Chapter Thirteen
Nate
Housekeeping and I had an understanding. If I was asleep, they could just come in and do their thing, as long as they didn't wake me.
They seemed to be professionals, just handling the rest of the suite while I was in the bedroom and then taking care of that later. They hadn't asked me once about why I had so many syringes in the trash, which was a good thing since I didn't want to tell them.
I judged whether a day was going to be bad or good by whether or not I was hung-over, and I didn't have one today. I'd been a good boy. Heroin was great if you were the sort of person who didn't really like to leave the house. I checked the time and had a shower, ordering food that was here by the time I was out of the shower — breakfast food, although it was already past noon.
I thought about what I was going to do today, remembering the day I had had with Abby yesterday. I had some questions. I hadn't gotten too much from her. She was playful and flirty, but was she interested? Like, if I invited her up to my suite, would she say yes?
She seemed a little young to be married and didn't wear a ring, but that didn't mean anything. She hadn't said she was attached. If she was, then that was about to be a problem for whoever that guy was. Not me.
I thought I had agreed to see her on Sunday, so maybe I'd find out then. I felt pretty good. I had actually had fun. Things started going a little left once we were back in the car, but up until that point, it had been great. I had to remember to send the pictures of the Garden of the Gods to my dad; he’d like to see them.
My suite suddenly felt too small. I wanted to leave. What else could I do now that I wasn’t spending the whole day inside? I could go talk to Abby, but she was working. Could I call my dad? No, he was probably working, too. I was the only person I knew who was on vacation. Maybe if I left the suite, I’d figure something out.
I walked out, taking the elevator down. I got outside remembering how fast I had tried to find the bar my second day here. Keno worked at the bar, I thought, remembering. I hadn’t seen him in a little while. How was he?
I didn’t have to try answer that question myself. I walked over to the bar. It was a reasonable time of day, so for once, I wasn’t the only person sitting there. I had to wait a little while he served some other people before getting to me.
He came over, sliding me a vodka soda. “Is this still your drink? I know you don’t like the fruity stuff,” he said with a grin.
“This is great. Thanks. How are you doing?”
“Good. How are you? I didn’t see you at the luau again; did you leave early?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t feeling too hot that night.”
“Abby was worried about you.”
“She was?” I asked. She had asked about me?
“I heard her talking about you that night with her manager,” he said.
“Are the two of you friends?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. She’s a great girl,” he said fondly. Huh. How great was great? Had they dated? Was that how great? I felt a little jealous thinking that might have been what he was talking about.
“You two used to be together?” I asked, trying to make it sound casual.
“No. Just friends. I went out with Makani for a while, but we broke up. Abby works here every summer. This is her fourth one, I think. We used to be a lot closer, but since the breakup, she keeps her distance for Makani’s sake.”
“You went out with her friend?”
“Yeah, but she bailed. I don’t know what happened.” Keno was hitting that? Well done, I thought. Makani was hot.
“Did she cheat or something?”
“Nah. She just left. We weren’t fighting or drifting apart. Nothing. She just said she didn’t want to be in a relationship anymore, and that was that.”
“That’s rough,” I said.
“It’s awkward for Abby now being stuck in between the two of us, so I just back off.”
“What about her? Abby? Is she seeing anybody?”
“I’ve never seen her with anyone… No. She’s single. She’s been single since I met her, in fact.” Really, I thought. How? She was gorgeous. Nice, too. I was going to bet she wasn’t crazy, either.
“She’s not from here, though, right? She’s from the mainland? Maybe she has a boyfriend there?”
“If she does, he hasn’t seen her in almost four years,” Keno scoffed.
He told me about himself as I finished my drink, just the one today; I wasn’t trying to get hammered. We got into Kirsten a little since he brought up Makani again. He sure talked about her a lot for someone who was no longer in a relationship with her. By the time I was leaving, I still felt pretty good.
