“I need to go back.” I ball my hands into fists to keep from touching her and I stare out the window, avoiding her overpowering gaze. “I’m done talking. I just want to go back now.”
She hesitates and I expect her to argue, but instead she puts the car in reverse. “Okay, I can take you back, but can I ask for a favor before I do?” she asks.
I squeeze my eyes shut, holding my breath, wishing I could stop breathing altogether. “Sure.”
“Can I come visit you tomorrow?” she requests in a soft tone. “I’m not going to be here for very long and I’d like to see you and talk to you a little bit more before I have to go.”
I should tell her no, save her like she’s trying to save me, but even in my cracked-up head I can’t bring myself to let her go just yet, so I greedily say, “Yeah, if you want to, but I hope you don’t.” I open my eyes and watch her reaction.
She smashes her lips together, battling her nerves. “But I do want to see you. I really, really do.”
I’m not sure what to do with that, so I decide to do nothing, shutting myself down, and it’s easy because seconds later I’m thinking about something else, getting home, getting to Johnny’s, getting my next hit. Then nothing will matter. Not this. Not the future. My past. What I did.
It’ll all be gone.
* * *
I don’t say much to her on the ride back to my place, but she talks lightly about music, how she’s been playing again, and I love hearing her talk that way. I love hearing her happy. It makes me almost want to smile and I haven’t wanted to smile in a really long time, but I don’t think I quite get there.
Then we’re pulling up to my building and the slight elation I was feeling deflates into the darkness that engulfs the place where I live and my mouth begins to salivate, knowing what’s waiting for me as soon as I get Tristan and get to Johnny’s. I want it more than sitting in this car, more than eating, breathing, living.
“So when should I come over tomorrow?” she asks, the tires of the car grinding against the gravel as she stops the car a little ways from the building.
“Whenever you want,” I tell her, because it doesn’t really matter. I know I’m going to be up all night and all day after I get enough lines in my system. Then I start to get out of the car, ready to get inside my apartment. Ready to forget all of this. Ready to be free again from my emotions, my conflict, my memories. I’m ready to return to my prison.
“Wait, Quinton,” she calls out, and I pause, turning to look at her.
Her lips part, like she’s about to say something, but then she shuts her mouth and scoots over toward me. I freeze up, wondering what she’s doing. Then she opens the glove box and takes out a pen and tears a corner off an envelope. She jots down some digits and then hands the paper to me. “This is my number, just in case you need to call me for something.”
I stare down at the paper in my hand, baffled that she gave it to me. “I don’t have a phone.”
“I know,” she says, tossing the pen down on the dashboard. “But Delilah does and I want to make sure you have that just in case.”
I try not to get worked up over the fact that she gave her number to me, like she actually doesn’t mind if I call. Like she wants to talk to me. No one has given me their phone number in a very long time and I’m not sure what to do with it. Part of me wants to throw it away and get rid of the temptation to call her, but instead I find myself putting it in my pocket. Then I start to get out of the car, and she leans over and gently places a kiss on my mouth. I’m not sure why she does it, if it’s simply a friendly kiss or if she’s experiencing the same kind of pull I am. But the kiss feels twisted and wrong in a way, because I’m high and I wonder if she can taste it on me—the decay inside me. But in another way the kiss feels so damn right, like if I was living a normal life, one where I hadn’t gotten in a car accident, and I’d simply broken up with Lexi and met Nova, we would have kissed like that all the time.
I’m so sorry, Lexi. For forgetting you. For living. Moving forward in life, while you remain motionless.
Thoughts of Lexi stab at my mind, yet I still kiss Nova back, slipping my tongue into her mouth, getting a brief taste of her before I pull back. “I’ll see you later,” I whisper against her lips and then lean back and take the food when she hands it to me, feeling like I’m leaving a piece of myself behind. But I shove the sensation aside and go back to my apartment, where I belong.
When I open the door, I’m flooded by a musty cloud of smoke and my senses of taste, sight, smell, touch, go haywire. God, I need to feed my addiction. Now. In fact, waiting to get back to my room seems nearly impossible.
Delilah and Dylan are sitting on the sofa, heating up some crystal on a piece of aluminum foil. Delilah is fixated on it, cuddled up to Dylan’s side, watching him drag the lighter back and forth and create smoke. They both have bags under their eyes and I wonder how long it’s been since they’ve slept…I wonder how long it’s been since I’ve slept.
“Where the hell have you been?” Dylan asks, glancing up from the piece of aluminum foil. He looks down at the McDonald’s bag in my hand, confused because we rarely eat. “And where did you get that?” He’s got a fresh bruise under his eye and there’s dried blood on his lip.
“From McDonald’s,” I say, heading for my room, not wanting to talk about Nova to either of them because it feels wrong to talk about her in such a crappy-ass environment. “What happened to your face?”
“You and Tristan happened to my face,” he says, irritated. Then he hands the aluminum foil and lighter to Delilah as he gets to his feet, scooping up something I didn’t notice before on the coffee table. A small gun. What the f**k? “Do you want to tell me what happened with Trace…why you look like you got the shit beat out of you?”
I stop near the curtain that shields the kitchen from the living room and flex my bruised fingers as I eyeball the gun, trying not to look alarmed, but it’s a f**king gun for God’s sake. “He sort of kicked my ass.” I pause, deciding whether I should ask. “Where did you get that?”
Dylan glances unconcernedly at the gun in his hand. “I got it the other day to protect myself.”
“Protect yourself from what?” I ask as Delilah’s attention lazily drifts up from her crystal. Her eyes widen as she spots the gun in Dylan’s hand and when she looks at me she appears horrified, very unlike herself, since usually she pretends she doesn’t give a shit about anything.