Chapter Nine
Nate
I was awake a little while before I got up. I opened my eyes and squinted because of how bright it was. I raised my head and looked around. I'd fallen asleep on the couch. I didn't have a headache, which was good – I wasn't hung-over. I didn't feel dope sick, either. I sat up, hearing something falling on the floor.
It was a needle. Right. I'd bailed on Abby's luau to come here and shoot up. I picked the needle up and checked my arm. No pain, no swelling. I hadn't botched it. I tossed it in the trash as I hunted for my phone to figure out what time it was. It was on the bed. Noon, as usual, it seemed. That was just when I seemed to get up no matter how early I'd passed out the night before.
Speaking of that night before, it had almost gone well. It probably would have been more fun if I'd shot up before I went, but still, I could think of at least a hundred ways it could have been worse.
I drank some water and got under the shower feeling strangely good – good compared to the way I usually felt, at least, which was horrible. I got out and got dressed, searching for where I'd left the in-room dining menu.
It was lunchtime, right? Why didn't I just go out and eat? I ate in my room all the time. It was getting charged to the room either way. I had like five different restaurants to choose from; it might even be fun.
I walked out of the room and went down to the lobby. I knew I could go down to the bar to see Keno, but I was hungry. Maybe later.
I spotted Abby and Makani behind their desk. They were talking. Abby's hair was down the way it had been the night before. She was smiling at whatever her friend was telling her. She glanced in my direction and stopped talking. She looked at me again, doing a double take like she'd just seen a ghost. Her friend looked over, too. I nodded at them and kept walking.
Maybe she was surprised I'd left my room? I couldn't think why. She had been the one who’d suggested it in the first place. After some searching, I found a restaurant with a lunch buffet going. I loaded my plate up with more food than I knew I'd be able to finish before finding a place to sit. A waiter came and took my drink order. I thought about getting a beer, but I was having such a good day, I asked for water.
I dug in. The food was good. A lot of things were good. I wasn’t feeling sick, I wasn’t stressed, and I’d left my room for the second time without being recognized by anybody.
I didn't want to jinx it, but who knew all it would take to turn my shit around was getting out of my own head. I wasn't dumb enough to think it would last, but I also wasn't going to waste it just waiting for the ball to drop.
I heard the sound of a chair scraping the ground in front of me and looked up. It was Abby. She was sitting across from me with a look on her face like she was upset. I didn't know what to say for a second, so I just looked at her.
"Hungry?" I asked.
"No," she said shortly. "I see you got to your room last night."
"I did. Listen, if you're gonna sit there, I'm gonna have to ask you to grab a plate because it's awkward being the only one eating."
"How are you even talking like that after last night?" I looked at her. She sounded way too much like Kirsten, accusing me of something I had done wrong.
"What happened last night?"
"You don't-" she leaned in like she was going to tell me a secret. "You sure you don't remember?"
I shrugged. Was she upset about the way I'd left her on the beach? It had been an emergency. I had thought I could make it through the night and I got pretty fucking far, but in the end, couldn't do it. I wasn't proud of it, but why was she mad about that? I had told her not to worry about it.
"Nope. Nothing."
"I saw you last night."
"I remember. I saw you, too. You invited me to the luau."
"Not there. In your suite, on the couch with a...with that thing sticking in your arm," she said. My jaw dropped. She'd followed me to my room? She'd been in there while I was sleeping?
"Who let you in my room?"
"The door was open; you didn't even make sure it was closed before you...did that to yourself."
"I don't know what you think you saw, Abby, but it was in my private suite that I'm paying a lot of money for. It's none of your business."
"I was there because I was sent to check on you. You weren't well. You were acting weird, and we were worried."
"You have nothing to worry about because nothing is wrong. Just forget whatever you think you saw."
"You're going to sit there and tell me nothing was wrong when I found you passed out in your room with a needle in your arm?" she asked sharply.
"A little louder, Abby, I don't think the entire restaurant heard you," I snapped sarcastically. She sat back.
"I haven't told anyone. Am I the only person who knows?"
