“I don’t think you should, at least until you can deal with what’s probably going to come after you say it,” he explains as I drop the hammer on the ground. “I think what you need to do is work on forgiving yourself, because it’s all you can do and life will get easier when you do. It might even end up being good.”
I cross my arms, wishing I could curl up in a ball and erase the last few minutes, go back home and put that picture up on the wall. “I’m not sure I can do that. Forgive myself when they haven’t yet.”
“Sure you can,” he assures me, picking up my hammer and extending it in my direction for me to take. “It’ll just take some time.”
I don’t take the hammer from him and instead storm away, the knife in my chest digging deeper as I think about how I wanted to say sorry to Lexi’s mom one day, hoping that something might come out of it, but now he’s saying I shouldn’t because what I want—need—to happen probably isn’t going to. Then I think about how I just took down her photo and put it away and I start to regret it.
“Quinton, come back,” he shouts out after me.
I shake my head as I keep walking. “I need to take a walk and think,” I say to him, trotting down the stairs of the house and onto the bottom floor. There are a few guys at the site, but I barely pay attention to them even when they wave.
When I get outside, I dash across the parking area and to the sidewalk. Then I start walking toward the corner. I don’t look back, looking straight ahead as I wander toward the unknown, one foot in front of the other, focusing on that instead of how I feel. I’m not even exactly sure what I’m upset about. I think it might be a combination of everything that’s happened today and the difficulty that just comes with living life.
Life.
It’s so f**king hard.
One minute things are fine. The next they change into something painful. Every day just moving. Changing. And I’m left coping. Is that what I want? To go through day after day like this? So up and down? I’m not sure I can do that.
Not sober, anyway.
The last thought guides my feet to a place where I can start making everything easier. I don’t stop walking, going for at least an hour, passing blocks and blocks, until I’m standing in front of Marcus’s house, staring at the door with a flowery wreath on it like a f**king psychopath. I can’t seem to bring myself to walk away, yet at the same time, I can’t get my hand to knock on the door. I’m getting so furious with myself for even coming here. Why did I do it? I don’t want to be here.
What do I want?
What do I need?
Why do I feel this way?
Why can’t I bring myself to walk away?
Questions are racing through my head so quickly I’m hardly aware of anything around me. It’s like I and what’s on the other side of that door are the only things that exist. That’s it. I need to walk away. I need to knock. Go. Stay. Go. Stay.
My phone starts to vibrate in my pocket and the sound brings me out of my daze. I don’t want this—I remember that. I’ve been to this place and even though it’s easy, I chose to leave it for a reason—I chose life.
I turn to walk away even though my body’s so stiff it feels like it’s going to crack apart. But when I’m in mid-turn the front door of the house suddenly swings open. Marcus looks a little startled as he stumbles back in the doorway. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and no shoes. His black hair is thinner than the last time I saw him. Not from old age—he’s only twenty-two. But because he’s gotten into harder stuff since then. The scabs on his face and arms and his major decrease in weight are evidence of that. And also evidence that he has what my mind is craving at the moment.
“Wow, where the f**k did you come from?” Marcus says, scratching his arm as he glances around at the front yard behind me, which is decorated with a giant inflatable Santa. “Quinton, my man, how the hell have you been?”
To him it’s probably such a casual question, but to me the answer is more complicated than living. “I’ve been good,” I lie, and then exchange a handshake with him. “How’s things going with you?”
He shrugs, glancing over his shoulder into the house. “Not too bad. Just been living life.”
I nod with uneasiness. “That’s good.” I’m about to say good-bye and walk away because things feel really awkward.
But then he looks back at me and says, “You want to come inside for a bit? Dan’s here chillin’.”
Fuck. Shit. Fuck. What am I doing? “Maybe… I mean, yeah. Sure.” Walk away.
Marcus steps back to let me in and I stare down at the threshold, watching in slow motion as I lift my foot over it and step inside. Just like that I enter the world that nearly killed me.
I’m trying to decide how I feel about that as I follow Marcus down the hallway and toward the basement where I used to spend a lot of time getting high. Marcus is chatting about something, but I barely hear him because I’m too distracted by the way my mind and body are reacting to the pungent scent flowing up the stairway. I’m sure a lot of people probably wouldn’t notice the increase in moisture in the air, but having craved the sensation before, my senses heighten.
I know what I’m walking into before I walk into it, which means I should turn away. But I don’t. I walk right into it. Part of me wanting it. Needing it. Seeking the quiet.
Dan’s sitting on the leather sofa when I enter the room at the bottom of the stairs. He looks about the same as the last time I saw him, maybe a little scragglier and his hair a little shorter. He has a light bulb up to his mouth and he’s heating the glass with a lighter. He glances up when I walk in and then lowers the light bulb.
“Quinton, what the f**k,” he says with a surprised laugh. Smoke leaves his lips and enters the air around me and I helplessly feel myself crave it. He gets to his feet and sets the light bulb and lighter down on the table. “Where the hell have you been for the last year or two?”
“Around,” I tell him, being purposely vague. That was always the thing with hanging out with people who were high. Nothing mattered. The future. The past. If you wanted to dodge questions, they’d let you, because they were too fixated on getting the next hit. So different from spending time with Nova. Or even Wilson.
He nods, like I’ve said something that actually means something. “Cool. Cool.”
“I heard you were in Vegas,” Marcus says as he winds around me and plops down into the sofa, reaching for the light bulb.