was always cast out, always hiding when you weren't around. He was so depressed, Logan."

I could tell by the way he kept trying to focus his eyes above my head that his own emotions were trying to surface.

"I failed him." Logan pointed his finger against his chest. "Not you, Em. He loved you so God Damn much he would have taken a million bullets to the chest if it meant protecting you. He had you on that pedestal. You were his light in his never-ending darkness."

I touched Logan's cheek as a stray tear escaped his right eye and fell from his eyelashes and on to the top of my hand.

"You didn't fail him, Logan."

"But I did." He retorted angrily. "I knew he wasn't all there, Emily. I knew that what he was doing here on campus was disgusting and wrong. But I just watched, I watched him crumble away into nothing. Because in my head, getting my next fix was more important than the guy that'd been there to help through every withdraw, every relapse, even my father passing. I killed him, Emily, by not helping him. By not letting him know he wasn't alone in this shitty world. I did it."

I could hear footsteps echoing in the hall, but Logan was too caught up in his thoughts to hear anything.

"I would give anything for the roles to be reversed." He whispered, pressing his forehead against mine. "To have him here with you and me be gone, if it meant I didn't have to sit here and watch you trying to keep yourself together every day."

His words bulldozed one of the walls of denial I'd put up around my heart and I immediately felt a sob rise in my throat. He wiped the tears from my cheeks, his own eyes glistening with fresh ones as he tried everything in his power to force them back.

"I love you, Emily." He breathed, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the tears had dissipated, and he was staring at me as if none had been shed to begin with. "I'm so sorry."

I rested my head against his shoulder once he hugged me, my eyes flickering from the table to the living room. Collin and Adam both stood in the dining room, staring at the two of us with sympathetic looks. Adam broke away and crossed the room to us, resting a comforting hand on Logan's shoulder. After a moment of contemplation, Collin followed in his roommates footsteps and leaned into the counter beside me, squeezing my arm with one hand and outstretching his hand to do the same to Logan.

Even if it would only be for a moment, I saw what Jesse had been trying to do all along. Collin had been right, this was the little family my brother had created, and even with the bitterness and hostility that was usually shared between Collin and Logan, at the end of the day they had each other's back. And somehow, I'd become the heart of it.