Matt

“Well, this is an all-time low for you,” Nick says, slamming the door behind him.

I grunt, holding my temples. Where the hell am I? My neck is cramped and I feel as if I have a thousand cotton balls lodged in my rank mouth. “What the fuck did I drink last night?” I groan as I roll over and land straight on the hard floor. “Motherfucker,” I yelp, trying to push up. I obviously failed in my attempt to stay sober.

Those fucking eyes are all I can see. The hurt I saw on her face when I called her a whore is mixed with my hurt from being lied to. Lying in bed talking all night with her is all tangled up with the horrible experience of going to jail. It’s all a jumbled mess in my head, and I can’t fucking forget no matter how hard I try. Maybe it was better when I thought she was missing, no matter how morbid that sounds. At least my only emotion then was worry. Now it’s betrayal, anger, and every other negative emotion in the book. “You slept in your office? Man, that’s gotta be a first.”

“Shh,” I mutter. His voice is too loud and the lights are too bright. I pinch the bridge of my nose with my fingers and squeeze my eyes shut.

“Get the hell up.” I feel his arms on me, trying to help, but I swat them away.

“I got it,” I say through gritted teeth.

“We need to have a talk, you and I,” Nick tells me. I hate his tone—the I’m-a-responsible-adult-and-you’re-a-total-fuck-up tone.

“Don’t want to hear it.”

“Don’t give a shit.”

I sit back on my couch, which I note should be thrown out and replaced with one that makes a better bed. “So I drank too much. Fell asleep. Big deal. When we were in our teens we passed out in one of the empty offices a bunch of times. Lay off.”

“That’s the thing, Matt. We’re not teenagers, we’re grown men. Men with responsibilities. You know how this life can suck you in. First the drinking and then the drugs, and then one day you’re gone. Is that what you want? Haven’t we been through enough?”

“That’s quite the stretch. From drunk to junkie? Really?”

“I thought you were going to help me run the club.” It’s the umpteenth time he’s given me this speech. Just because I don’t want to listen doesn’t mean I’m not; I’m simply ignoring it all. “Now that Dad’s gone, I need the help. I can’t count on someone who’s drinking instead of working. Getting laid instead of dealing with the vendors.”

I guffaw at that. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. But I’m not going to share the truth about my nonexistent sex life. “Fuck off,” I say one last time, closing my eyes and willing my headache to go away.

“You know what? Do what you want. I can’t help you if you don’t want help. So, April, June, whatever the fuck her name is, lied to you. You’re going to let that destroy your life?”

“Shut up. Shut your mouth,” I say with a scowl. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. That raspy, sultry voice, that black hair that is now golden blond, the love I thought we had for each other, five months of my life…all of it was a lie. A big colossal waste of time.

“Well, I can say one good thing about this whole mess. At least you’re feeling something.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, normally you have one emotion: ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen you mad or sad. So at least you’re letting that shit out. Not the healthiest way, but at least it’s something.” Shaking his head, he walks out, shutting the door behind him and leaving me to sulk by myself.

Eventually I get up, mostly because I feel like shit. When I realize it’s seven in the evening and the club will be opening shortly, I groan. If I skip out on work, it’ll be exactly what my brother said would happen. There’s no way I can leave. I just need more of the numbness.

I still feel so disgusting for having snorted coke in front of April. It’s made everything I’ve been feeling exponentially worse. I think deep down I always believed June—that is, April—would come back. As fucked up as that sounds, I deluded myself into thinking she would waltz back into my life. That there was a logical reason she’d left. As irrational as it seemed, I’d thought maybe it was just a very complicated pharmaceutical rep engagement that had kept her away.

I know, I know. It’s absurd, but that’s how desperate I was to believe she was coming back. Never in all this time did it occur to me that she’d stayed away on purpose. That she’d left me. That she’d been too busy fucking me over—getting me arrested, getting my father arrested—to come back.

Eyes fuzzy from all the drinking and the lack of sleep, I pull open a drawer with such force it comes off its tracks. I reach into the back and find the small baggie that I hid in there a few weeks ago.

As I stand there with the bag in my hand, my mind involuntarily goes back to her face when I pulled the bag out in front of her a week ago. Suddenly I rush to the bathroom and toss it away. I’m not going to let that bitch ruin any more of my life. It’s over. I need to move on.

I’m ready to get my ass downstairs and help tend bar or whatever the hell else needs to be done.

I’m ready to move on.