Page 80 of Stitches

“When was the last time you got laid?” I asked, watching the smoke swirl above us.

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I hope you’re not fucking offering.”

I took another hit and let out a soft laugh. “I’m not so hard up that I need to fuck you, Sinclair. I was merely making conversation.”

“When was the last time you got laid?”

I cocked my head left, watching the smoke swirl above me, high off my ass.

“Recently.” My firefly flashed in my mind before I took another deep drag off my drug.

“Vague. Of course,” Sin commented, smoking again.

“Was Bells the last bitch you were buried in?”

He grunted. “Thought you were psychic. Shouldn’t you know the answer to that?”

I considered his words for a moment. “It doesn’t really work that way, bestie. If it did, I’d have the winning lottery numbers and be on a white sandy beach somewhere instead of sitting here getting high with you.”

He turned his head to look at me from where he was lying in his bed. “Aren’t drugs bad for nutbags like you? With the voices and shit?”

I shrugged and took another hit. “I don’t know. This actually quiets things down inside my head. It’s nice sometimes to hear nothing.”

“Really?” He went up on his elbow and stared me down.

“Yeah.”

“Are the voices really that loud for you?”

“Sometimes.” Another hit.

Fuck, that’s good shit.

“I feel normal when I’m smoking. Weed always kept me grounded, but this shit makes my head feel a lot clearer. I’m more focused.”

“Do you even know what normal is?”

“No.” I smirked at him. “I’m only assuming this is how you little assholes feel. Minus all that self-loathing shit you sad fucks have.” I paused. “I didn’t always hear the voices you know.”

“What happened?”

“Who knows? I was probably triggered by some traumatic event in my childhood or some shit.”

“Did you have a traumatic event?”

“Does killing small animals with toothpicks at three count?”

“I wouldn’tnotcount it,” he mumbled. “Weird fuck.”

I laughed at his words. “When I was five, my old man took me to see a guy in the city. I sat there and listened to them talk. I watched as they dined. They offered me something to eat.”

“And?” Sin took another hit.

I smiled at him. “I guess it wasthe traumatic event. Turns out, it was a thirty-eight-year-old man who owed some very bad men a lot of money.”

Sin curled his lip up at me, his face positively green with revulsion.

“To be fair, I didn’t eat it, butI felt it. Does that make sense?”

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