chapter THIRTY
Therapist: The temptation will come and it will be overwhelming.
Jay: My determination will be there too and it will be impenetrable.
Jay
“You think…” I glanced around, rubbed my eyes and saw what the damage looked like to someone who hadn’t been there. A tumbler was on the floor, probably reeking of incense and booze, and powder was laid out on the table.
I tried to tuck my rage into a bottle for later. I tried not to blow up at her, but the distrust I saw all over her face whittled away at my hope. The one person I wanted to believe I wasn’t ever going to use again stood there questioning me like I was only ever an addict.
I’d been more.
I was more.
I’d stared at that cocaine most of the night.
I’d held a rolled up piece of paper in my hand ready to sniff it off the table after watching Lela do two lines.
I’d stared at the one drug that had committed to me and always been there for me and turned it down.
No one tells you that breaking off your relationship with a drug is like losing a loved one. That the pain of knowing you won’t ever feel that exact same sort of feeling again is a scary fucking thing. Sure, the loved one had screwed with your head, threatened your life, and stolen so many things from you, but they’d still been a part of you.
Saying, no especially when it was only me and the drug, was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.
Instead of the woman I loved congratulating me on doing that, she was accusing me of throwing away my sobriety and my career.
I cleared my throat. “I get this looks bad, Meek—”
She cut me off. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Let’s not talk about it.”
As she rushed to the sink and grabbed a towel from the counter, I realized what she was doing. “Wait a second.” I stood up. “What are you doing?”
Lela piped up from the corner of the bus like a ghost I’d completely forgotten about. “Yeah, what are you doing? Don’t you dare wipe my blow. I’m going to hit it soon.”
She threw the towel into the sink harder than necessary. “Fine. We need to go, then, Jay. Lela, it’s been interesting.”
Mikka stormed off the bus, and I stalked after her.
In the middle of the village, I yelled at her. “You have some gall coming here at the ass crack of dawn just to direct judgmental looks my way after you sped back to Dougie yesterday.”
As she spun around, her hair whipped through the air. “Go back to him? Are you insane?” she screeched. “I can’t believe you think I would go back to him.”
Her words didn’t even really register. “Oh, so then you know how I feel about you thinking I would go back to using.”
“There was cocaine on the fucking table, Jay. You slept in her trailer. Did you fuck her before you took the hit or after?” She threw the first blow swiftly, knocking the wind out of my lungs with the ruthlessness of her words.
I shook my head. Her eyes glistened in the light of the morning sun. “You know what? You’re broken.”
She took a step back, ready to be done with me.
“I’m broken too, Little Pebble. We never threw stones at each other before, and we’re not going to start now. Our ground rules were wrong. We’re broken.”
She swiped at her eyes. “I can’t… I don’t know how to not be.”
I closed the distance between us and threaded my hand in hers. “I never wanted you to be unbroken, woman. We have to work together to heal.”
She snatched her hand away. “Jay, you need to finish your scenes for the day. You need to focus on you.”