Life of the Party (Wayward #1)

CHAPTER 51

Grey liked heroin just as much as I did. I’d been banking on it, actually, knowing he’d cave that much more if he wanted the dope as badly as I did. It was all too easy for us to go from balloon to balloon, justifying every one, calling each our last and then finding some reason to go and get another. It was lovely, my holiday—spent almost entirely in my room with the man I adored, smiling smiles of pure, relentless joy, forgetting all about the world outside.

I could hear Charlie coming and going, her door closing, her hairdryer whirring. I heard Courtney’s voice, too, as she came and went, but nothing could coax me from my room, the ultimate zenith of my happiness. Nothing but the need for more heroin.

Once in a while when our supply was getting low, I’d rise from my sloth-like existence and force myself into a shower, throw on some clothes and go out into the world. My parents were never home. I’d go through purses and jean pockets and bowls of change, always finding enough to fuel our habit for another week.

When I returned home, Grey would dress and shower, take the money I’d procured and leave the house. Sometimes he was gone an hour, sometimes half a day. I’d wait at home, edgy and impatient for my next fix, taking the time to straighten up my room and tidy the house, washing the week-old food from the plates piling up, shaking out my bedding, emptying the overflowing ashtrays, disposing of countless needles.

Getting everything in order for our next binge.

I knew this couldn’t last. I mean, this wasn’t really a way of life. It was just a time-out, an extended break before we re-entered normal society again. It’d been ages since I’d last been to a club, months, it seemed, since I’d hung out with all of my friends. And I needed to get a job soon—I couldn’t steal from my parents forever .

All this I knew, but the actual date to start my life again kept getting pushed back further and further. It loomed on the horizon, something I knew I needed to get back to, but it was just so easy to procrastinate, so easy to justify the next balloon of sticky black drugs.

Even so, when Grey returned home after a trip to the city with only one rubber pouch in his hand, I was shocked, disappointed. I gazed up at him in alarm.

“Are you going back again? For more?” I wondered hopefully.

“No.” He was hesitant to begin. I knew he didn’t want to upset me, but at the same time, he had to be firm. “No, Mackenzie. This is it. We’ve booked the Aurora again and we start playing next week. I have to get serious, I can’t be strung out all the time. I can’t remember the last time I practiced my guitar.” He held his hand out in front of him, stretching stiff fingers. “One last weekend, okay? Then we quit, for good.”

I nodded. I knew the truth in his words, but I was sad, afraid for my holiday to be over. I didn’t want it to be over. The thought made me panicky. I wanted to argue with him, but I had no argument. I tried to rationalize, to talk some sense into my brain. This wasn’t living. This wasn’t life. I needed to get straight too. When was the last time I’d talked to Charlie? The last time I’d socialized with anyone?

The last time I’d eaten?

“You’re right,” I admitted begrudgingly. “We need to quit.”

“One last weekend,” Grey smirked at me. He set the supplies down on my nightstand and began rolling up his shirtsleeve, revealing the dark, hard muscle of his arm. “Let’s make it count.”

Monday morning came too soon. Grey and I woke up about the same time, uncomfortable and sweaty. He grabbed my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and kissed me encouragingly.

“We’re done.” He proclaimed. “We’re done with heroin.”

I nodded. “Yes.” I agreed. I tried not to be sad, I tried to be excited for a fresh start. We’re done, we’re done with heroin, I repeated to myself, over and over again.

Even with that thought running foremost in my mind, nothing could’ve prepared me for what we were in for.

At first, I was merely…achy. Like I was coming down with the flu or something, like my bones were sore in their very marrow. It was unpleasant but bearable. Grey and I la y back on my bed, smoking as our sweat dampened the sheets beneath us, trying to talk to each other and keep our minds from withdrawal.

“The CD’s almost finished.” He informed me. “It’s just being mastered now, and then it will be ready for distribution.”

“So it’ll be in music stores and stuff?” I wondered, amazed. My stomach churned within me. I tried to ignore it.

“Uh…I think so. I think it’ll be more for having at our concerts, for fans to buy.” A wave of pain contorted his handsome features for a split second, but he recovered quickly. “Tom’s going to try and get us some radio play.”

“What? That’s awesome.” I started to smile, but a blistering stab of heat bore into my guts. I panted around it. “Your songs are going to be on the radio?”

“Yeah.” Grey wiped his brow. “Cool huh?”

I tried smiling again. “I’m so proud of you. You’re going to be famous, Grey Lewis.” I imagined it then—anything to take my mind off the churning—and beamed at him through my sweat, drawing my knees up to my chest.

