“It’s my fault.It’s all my fuckin’ fault, AJ.I could’ve flushed that shit down the toilet.But I didn’t.”
AJ clicked off her phone and slipped it in her jeans pocket, and when I stepped onto her porch, she grabbed my hand and tugged me inside.We sat on opposite ends of the couch again, not saying a word and just looking at each other.
“It’s not your fault, Dixon,” she said softly.“Deep down, you know that, right?You didn’t force her to do heroin.”
“I didn’t stop her.”
“Would she have let you?”
Sighing and shaking my head, I said, “No.She’d already decided to do it, and when she made up her mind, nothin’ stopped her.It’s what drew me to her in the first place.She reminded me of my brother, Bax.He’s always known what he wanted.I was the opposite, and I hated that about myself.”
I thought for a few minutes about Kel and all the things she had been so stubborn about, like when we left California and hitchhiked out to Nebraska because she said she just knew she’d be happy there and we could get clean.And then in Omaha, she insisted she was sober enough to drive the car she said she bought but I found out later she’d stolen.I was too high to realize she didn’t have money to buy a car, even a shitty, used one.
She hadn’t been sober enough—I should’ve known that too—and she got picked up a block away from where we’d been staying in a run-down motel we’d paid for with the last of the inheritance she received when her dad died a few months before.She spent ten days in jail until I could come up with the money for her bail, and not one red cent of that cash had been procured by legal means.
Still to this day I couldn’t remember how we made it back to California, but that was where I found myself when I woke up one morning with way too much clarity for my liking.It should’ve scared the shit out of me that I had no clue how I’d traveled across five states, but it didn’t.Heroin was thorough like that; it let all your fears and anxieties seep into the ground beneath your ass and made wherever you landed comfy as fuck so you never wanted to move again.And once Kel and I were back in Redding, it was like we’d never left.We were as high as ever, she didn’t go back to Nebraska for her court hearing, and she died later with probably several warrants out for her arrest.
“When we found out she was pregnant with Stu, she swore she could handle it.She promised to stay clean for him, and I believed her becauseshebelieved.But I also knew better.
“And Stu,” I said, “as soon as I saw him, I knew I’d get clean.Kel felt the opposite.It was like she went into shock after he was born.She couldn’t figure out how she deserved such perfection.She didn’t think she could ever be worthy of him, so she made it true.
“Those first two weeks feel like a dream to me now.Sometimes I doubt they actually happened, that she was sober for two whole weeks of his life.But it didn’t take long for her to find some dope, and it didn’t take much for her to convince herself that Stu was better off without her.After that, she stayed as high as she could until I took Stu away from her.
“But she must’ve known deep down that she was wrong, like her mama-bear instincts had been activated.He’d get so hungry and cry so hard, she tried to physically fight me to get him out of my arms so she could breastfeed him, but she had so much bullshit runnin’ through her veins.I couldn’t let her feed him that.His little body had already gone through too much, detoxing after he was born.”
God, just remembering was making me edgy.Here I was, home and hoping for forgiveness, but I still hadn’t forgiven myself, and I wasn’t sure if I ever could.I shifted on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position, but there was none.
“The shit I put that kid through.I’ll never forgive myself, AJ.I swear I won’t.
“But that was when I started to believe in myself, because I knew what was right.Kel couldn’t see it, but I knew how bad things were, and that’s when all those lies I’d been tellin’ myself began to crack and fall away.
“Stu and I lived in an abandoned barn on the edge of someone’s property for a week so I could keep him away from her.The old man who owned the place found us out there, and he gave me food and water.He let us stay in his air-conditioned garage, and his wife bought formula for Stu.They offered to drive me up here when I told them I had family who would take Stu, but I needed to do it myself.
“By the time I got back to California after I left Stu with Bax, Kel was at the end.I tried, AJ.I tried so fuckin’ hard to get her to go to the hospital.She wouldn’t, and she died right in front of me.
“But it’s not her I see when I get the urge to use again.”I shook my head, letting the pain split me in two all over again.“It’s Bax, holdin’ my kid and the jealousy that caused inside me, because no matter how blissed out drugs can make me feel, seein’ Stu for the first time was better, holdin’ him in my arms, feelin’ his weight.I’ve never loved anyone the way I love him.It’s still crazy to me how fast I fell in love with him.It was faster than instantaneous, and now that I’m here, the hope I feel about getting to know him and be around him feels the same.I want that.I need him in my life more than any high.”
AJ wiped away a tear that had fallen from the corner of her eye.
“Don’t cry.Please don’t cry for me.I don’t deserve your tears.”
“Yes, you do,” she said.“You forget, I knew you before you told yourself all those lies.I knew you before your daddy damaged the sweet little boy you used to be.”
“He was never my dad, AJ.He was just the sorry son of a bitch who owned the house I grew up in.”
“What does that mean?”
But I didn’t have it in me to explain all my conspiracy theories tonight.
Instead, I asked, “What about you?What have you been up to all these years?”
ChapterThirteen
Avery Jane
Clearly,Dixon was trying to redirect the conversation, and that was his prerogative.
If he wanted to talk about his dad and his childhood, I’d listen.Some of it was my childhood, too, but if he wasn’t ready, I’d just show him that I would be there for him when he was.
