Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Something tells me that it always will.
“You are not the guy I fell in love with.”
I choke back a sob, chest heaving harder and faster and more frantic. “But, baby, I am-”
“No,” she softly tugs the strands again, “You’re not. Somewhere inside of you…somewhere deep, deeper down, I think the guy that I love, Ry, is still there, but he’s being silenced by liquor, weed, coke, X, acid, mushrooms, and every other drug you’re killing yourself with.”
“I’m not doing that shit much anymore,” I plead at the same time I drop my forehead to rest against hers. “I don’t wanna do it anymore at all, Pres.” Sniffles present themselves for the hearing. The feeling. “Please, baby…Please help. Please, save me.”
There’s a light sound I know but hate.
It’s the one she makes when she’s doing everything possible not to cry.
She pulls us together closer by the locks she’s tangling and airily claims, “I can’t do that, Ry.”
“But-”
“I want to, so bad. So, so bad, baby-”
“Then do it!”
“I can’t.” This time her breath hitches forcing my fingers to dig into her harder hoping to bruise and loathing the idea of it all at once. “The only person who can save you is you, Ry.”
“But, baby, please,” I beg louder. Shamelessly. “For fucks sake, you’re the one person I need in my world. You’re it for me. I can’t lose you.” Frenetic headshakes occur. “I just…I just can’t fucking lose you.”
“You already have.”
The words pry open my eyes to see her staring up at me, face stained with much more than tears.
Her trembling hand runs down my cheek without another word spoken.
I lean into the touch.
Memorize the feel.
Engrave in my memory the once in a lifetime sensation I know I’ll never have again.
The music tempo changes, and Pres backs away from me to head for the exit.
All the air that remains in my lungs is savagely robbed by the same person who’s leaving with so much more than just my heart.
She’s leaving with my goddamn soul.
My sheer reason for living.
--
“She left you.” Doc states placing down the pen in his hand.
Twirling around the candy stick, I turn away from the window I had been staring out. “She did.”
“You didn’t chase her?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t see the point. I mean…she had given up on me.”
“Given up on?” Doc questions on a grunted laugh. “You really believe that she gave up on you?”
“What the fuck would you call it?”
“Depends on the angle you choose to view it from, Collins. She let you go to save herself.”
The fake cigarette flies to my lips while the natural reaction to stifle the guilt in other ways rises.
“And what she saved herself from was getting further caught in the shit storm she could see that lied ahead. She had already felt its fucked up winds. She decided in order to survive, she needed to get the fuck out of dodge.”
Chalk flavors roam my mouth doing everything in their power to keep the urges for harder chemicals away.
“Blue Dream also knew you had changed. She wasn’t wrong when she said you weren’t the same person you were when you first fell for each other. If you had been, you would’ve gone after her at that fucking moment. If you were the guy that she was so desperate to see again, you would’ve put your balls on the table, said fuck it, and kept at it. You would’ve kissed her in the fucking crowd. You would’ve told Bambi or Carl-”
“Kevin.”
“To fuck off because this was your girl, and you were ready to do whatever it took to have her back. Real talk, though? She lost you long before you ever lost her.”
Alternating between anguish and awareness, my fingers run through the back of my hair in that same spot she always tugged.
The same spot she used as her method of comforting me.
For just a moment my eyes drift closed.
For just a moment, I’m lured back in time.
Back to a point where I can practically feel her delicate digits pulling.
Yet knowing it’s not them, knowing that no matter what I do it’ll never be them again, returns my stare back to Doc.
“Collins, something you need to accept is that she had a valid point. She couldn’t save you. And if she would’ve stayed, if she would’ve continued to play the toxic bullshit game you two had been playing, all she would’ve done was given you something to blame the constant need to get high on. Which you did. After that particular moment you continued to numb the pain of her leaving, just like you did with that first cigarette.”
The ugly fact has me looking at the candy version of my most trusted solace.
“You wanted to kill all the grief that came from being without her and silence all the fucking noise that reverberated in your brain about how lonely you were on your own.”