Present
“WAKE THE FUCK UP, LENNOX!” I nudged his limp body only to get an incoherent grumble out of him. What else is new?
It was probably better he slept this bender off because once he found out I called her he’d be furious. Or will he? I wasn’t sure which I was more terrified of. Him being mad at me for reaching out to Eden, or him needing her. A dark, hidden part of my soul, untouched by everything I’d been jaded by in the past, knew it was the latter.
The truth was a hard pill to swallow.
It was her name he whispered when he was so drunk he couldn’t stand. It was her face he saw in his drug-induced dreams. I knew this because it was her name that slipped from his lips when he cried out in agony for someone to save him. It was never me. Although there was a time I thought it was. And stupid me, I loved him and hung on to shreds of the “good times” to get by. To convince myself that he loved me too in some way. That as fucked up as we were together, we were still together for a reason.
But what was that reason? Damned if I knew. We’d made such a mess of our togetherness there was nothing good left. Only desperation, hate, resentment, and more hours spent high than not. This is the life. Ain’t it, Vi? Mama would be so fucking proud.
There was no use crying over spilt milk or my dead mother, so I stepped over Lennox’s jeans that he somehow shed before passing out and grabbed my pack of smokes from the nightstand. The nicotine was nothing compared to the rush of something more potent surging through your veins like sweet venom first thing in the morning, but this would have to do.
Pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, I walked through the living room, ignored the empty beer cans scattered throughout the stale space, and stepped outside onto the small porch of our beat-up bungalow. Considering I was the only one really bringing in any money, measly as it was waiting tables at the diner and washing hair at the salon, I should have called it my bungalow. But much like everything else, what was mine was Lennox’s, too. The only thing we didn’t share was my sobriety.
Before I made the decision to call Eden, I also came to terms with many of my regrets, the drug use being the first. There were too many others to divulge at this point in time, so I chose to start there and see where it got me. Everyone thought I was a junkie. Everyone knew Lennox was. But what they didn’t know was that I had the power to quit anytime I wanted. I’d done it before, now was no different, except this time I was certain if Lennox didn’t join me in sobering up, I’d lose him for good.
Not like that last time. That time we were lucky. Then, I hadn’t thought to call Eden because I was afraid it was already too late. When you walk in to the sight of your boyfriend stuffed into a bathroom stall and slumped over a toilet with a needle sticking out of his arm, you imagine the worst. You picture the end. But by the grace of God, or whoever it was looking over us that night, Lennox pulled through and lived to tell about it. If living is what you want to call how Lennox spends his days.
I took a long drag of the cigarette and exhaled longer than there was smoke to release. Looking up at the clouds, the sun hidden behind their cottony whiteness, I shook my head and allowed the tears to fall.
How the hell did I get here? This was not how I imagined my life. I swiped the pathetic tears with the palm of my hand and flicked the finished cigarette to the ground. A sardonic laugh escaped my nose as I hung my head in disgust. “You did this to yourself.” I whispered it to no one because there wasn’t anyone anymore. We scared them all away, whoever was left. And now I had to admit defeat, accept this depressing life, and grovel to the last person on earth I ever wanted to ask for help just to survive another day in this hell I created.
Sometimes I thought it would be easier to give in to the high and let it take me away. But where would that leave Lennox? It always came back to Lennox.
Past
HE WALKED INTO THE DIVE of a restaurant where I worked with a confidence only the town’s most beloved athlete could possess. I knew who he was—everyone did—but he had no idea who I was. Weird if you asked me, but no one did. My opinion seemed to matter less and less as I got into more and more trouble.
That night, instead of sporting the usual Gator’s jersey or University of Florida tee, he was more put together in a cotton polo and khaki shorts. His ashy hair was cut shorter than in high school, his face clean shaven—probably some kind of team rules about professional appearance. You could make out every line of his strong jaw and masculine features. And those eyes—they were captivating in the strangest way because they were full of life and hope and everything I never thought I deserved to aspire to. Admittedly, he wasn’t my type—I liked them rough and worn at the edges; inked and dangerous, if you will. But Lennox Dean was home from college on break and something about the way he swaggered in, laughing with his whole body and surrounded by his gaggle of minions, made me squeeze my thighs together to suppress the pang of lust that snuck up at the sight of him.
I ignored the pair of giddy girls seated at my station, sipping their cosmopolitans and giggling about it being their first real drink—losers. The people I called friends were stealing beers and half-empty bottles of whiskey from their dads’ stashes long before we were legal.
Making myself look busy while discreetly eyeing Lennox, I pulled out a rag from my apron to clean an empty table and adjusted my boobs so they spilled over the top of my skimpy black tank. From what I knew of him, my efforts were futile. Nothing would get him to look my way, even my killer rack. He already had a girlfriend and they were serious. High school sweethearts. Gag. Yuck. Shoot me. It wasn’t like me to prey on someone else’s man, but his girlfriend, Eden, and I were currently on the outs and I was looking for a way to piss her off. Immature? Catty? Devious? Maybe, but getting a rise out of her was better than not having her pay any attention to me at all.
She was in and out of my life more than a commuter through a turnstile, but that was my own fault. I was ‘difficult,’ as she phrased it, and she needed to keep her distance to keep her head on straight with her own studies and to prepare for the homecoming of her cherished college boy.
That night, however, I felt rather daring. I didn’t want to keep my distance. Especially not from Lennox, because once Eden got word that I was flirting with her man, she’d have no choice but to talk to me and stop ignoring my phone calls. I was using Lennox as a pawn, but so be it. What was life if you couldn’t have a little reckless fun from time to time?
Too bad my idea of reckless always ended in disaster. Even knowing that, nothing prepared me for the way cozying up to Lennox Dean would change everything.