“You okay?” Grey wondered, placing a sweaty hand on my slick arm.

“Yeah.” I lied. Another spasm clutched me. “You?”

“Yeah.” He lay back and shut his eyes, though, his lips a hard, tight line.

“Grey?”

“Yes?”

“Keep talking to me, okay? It helps.”

It seemed like he tried to laugh, but the sound never made it to his lips. “What do you want to hear?”

“Anything. Something about you, something I don’t know.”

“Something you don’t know…hmmm…” He inhaled sharply, and then his face relaxed. “This isn’t…the first time I’ve had to get off heroin.”

“It’s not?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “When did you?”

“When I was younger. Like, fifteen, sixteen.”

“Really? I had no idea.” I grit my teeth. “Was it hard to quit?”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “I barely got into it. We smoked it on tinfoil back then. I was such a punk kid, into all kinds of shit.”

I listened quietly, shutting my eyes and focusing on Grey’s low, velvet voice instead of the gnawing in my stomach.

“Things were bad before.” He explained. “We were stealing stereos and stuff to pay for drugs. One of my friends almost got beat to death by a dealer.” He paused for a moment, talking a breath. “I saw some messed up thing go down. When I tried heroin…it was such freedom. I didn’t have to think about my past and my parents, or my present and all the shit I’d seen and done, the little shit-hole apartment that was my home, my frail old grandma waiting for me there.”

I nodded, encouragingly. I loved it when Grey opened up like this. Most of his emotions he expressed in his songs—I had to listen to them, read the lyrics there to really understand what he’d been through, what was going through his head. He had my attention now, my rapt attention, overshadowing the sick, achy blood racing through my body. I would listen to whatever he had to say.

His eyes were shut, in remembrance or pain, I couldn’t tell. His voice shook ever so slightly. “It was my grandma who made me change. I could see her wasting away, so worried. I was leaving, it was late one night, and I needed a fix. She begged me not to go, but I wouldn’t listen. Finally, she lost it on me. I can still see her eyes, they were so wide, so furious. ‘Go ahead and die then, and see if anyone cares! You’re just like your parents, Grey Lewis. You’re a loser! A screw up!’”

“That’s the last thing she ever said to me. Of course I didn’t listen to her, I needed to get high. And when I came back the next morning, she was dead.”

“Oh, Grey.” I gasped. I tried to sit up, to comfort him, but I was too weak. “That’s horrible! I’m so sorry.”

He cringed. “It was enough to clean me up a bit. I had to prove her wrong, you know, to show her I wasn’t a total screw-up. To maybe make her proud of me…someday. She was all the family I had in the world, and I just…” He shook his head. “I…I owed it to her to make something of myself. So I threw myself into music. It became my drug, my heroin. Through it, I found some measure of…peace…”

I grasped his hand, I didn’t know what else to say. The pain was rocketing through me, tearing through my muscles. I moaned and pressed my face against the pillow.

“I’m sorry, Mackenzie. I’m sorry I let this get so far.” The pain was evident in Grey’s face, his blue eyes burning as he watched me suffer. “It wasn’t like this before, I didn’t realize…I mean, I felt a little nauseous…but it was nothing like this.”

“It’s not your fault.” I shook my head. It was mine; I’d manipulated him into it, pulled him down with me, deeper and deeper. I choked back the guilt and squeezed his fingers. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m with you.”

“I love you.” He panted. “I’d do anything for you.”

“I know. ”

It was agony. I’ve never felt so sick in my entire life. Just when I thought I’d reached the pinnacle, that things couldn’t get any worse, they did. I shook and trembled. I was violently ill. Every noise grated in my ears, the slightest breath of breeze from the window felt like razor blades against my weeping skin. The pain in my stomach doubled, tripled—until I was bent in half, crippled in torture. I tried to stay quiet, tried to keep my suffering to the panting horror of my breath. But I felt like screaming.

It was too much to bear. I swallowed thickly, keeping the bile at bay.

“Grey,” my voice was unrecognizable, harsh, and choking in my ears. “Grey, please…I can’t do this…I can’t…” I wept, tears of anguish disappearing into the beads of sweat on my cheeks.

He turned over to me; I knew it hurt for him to do so. Every movement hurt. He was in just as much agony as I was.

“It’ll get better. I promise.”

“No, it won’t. It can’t. I’m sick, Grey. I’m so sick.”

“I know.” He reached for my hand and brought it to his lips. “Please, just be strong. For me, be strong…”

Hours passed. It didn’t get better. I was writhing, flipping in pain, groaning and gritting my teeth, my body pulsing with sweat and nausea. I was dying. That was all there was to it. I was going to die.

