Page 24 of Fragments of You

“You left?”

“Several times. I’d go back, swearing to myself that this would be the time it would stick, only to wake up in a panic and run to the first fix I could find.”

“But you’re clean now?”

He nods. “For a year now. I woke up one day and realized that the reason I kept failing over and over again was because I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I wanted to get clean for you, but I needed to want it for myself first. It took me way too long to realize that, but once I did, it changed things for me. I finished an entire stint in rehab for the first time. I came out, and all I wanted to do was get back to you, but I knew doing that would be a mistake. I still had a lot of work ahead of me, and I had to be sure that it would stick. I hurt you once. I didn’t want to come home only to hurt you again.”

“I don’t... I don’t know what to say.” I stare at him for a moment, tracing the contours of his face with my eyes. His full lips. His short beard—if that’s what you want to call it—it honestly looks more like he just hasn’t shaved in a month than it does an actual beard, though I can’t deny that it looks really good on him. His eyes, the way the blue stands out against his tanned skin. His hair, which falls haphazardly across his forehead in a way that makes me desperate to reach out and gently push it back away from his face.

I quickly refocus, not willing to allow myself to go there.

“You don’t look like an addict,” I finally state after too long. “Your skin, your teeth, nothing about you looks like a drug user.”

“Because you know so many?” His mouth quirks up on one side.

“Shut up.” I have to resist the urge to shove his shoulder like I would have done back when we were still us. “I’m serious. How do you still look so... good?” I hesitate to say.

“I didn’t when I was in the thick of it all. In fact, I was basically skin and bones. You probably wouldn’t have even recognized me. My eyes were sunken in, my skin was pale. I can’t even look at pictures of myself from rehab because it’s like looking at a different person entirely. It took me a good bit to start to look and feel like myself again.”

“And Iris?”

“What about Iris?”

“You two seemed awfully chummy. I assume Felix wasn’t the only one who knew?” I try to keep the hurt from my voice.

“Actually, yes, but not because I told her. And I didn’t even know she knew until two days ago when she stopped by my father’s house to check on me.”

“You’re staying at your father’s house?”

“Clearing it out to sell it would be the better way to put it.”

“I see... So Iris knew, but you didn’t know she knew. How is that possible?”

“Her roommate overdosed.”

“I know.”

“She ended up in the same rehab as me.”

“Because she also lived in Tennessee,” I say, feeling stupid that it just now dawned on me that the two were living in the same area.

“She saw me one day when she was visiting her roommate. She didn’t speak to me. I didn’t even know she was there.”

“And yet, not even she told me the truth,” I say more to myself than to Nash. I know Iris and I grew apart after Nash left, but I never realized we were so strained that she wouldn’t call me the instant she found out where Nash was.

“She said she didn’t want to be the reason I failed.”

“Easy to make that decision when you don’t wake up every day wishing you were dead, but sure,” I sneer bitterly.

“P...”

“You said you checked up on me. Why?” I redirect the conversation.

“What do you mean, why? Because I was insanely in love with you.” He tosses his hands up. “Hell, I still am.”

“Don’t.” I shake my head.

“Don’t what, tell you the truth?”

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