"You don't know anything, okay? You came in my room without permission. You weren't even supposed to be there."
"Why would you do something like that? What's happening that's so awful that you have to use drugs?" she asked. She whispered the last two words like they were swear words.
"I have nothing else to say to you. Nothing happened. I'm here, aren't I? I'm fine. I want to eat my fucking lunch and go back to my suite in peace."
"No. You aren't going back to your suite to spend the rest of the day alone." I narrowed my eyes at her. What now? She'd started mad and now she just wasn't making sense anymore.
"Why? Because I'm on an island paradise in a world-star resort?" I asked, using her words from the night before.
"You don't have to do this. You don't have to face this alone. I want to help you."
"Help me do what? I haven't asked you to do anything but leave me alone and forget what you saw."
"Help you see that it's worth it. You've been in your suite all this time, and the island's bigger than that. Your life is bigger than that."
"Oh, I don't appreciate my life? Thanks, Dr. Drew. I didn't know this was an intervention," I said sarcastically. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know what I saw, and I know that whatever you're going through must be extremely difficult. No matter what it is."
"No. Stop it. It's nice that you want to help, but I didn't fucking ask you to. Whatever happens when I am in my suite alone is none of your business. Don't come in my room again." I stood up, taking my plate with me. I walked away, not bothering to see whether she had followed me or not.
That bitch. She wanted to teach me that my life was worth living? My thoughts were swirling around my head. What I needed her to do was stand at that front desk and leave me the fuck alone. Why did she think she had the right to come up to me and say that shit? She went straight to the point, making assumptions nobody asked her to make.
Part of me was mad that she had said anything at all, but another part was mad about how right she was. A couple of the other guys in Remus knew about the dope, but they never told me anything. She had been nosy and annoying, but she wasn't wrong – and I didn't know whether I was sort of pleased about that or not.
When you have something people want, they get close to you, but not because they want to be your friends. They're leeches who want to suck you dry or enablers who don’t care whether you run yourself into the ground because it’s not their problem. Nobody had ever called me on my bullshit like that, and even if I wish she hadn't, it was sort of nice that she gave enough of a fuck to say something.
I was shelling out thousands of dollars a night to stay here, and their only job was to give me whatever I wanted. She didn't have to care that I was an addict. She didn't just care, she sounded almost sad that I was doing that to myself.
I got into the elevator and waited to go up to my suite. She was walking through the lobby back to the desk as the doors were closing. She was running a hand through her hair and looked mad.
Apologize to her, I thought suddenly.
No, you told her to fuck off; why would you go back over there to talk to her again?
The doors closed and stopped me before I did anything stupid. I got to my room and left my plate on the table, not really that hungry anymore. I felt restless. I wanted to do something because I knew what happened when I got like this. It would start. It'd start bubbling up until it was too much and I'd use again.
Television wouldn't work. I didn't want to go on the internet. I paced around, suddenly remembering the piano. Yeah. That would do it. It would keep my hands busy. I sat at the piano and touched the keys, waiting to hear something. The stuff I had composed for Remus wasn’t even half of the work I had accumulated since I had started writing music. I had more music than I knew what to do with. When it came out of me, I had to put it somewhere.
Sometime must have passed before I stopped, realizing something. My hands weren't shaking. I wasn't sweating. I felt fine.
I had been fine all day, but right then I was calm. Sitting there at the piano, I felt like everything was okay. I had been so heated after what had happened with Abby, that was the sort of thing that would have sent me right off the edge, using again, but I hadn't.
This weird urge came over me to say something to her. To tell her that I had found something. One of those things she said she wanted to show me that would make me want to stop using. I got to the phone and dialed the number for the front desk.
"Good afternoon. Thank you for calling Four Seasons Lanai, you're speaking to Abby. How may I help you?" she asked me.
I slammed the phone back into the receiver. What the hell was I doing? She didn’t care; hadn’t I told her to fuck off and leave me alone? Fuck, make up your mind, I thought. Either you’re doing this shit alone or you’re taking her up on her offer. I remembered her face after I had left her, like she was hurt. There was no way her offer still stood. Nobody was that nice.