Micah flinches. He looks at me one more time, and the painon his face is unbearable—like he’s watching someone drown and can’t save them. “He’s taken too much, Adriana. He’s nodding.”
I try to lift my head. Try to say something that makes sense...but the heroin is mercilessly pulling me under. He sighs, running a hand through his messy hair and disappears down the hall, jaw clenched tight. As soon as he’s gone, Adriana climbs on top of me.
I can’t give. I can’t…
My pulse is a slow, lazy beat in my ears, a distant echo from another room. The heroin is a warm, thick blanket smothering every sharp edge, softening everything into a pleasant, blurry hum. I feel her, but it’s like watching a movie through a rain-streaked window. The sensations are muted, filtered through layers of static.
Her grip tightens, her nails biting through the fabric of my shirt, a faint, almost pleasant pinprick of reality. My own fingers are suddenly inside her. I don’t remember moving them. They’re just...there.
I keep my eyes closed, my brain fighting to survive. To keep me from overdosing. I almost want to cry, the poor fucking thing tries so hard. Every nerve feels muted, yet alive in a broken, disconnected way. The flickering light through my eyelids stabs at me, so I tuck into a safer corner of the dark, chasing the quiet.
Her breath is uneven. I feel the desperate clench of her thighs, the frantic motion in her body, and the friction of her against me. I register it—not fully, just enough that it pulses through me. She pulls my hand away.
She shifts, grinding against the seam of my denim, hands pressing down, using me for leverage, for balance. I sense it more than I understand it.
I’m here, but not here. I feel her, but I can’t reach her. I hear her, but the words don’t register. Every touch is amplified, yet distant. I nod closer to the edge of oblivion. And for a brief moment, I hope I fall into the warm darkness forever.
I don’t care to come back from this...
She presses her forehead to my neck. Her skin is fever-hot, damp with sweat. Her whisper is a fast, desperate murmur, a jumble of sounds that smear together into meaningless noise in my heroin-fogged ears. I can’t decipher it.
I can’t catch anything.
My head lolls back, heavy as stone, and the ceiling melts into white noise. Shapes bleed, swirl, dissolve. I am a satellite spinning silently in the void, drifting further from the body I inhabit.
Adriana is lost in her own world, a world of sensation I can only faintly perceive. She’s using my body like muscle memory,her movements instinctual. I am the couch. I am the thing she fucks herself on.
A high, broken moan reaches me. Her body stiffens above mine, fingers clawing into my shoulders, talons in flesh. Tremors ripple through her, violent shudders transmitted along every point where our bodies meet.
She comes. Hard. Heat seeps through the denim, a startling, damp warmth against my crotch. The tension drains from her instantly, her body collapsing forward on my chest. Face buried in the hollow of my neck, her breath is harsh against my skin.
“I’m sorry…” she whispers, so low I can barely process it. “You’re the only person who doesn’t make me want to die.”
But I am adrift, anchored only by the faintest vibration of her presence, aware in fragments, drowning in the heat and the haze, barely tethered to the world. To...
Emma.
The ache in my chest flares so sharply it shines through the high for a moment, stinging my eyes. My throat tightens. I wanther. I want her so much it hurts.
But all I can do is lie here, someone else filling the space where she should be. I close my eyes, letting the high swallow me whole, and in every pulse of my veins, I feel her like a ghost I can’t touch, but can’t let go.
I wake up choking on my dry fucking mouth. My head is pounding. It takes a few seconds for the room to stop tilting sideways. The TV is still on, flickering the blue light of some late-night infomercial. The sound is a soft drone that feels like I’m in some dream. I have no idea what time it is...just that it’s still dark outside.
Micah is passed out beside me on the couch, one arm thrown over his face, mouth slightly open. Poor bastard must’ve stayed up to make sure I didn’t stop breathing.
My stomach twists. I blink a few times, trying to force my eyes to focus. Everything feels so heavy, like my body isn’t ready to wake up yet. Then I look down. There’s a dark smear on my jeans. High on the thigh and crotch. A vivid reminder of everything I shouldn’t have allowed to happen. Did she…say sorry after? I could haveswornI heard her. But maybe I’m just imagining.
I scrub a hand over my face. I don’t remember falling asleep. Don’t remember when she left. I just remember floating in and out, weightless and numb. I must have nodded really hard…
My phone vibrates weakly under my hip when I shift, and I pull it out. The screen lights up, stabbing white. I squint.
EMMA
Hey, are you okay?
Jude???
Please talk to me, I'm worried.