I wanted to keep it up. I spent my time sober more scared of when I was going to feel sick again than actually enjoying feeling normal. This was nice, but maybe checking into rehab would have been a better way to spend my money. Heroin wasn’t cigarettes; I didn’t think people could just quit without checking in somewhere.
I wasn’t here to quit, really, but if I ended up being able to do it, then I wasn’t going to complain. If talking to Keno and Abby and going to places like the Garden of the Gods replaced heroin for me, at least half of my problems would disappear, just like that.
I got back to my suite and sat at the piano. I was feeling inspired. It had become hard to feel that way anymore. It had been a weird, shitty, but also good few weeks since I’d landed in Lanai, and I felt sort of renewed. Like I’d gotten all that LA smog out of my lungs and was breathing clean air for the first time in years.
I started playing through something I’d written years ago for Remus that we hadn’t ended up using. I had tons of stuff in the vault that I had written and never used for anything. Besides my housekeeper hearing me play when she happened to be in the house, nobody had heard it. I had a home studio, but that was something else that I had used less and less as my life fell apart.
I’ve spent so much time being a loser, I thought. I’d gotten really great at heroin and booze, but had literally put the brakes on every other thing I used to do. Fuck that. That was the stuff that made me feel like myself. The drugs made me a zombie. Between the two of them, I had chosen the wrong thing. I wasn’t going to be able to make that choice forever. I had to wake up.
My phone started vibrating in my pocket where it still was from my trip downstairs. I stopped playing to see who it was. Kirsten. I rolled my eyes and put the phone on the piano, ignoring it. It rang a couple more times until she finally went back to enjoying my money, or whatever the hell it was she did in her free time. I played a little while longer before I figured it was time to order something to eat.
My phone was still sitting on the piano. I picked it up thinking I’d see a text from Kirsten or something. She wasn’t the type to let sleeping dogs lie. It wasn’t a text, but she had left another voicemail. I hesitated before listening to it.
No, this was okay. I was in a much better headspace than I had been when I’d gotten that first message. I’d been away a little while, I wasn’t antsy and dope sick. Nothing she said could touch me. I played the message.
“Nate, I wish you’d stop ignoring me, babe,” she started. I frowned. Why was she being so nice all of a sudden?
“I don’t know if I can go the whole summer without hearing from you. I want us to talk. After you come back, I want us to talk about things. About us. We’ve both said a lot of things in the past to hurt each other, but I love you, Nate, and I think we should give it another shot. Please call me back when you get this. I need to know that you aren’t shutting me out. You shouldn’t be alone right now, honey. Just call me if you need anything.”
The message ended.
I shut my eyes and sighed. I was in a better headspace, but something about Kirsten and everything she said to me these days just rubbed me the wrong way. She wanted to get back together now? Why? So she could file for divorce again?
I stood up, making the piano bench fall over. Fuck her. Fuck that bitch and whatever scam she was trying to pull. There was no way she’d had a come to Jesus moment since the last message she’d sent me telling me I could die and it wouldn’t make a difference to her.
It hadn’t been long enough. It was still too fresh. Hawai’i wasn’t far enough. All the people I hated were still in LA, but all the shit had followed me here. I paced around the room, mad, frustrated, and angry that this was my fucking life. I grabbed a lamp sitting on the table near the piano and launched it at the deck. The doors were open, so it smashed against the banister.
I knocked the dining room chairs aside, flipping the table. It cracked as it landed heavily on its side. I launched one of the chairs right into a framed picture of waves breaking on a beach. Then I stormed into the bedroom and dug my kit out of the closet. I walked over to the bed and opened it, looking at my solution.
All it took was one little dose, and I could forget. All this could fade into nothing and I’d feel great. It had worked for so long; why couldn’t I just continue? I looked at my stuff for a long while before walking back out of the bedroom. I had a better idea. I searched the drawers in the living room for hotel stationary and a pen. I sat at the piano and started writing.