Of course she sits down because she’s sweet and innocent and sees some sort of good inside me. I honestly don’t get it, because whenever I look into a mirror, which isn’t that often, all I can see is a skeleton, the remains of a once-good person, who ruined everything and who will always ruin everything. Kind of like the view in front of me of old buildings, stores, houses, that I can tell used to be beautiful before things changed—life changed—and they were all forgotten, lost like the sand in the wind, left to crumple in the shadows of the city, the area no one wants to see, yet I prefer it.
“You think you’re not good enough,” she says, situating herself beside me, her legs dangling over the edge. “But you are.”
“What?” My head snaps in her direction as I try to rewind and see if maybe I was really thinking my thoughts aloud.
“When you’re in that dark place,” she says. “At least that’s how it was for me. It was almost like I thought I didn’t deserve to be happy.”
I relax a little, understanding that she’s just thinking aloud. “And that’s why you did drugs?” I ask.
She shrugs. “One of the reasons. But honestly there were many…like that fact that I wasn’t dealing with my boyfriend’s death…what are your reasons?”
She expresses herself so easily and I’m not sure how to respond. There’s no way I can explain to her why I do it—all the dark reasons. “Why would you think I even have a reason?” I ask. “Maybe I just do it because it feels good.”
“Does it feel good?” There’s a challenge in her eyes that makes me fear what she’s going to say after I answer.
“Sometimes, yes,” I tell her straightforwardly. “I mean, I don’t know how it was for you, but it helps me forget stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” she asks interestedly as she tucks her hands under her legs.
“Stuff I’ve done.” I pop my neck and then crack my jaw. “But why are we talking about this?”
She plays with a loose strand of her hair, twirling it around her finger as she gets lost in her thoughts, staring down at the abandoned stores and houses five stories below us. “Is this why you brought me here? To show me the view?” she wonders, eluding my question.
I look her over, wondering what’s going on in her head. Is she seeing the same view as me? Does she find it repulsive? Or can she still see what it used to be? “Yeah, I stumbled across it once and I liked it.” I tear my eyes off her and focus on the view. “It’s like Vegas used to be out here, before all the madness took the city over.”
“Was it ever not full of madness?” she asks, pointing over her shoulder at the city gleaming against the sunlight and stretching toward the hazy sky. “Because every time I think of Vegas, I can only see that.”
I shrug, swinging my feet back and forth. “I’m not sure, but I can picture it, even if it’s not true.” I put my hand up and motion at a cluster of single-story homes kitty-corner to our right. “Imagine, just a bunch of normal houses, no casinos, no people packing the sidewalks. Everything is painted in warm colors, the grass is green, the fences straight. Trees grow in the yards, bright flowers surround the houses, and people are just hanging around outside and taking life slow.” I point to the left at an oddly shaped stucco building with old signs hanging on the side. “Imagine the stores and shopping areas were like that, instead of crammed so close together, all carrying the same overpriced souvenirs. Imagine the quiet, ordinary, simple life. A place that’s not busy and where your thoughts don’t have to race to keep up with it.” I shut my eyes and savor the scent of freedom in the air. “Imagine breathing again.”
She’s quiet for a while and I wonder if my tweaker rambling has frightened her off, but when I open my eyes she looks relaxed as she observes me, turned just at the right angle so the blue sky and sunlight are her only background and her hair is dancing around her face in the gentle breeze. A strand of her hair falls from behind her ear and lands near her chest and I remember what it was like to touch her there, feel her, do whatever I wanted with her.
Beautiful. That’s the word that pops into my head and for a fleeting moment I just want to hold her and for her to hold me and for me to not have to think about Lexi and Ryder and what I did to them.
“You paint a beautiful picture,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. “It makes me want to live in this place.”
“Well, it might not exist,” I utter quietly. “I was just making up what I see.”
“You should draw what you see sometimes,” she suggests with a faint smile at her lips. “I bet it would turn out beautiful.”
“I’m just rambling,” I mutter. “It doesn’t really mean anything.”
Intensity burns in her eyes. “You’d be surprised what your words can mean to someone.”
“I never say anything important,” I state truthfully. “Everything I do or say gets forgotten quickly.”
“That’s not true…you said a lot of stuff to me last summer that meant something. Like when you told me I was too good to be doing drugs.”
“That’s because you were—are.”
“Everyone is,” she insists, scooting closer to me. “But you were the one to actually say it aloud.”
“It still doesn’t mean that what I said mattered,” I argue, wanting to inch away from her, but I can’t seem to find the willpower to do so. “You just remember it because it happened during an intense part of your life.”
She studies me momentarily and then looks back down at the scenery below us. “Do you remember the pond?” she asks.
That question hits me straight in the heart and makes it slam inside my chest. “How could I forget?” I say, grinding my teeth. “It wasn’t one of my finer moments.”
Her attention whips back to me. “Are you kidding me?” she asks in shock, which seems so out of place that I have to look up at her to see if she’s being real or joking.
“No…I’m being serious,” I tell her, fighting the emotions buried inside me—the guilt I feel for leaving her that day. “I should have never left you there like that. I was—am such a douche.”
She gapes at me like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “You are not in any way, shape, or form a douche for leaving me there. You pretty much saved me from doing something I’d always regret and that probably would have kept me in that dark place a hell of a lot longer.” She says it with so much passion, like she’s been thinking about this a lot, and I don’t know what to say to her, so instead I stare silently at the ground. Finally she places her hand on my face and cups my cheek, forcing me to look at her. “You helped me so, so much, whether you want to believe it or not.”