Grey voiced my exact thought. “I’m fucking dying here.” He groaned. I’d never heard his voice so full of agony; I’d never seen him so weak. He sat up on the edge of the bed and dropped his head into his hands. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

“Grey…” I reached for him, but he was gone. “No, Grey, don’t leave me, please. Don’t leave me alone.” I meant to yell for him, but my voice was no stronger than a strangled whisper. I collapsed back onto the bed, too weak for anything else, all my energy pent up in my racking sickness. Crying, sobbing, shaking, trembling, I pulled myself into a ball and waited for death.

A voice came to me from beyond the pain, the voice of an angel.

“Mackenzie.” Grey was calm again, in control of himself. I pried my eyes open, cringing as the light assailed them.

“Grey.” I cried. “Please. Make it stop.”

His face was before me, tortured, his blue eyes desperate and sad. I barely felt him grip my arm, barely registered the sharp sting of the needle …

And then everything was good again. The sickness receded, falling back, surrendering to the sweet heat of the drugs sweeping through my veins, killing off every ill feeling, every ounce of pain that plagued my body. My muscles relaxed, my body slackening against the bed. A few moments more and I found myself actually smiling, something I didn’t think I’d ever do again.

“Thank you,” I sighed. “Thank you.”

Grey was playing his music. It came to me from beyond my dreams, making me smile in my sleep. When I opened my eyes, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, quietly strumming his guitar. Even without the practice, he didn’t make one mistake, and the notes weaved in and around me in a beautiful melody. I sighed happily.

“Grey?” I sat up.

“Hey,” Grey turned back to me, “how you feeling?”

“Good.” I realized with surprise. “Better. You?”

“Better.” He nodded, looking back at his guitar. He seemed resigned…relaxed, almost. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but I thought he’d be more upset about our failure to get off the drugs. We’d given up; we hadn’t been able to last.

He smirked at me sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Making you go through that. If I’d known it would be so hard to quit, I never would have started again. I never would have let you do it. It was such a stupid thing to do; I didn’t realize…”

“Of course you didn’t.” I stopped him short. “Don’t worry, Grey. I’m totally fine.”

“You are now.” He grimaced. “You didn’t look fine a few hours ago.”

“It felt like I was going to die,” I admitted with a shudder. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.” Grey frowned, strumming idly. “Cut back so next time’s not so bad?”

“That makes sense.” I couldn’t help but feel relieved—this meant there was going to be more heroin in my near future. Again, Grey’s attitude surprised me. It made me wonder if he’d been hoping this would happen. I knew how much he loved the drugs, almost as much as I did. We may have found it too hard to quit, but at least now we could say we tried.

“We do need to cut back, though,” he insisted, as if trying to convince himself. “Seriously. We have to get clean. ”

“Yeah.” I agreed. But they were just words. Empty, meaningless words said with no real conviction. I loved heroin. I didn’t really want to quit, and I knew Grey didn’t want to either.

“I think you should at least get a job.” His blue eyes smiled at me. “It’ll help, knowing you have to go out and work. It’ll keep us from getting high all day.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and flopped back on the bed, dramatically. “Grey, come on. Can’t you just support all my habits?” I teased. Well, half-teased. I really never wanted this holiday to end.

“Not yet, sugar. Maybe one day.” He smirked at me.

I huffed. “I need a shower.”

“Don’t change the subject. Seriously. Where are you going to look?”

“I don’t know. The lumberyard? They must be hiring, since Zack and Alex quit.”

“The lumberyard? You wouldn’t last five minutes.”

I glared at him. “Would too.”

He chuckled. “Would not.”

“Really?” I pushed the sleeve of my shirt up and flexed my bicep—impressively, I thought. “Now tell me I wouldn’t.”

Grey burst into laughter. He pulled his guitar off over his head and set it gingerly against the bed, then wrapped his hand around the hard muscle of my arm.

“That is impressive.” He snorted. “I take it back. Maybe you’d last seven minutes.”

I knew it was futile, but I attacked him, trying to pin him back to the bed…apparently, the only wrestling move I knew. He let me win again, falling back easily and chuckling as I used all of my one-hundred and ten pounds to keep him there.

“Mackenzie?”

“Yeah?” I gloated from above him.

“You’re right.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You do need a shower.”

I attacked him again, gleefully, but he wasn’t having it this time. In seconds I was pinned to my side, and we wrestled, and he tickled me, and the sounds of our happy, youthful laughter floated down the hallway.