“That’s…thats kinda nice, you know? That you were able to make something good come from such a shitty situation.” I looked at the guys and they were a unit. A family. You could see it in the way they all looked at each other. That connection. The same one I craved.
“It is,” Mia sighed, draped across Jet's lap where he sat on the car roof. “Come on up, newbie. It's time to get lit!”
Hours passed in a haze of beer and weed. I felt lighter. Freer than I had since I’d lost mum. Numb but not in a way that hurt. I laughed too easily. Answered questions I didn’t remember being asked.
Mia sat too close on one side, her hand stroked up and down my thigh. Jet sat on the other side, hand resting on my knee. I felt like too much. I didn’t lean into it. Didn’t push them away either.
Just let things happen to me.
It felt easier that way. I stopped feeling like a person and started feeling like an object. Like something things happened to. It was quieter that way.
“Open up,” Mia looked at me, pupils blown.
“What—”
“Trust me,” she said. “Its gentle.
I stared at the tiny white pill with a picture of blood red lips on it stuck on the end of her finger.
“I don’t—” Words died on my tongue as she stuck the pill on it and pushed my mouth shut. Something in me screamed to pull back. To say no. The sound drowned under the weight of wanting to feel different more than I wanted to feel safe.
“It’ll make you feel lighter,” she whispered, then kissed my cheek. Reeling from the brush of her lips I watched through hazy eyes as she put another on her tongue and pulled Jet to her. The moment their lips met I swallowed what was left of the pill that had dissolved on my tongue. As I watched her feed him another.
I was already floating by the time it hit my blood stream. That was the moment things stopped being mine. The world tilted. Sounds got too loud.
My skin felt too close to my body. My heart started beating like it was trying to escape my ribs. Every breath scraped. My pulse thudded in my ears so loud it drowned out the music. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the night began.
Someone laughed behind me and it felt like a shout. Someone brushed my arm and it felt like a handprint burned into my skin
I was on the ground with no recollection of how I got there. I stood up too fast. Everything was spinning. “I need air,” I gasped, clutching my chest.
Nobody listened. Or maybe they did, and I didn’t wait. I walked. Away from the noise. The fire. My new friends. Down the road that curved past the fair ground. The darkness of night had never seemed so vibrant and alive.
My phone buzzed in my hand as it turned on. I didn't remember picking it up. I didn’t remember unlocking it. I just knew the only name in my head was his. I hit call without thinking. My fingers knew his number better than my mind did. Even through the fog, even with my thoughts sliding sideways, my body remembered who felt like solid ground.
“Eli—”
The sound of his voice cracked something open in me. Relief hit so hard my knees almost buckled.
“Can you come get me?”
“Where are you? Are you okay?” Concern laced Anthony’s voice.
My vision swam. I leaned against a fence post. “I-I’m not okay,” I whispered to the empty road. Saying it out loud felt like admitting failure. Like I’d broken some unspoken rule about being too much.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. You’re scaring me.”
The word sweetheart lodged in my chest. I didn’t want to scare him. I didn’t want to need him like this. But I was already falling, and he was the only one who could see it. I could hear Anthony’s heavy breathing like he was running. The sound of a truck door slamming shut. The roaring of an engine.
“I’m scared I’ll do something stupid.”
I didn’t know what that meant exactly. Only that being alone felt dangerous.
“Stay where you are. Don’t move! I’m coming.”
I slid down the post until I was sitting on the curb. The asphalt was cold through my jeans. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to breathe. I pressed my palms into my thighs, dug my fingers into denim, counted the cracks in the pavement—anything to stay in my body.
“I don’t want sex,” I mumbled. “I just want to feel safe.”
