“You are worth something, you’re worth everything,” I said fiercely, tears running down my cheeks at the heart-wrenching story. I knew her background, but she’d told me breezily, as if it didn’t bother her. I didn’t know the extent of it. I should have known what lay underneath those joking words. Those scars beneath the surface. I was her best friend. I should have known.
Bex smiled sadly. “Yeah, that’s what you told me. What Faith told me. The two of you, coming into my life, you’re probably the reason why I didn’t seek solace in the needle sooner,” she stated quietly. “Then it got you. Faith. Life took it away from two people who didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t handle it. I’m not strong like you, Lil. I got Dylan treating my body like it was his, Carlos profiting off it, men claiming it. I needed to escape it all. Have something that took it all away. Made me forget for a while.”
I sat back, blinking. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked brokenly.
Bex smiled again. “Tell my sweet little Lils that I was shooting up whenever she was at the hospital caring for her dying mom? Letting my best friend see the filth, when she was the only one who treated me like it wasn’t there? Put my problems on the girl already carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders?” She shook her head. “No. That’s not what best friends are for. They’re for taking some of that load, not adding to it,” she whispered softly.
I stood quickly, moving to sit next to her, clutching her hands in mind. “That goes both ways you big idiot,” I told her croakily. “You’re all I’ve got. You can’t check out, too. You can’t decide you’re not good enough. You can’t put poison in your body anymore. Promise me,” I pleaded. “You’re worth so much more than that. You can be so much more. My mom knew that. She saw the real you. She wouldn’t want you to give up.” Playing the dead mom card was a low blow, but I was willing to do anything to make sure Bex didn’t meet my mom, wherever she was, anytime soon.
Bex stared at me. “I don’t want to,” she said finally. “I don’t want to live that life. I think I realized that when I was in that stall, shooting up. It was like I was back in bed years ago. I want something more,” she whispered.
“You’re going to get it,” I reassured her.
Her eyes, the ones that had life in them, stared into mine. “I’m not going to some rehab where they do daily circle jerks and talk about feelings. I’m not being trapped in some state-run prison,” she stated firmly.
“Okay,” I replied quietly. I knew the reality of what Bex could afford, which was nothing, which meant places that rivaled the foster homes she grew up with. Only the rich had the luxury of rehabs with tennis courts and spas.
“You don’t need this,” she continued, shame back on her face. “You don’t deserve to have to handle your drug addict friend going cold turkey on heroin.”
I pulled her chin with my thumb and forefinger. “That’s the last time you say something like that. In sickness and in health,” I told her firmly.
She grinned. “That’s marriage.”
I shrugged. “Best friendship is like marriage…” I paused, “and you’re my family,” I told her simply.
“I’m dying,” Bex declared, her entire body shaking while a thin film of sweat trickled off her forehead.
I dabbed it with a damp cloth. “You’re not,” I promised.
“I am,” she argued, any further protest silenced by her emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl.
I held back her hair and rubbed her back, my heart bleeding for my friend, my heart bleeding with the powerful flashback that hit me of doing the exact same thing with Mom. Only with Bex, her body was having trouble with the poison leaving her body, with Mom they were fighting her body with poison. Unlike Mom, Bex was going to win this battle. I had to believe that.
She wiped her mouth with toilet paper, her defeated gaze turning to me.
“I can’t do this, Lil,” she croaked.
“You can,” I told her firmly, helping her off the floor.
We walked slowly to the living room, Bex relying heavily on me, her body weak. Days of withdrawals had turned her into a shadow of herself, I would have barely recognized her if it wasn’t for the purple tips peeking out of her shaggy bun.
Once I’d settled her back on the sofa and watched her curl into the blanket with a grimace, I walked into the kitchen, where I could still see her.
I was at a loss. I had to work tonight. Had to. My funds were running seriously dry, funds that both Bex and I needed now she wasn’t working. I knew there would be no way I could have afforded a new phone to replace my smashed one. Then one had been sitting inside the door of the apartment when I got up. Someone had broken in. Someone who knew the code of the new security system we had.