Forever Dark(16)

His breathing evens out, he finally raises his head, his face blank. “Who’s the guy you fuck in your dorm room?”

Jay doesn’t talk. We’ve never actually had a conversation. It’s mostly one-sided. He gives me what I need and tells me how things are going to go.

I swallow, afraid, my heart in my ears, his question met with silence at first. The last thing I want is Cash brought into anything to do with Jay. I also know I shouldn’t lie. He already caught me in one.

“Cash.”

He has no reply and turns his focus ahead of him.

There’s absolutely no sense in lying to Jay. He knows everything. He knows exactly who Cash is too.

He leans forward and takes the rolled up twenty between his index finger and his thumb and does his line. Rubbing his nose, he leans back on the couch staring up at the ceiling and nudges my knee with the back of his hand, then nods to the table where a second line is waiting for me.

I look down at his hands that have the word “dark” on his left hand and “ness” on the right.

How ironic.

I want to say no to what’s in front of me. I don’t want to do cocaine. I never have. But once I did, it’s hard to stop. If I deny the offer, he will be upset with me. I’m controlled in more ways than I can understand. He’s offering and if you don’t take him up on it, he gets offended. You don’t offend Jay Lucas.

He watches carefully as I do my line, the rush instant and burning. I sit there with my hands on my knees until he moves beside me.

He stands uncertainly, his hand on the back of his neck seeming rattled for a half a second. It confuses me how his moods change, let’s me see that he’s unstable in ways I’ll never understand.

He nods to the room.

I have a choice here. I don’t believe I do but there is one.

I go because that’s how this works. He gives me what I need—because I can’t afford it otherwise—and I lay there while he takes what he needs.

When he’s finished, my sadness for what I’ve let myself become rolls down my cheeks.

I should leave.

Instead I’m left staring at the ceiling when I hear the click of his lighter and the familiar first drag. I’m spinning out of control, the room with it, my stomach burns and my throat feels like it’s on fire. As I lay there, images of Cash rush through my mind, so quickly I can’t see them, but they’re there. There are flashes, years of what we had, what we’d become and what we might have been if not for the darkness that hangs over our forever.

I feel dirty, like even if I was to shower, I’d still feel dirty for what I just did.

Jay’s hand reaches for me shaking my shoulder. “You need to leave. I have to meet someone.”

He stands, his bare ass disappearing into the dim lighting of the bathroom. The door slams behind him, I raise up on my elbows and breathe in, trying to steady the beat in my chest. It’s steady, a pulsating beat. My stomach burns, I feel the acid rolling, my body’s fighting me and what I’m doing to it.

Twisting to the side, I lean down to retrieve my clothes from the floor. When I bend down, I see the drop of blood land on the cream carpet. My hands fly to my nose. I leave my shirt off and instead just wear my bra out of his room. The door creaks when I open it. A couple on the couch are fucking. They barely notice me; his bare ass on display and her eyes closed as if she’s dead to the world. She may be judging by the used needle on the floor.

My stomach turns again. I can’t believe I’m doing this shit to myself.

I keep one hand pressed to my face and use the other to button my jeans and slip my shoes on. I bend to tie them and I can feel the blood draining in my mouth now. The more I move, the more I start to shake. The front door slams behind me and I’m walking up the street, barely dressed.

I get to the road and stumble into the ditch. I sit there for a while because I hate myself and this is where I feel I should be.

On the ground.

In it.

Beneath it.

I start shaking hard and I think I see my chest moving, beating, and it stings. It feels like it can’t beat fast enough, yet, should be stronger.

I should call Landon, instead I walk the two miles in the middle of the night to the gas station and then take a bus back to campus.

When I get to my dorm room, my nose has finally stopped bleeding. Jenny’s asleep, the dorm is dark, much like my head. Exactly like my forever.



September 20, 2013



I’m sitting at my window, staring out it at nothing in particular, as smoke drifts through the small crack when Cash sends me a text. It’s not often that I see Cash during the normal hours of the day. And though it’s only six PM, he’s done this before.