Ghost nodded, but his jaw stayed tight, shoulders stiff like he was bracing for impact.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair and wiped his palms on his thighs. Took a breath. Then another.
“I just...” He sighed and tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling like the answer might be written there.
“Spit it out, dude,” I said, sharper than I meant to. The pause was making my skin crawl.
Had something happened while I was gone? Something Iggy hadn’t told me? Something they were keeping from me?
My knee bounced under the table. My hands curled into fists in my lap.
“A few days ago, in Milan,” Ghost started. “Iggy and I were talking about his injury. I gave him some painkillers.”
My chest went tight. “Was it Oxy?”
Ghost snapped his head forward and glared at me. “Fuck no,” he hissed. “I’m not a goddamn drug dealer.”
His reaction made sense, so I lifted my hands in surrender. Still, the intrusive thoughts had already taken hold. Oxy had been Iggy’s drug of choice. The one that had nearly killed him. The idea that he might’ve come anywhere near it again made bile creep up my throat.
“I—yeah,” I said, my voice rough. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Ghost exhaled and sat up straighter. “Nah. It was Ultram. Left over from when I broke my ankle.”
Ultram.
Not Oxy. But still an opioid.
My stomach dropped anyway.
“I told him to be careful,” Ghost went on. “That it could be addictive. There weren’t many left in the bottle, but when he asked me for more this morning...” He hesitated. “I was surprised they were already gone. And he was frantic. Like,reallyfrantic.”
He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “The way he was acting reminded me of you. Before.”
Before.
Before rehab. Before sobriety. Before I learned how to lie without blinking and not snap when someone got too close to the truth.
I swallowed hard.
Did Iggy get like that when he was using? Was this pain, or something else wearing its face?
I reached across the table and set my hand on Ghost’s shoulder, squeezing once. “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I’ll talk to Iggy.”
And I would.
I’d ask him to be honest. To tell me if he was struggling. We’d made a pact, after all. Promised to look out for each other. To stay on the right track, even when it got hard.
But more than that, I’d talk to him because I loved him.
And all I wanted was for him to be okay.
I spent the rest of the night before the show watching Iggy.
Not in the obvious way. Not hovering or hovering adjacent. Just... tracking him. Filing things away. Looking for signs I didn’t want to find. For cracks in the version of him that laughed too loud, gestured too big, took up space like he was daring the world to push back.
Anything that might tell me he was slipping. Anything that might say he wasn’t okay and hadn’t told me.
