Page 103 of Creatures Like Us
Lilith snorts. “Fuck do I know.”
I shoot up from the chair with the adrenaline rush you get from making a decision like the one I just made, and I go into the back room, where I know the off-the-record business takes place.
I find Joshua sitting on a beat-up-looking sofa together with all sorts of shady people, but I don’t care about them. I care only about one thing.
“Hey, I need something.”
Joshua raises his brows as he looks me up and down. “Been a while, Dalton. Where you been at?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just give it to me.”
“Got any money?”
It’s only now that I realize I left my debit card with Noah, and I don’t have any cash on me either. “You’ll get it later. You know I’m good for it. Just?…?please, fucking give it to me.”
Joshua rolls his eyes. “All right, all right.” He hauls a small plastic bag out of his pocket and places it firmly in my hand. “Have some manners next time, dude.”
His last words don’t register. I haul ass out of there and go find Lilith again. She’s right where I left her, in deep conversation with her friend Savannah.
I walk up to them. “I need to borrow your shit.”
Lilith stares at me. “What the fuck, Ash? You really think I’d let you use my shit, especially after you’ve been shacking up with your weird-ass boyf—hey!”
While she’s talking, I reach into her pockets and get what I was looking for.
I hear Lilith calling after me, distraught, but before she can catch me, I bound upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom, leaving the others to another night of drinking and drugging and arguing and fucking, and I hate them all—every single person on this planet.
Except forhim.
Fuck, I miss him.
I lean both hands on the closed bathroom door and feel my eyes burn with tears. I trail my hands down to where he cut me, and I press my fingernail into the scab, wishing the wound were deeper, wishing it hurt more, so I could feel something other than this pain. I know what would make it all go away, though, and I hold it in the palm of my hand.
Finally, I’m going to feel good again.
Pulse running wild, I rip up the packet of brown powder I got from Joshua. Fuck, that smell?…?My eyes roll to the back of my head, but at the same time, tears press thick and heavy in my throat.
I want to do it so badly, but at the same time, I?…?Fuck?…?Fuck?…?No, I have to! I have to get rid of this feeling. I have to feel good; I have to?…
I bang the back of my head against the wall, wanting to scream, but the sound that comes out is dry and miserable, a coughed-out sob.
“Noah,” I whine. “Noah.”
It sounds like a plea. A plea for what, I don’t even know. I feel like the ground has opened up beneath my feet, and below, there is only a black hole that beckons me to dive in and destroymyself. I can’t do this without him. Without Noah, I’m going to end up in that black hole, sooner or later. If I don’t jump, I’ll stumble and fall. In some distant future, I can see myself fighting it, but it’s a hopeless pursuit; the cravings are too strong, and I’m too broken and wrongly wired to fight them.
But tonight?…?tonight I have to try. Not for myself, but for him.
I dig my fingers into my cut, harder, and I sob with the pain, trying to breathe through it.
The contents of that plastic bag are going to kill me, unless the grief kills me first, unless the pain takes me under. How can one human being feel so much pain? How can I stand this? I can’t do it alone, but I don’t have anyone who can help me. My brother doesn’t give a shit about me, Lilith is a bitch who’ll throw me under the bus the next time she sees fit, and Noah?…?He hurt me. We can’t be together.
The walls are closing in on me, the noose around my throat is tightening, and I have nothing,nothing, to make me feel better. I hold my salvation in my hands, but before I know what I’m doing, I’m shaking the contents of the bag into the toilet bowl and slamming my hand on the flush handle, seeing my only means of escape whirl around and around and disappear into the darkness.
This is it. Was I a good boy now? Can someone come and fucking praise me, and convince me I didn’t just commit the biggest mistake of my life?
I wanted relief when I flushed the drugs, but there is none. I wanted to be proud of myself, but the feeling ripping me apart is nothing like pride. I just feel like nothing fucking matters anymore.
Being sober doesn’t matter. Being alive doesn’t matter. All that matters is I don’t have Noah anymore, and nothing will matter until I do.
