Chapter 10
Ten
Jami
The hotel smells like bleach trying to cover mold.
The carpet is scratchy, the bed squeaks if I even breathe, and the air conditioner rattles loud enough to drown out my thoughts. Not all of them, though.
Not the ones about Tommy.
Everywhere I turn, he’s there. His laugh. His hands. His voice telling me I’m his home.
And I walked away.
I keep telling myself I had to. That he deserves better. That I can’t drag him through the filth of what I’ve done, what I’ve been. I can’t make him carry me through another relapse.
But every night I curl up on this lumpy mattress, and the silence eats me alive.
Jenni showed up the day after I left.
I’d been sitting in the parking lot with my head on the steering wheel, trying to decide if I had the strength to check in, when her car pulled up.
She got out, eyes wild, hair a mess, like she’d driven straight through from home.
I climbed out of the car so she didn’t have to lean down to talk to me.
She’s my sister and the Hell I’ve put her through, yet, she still shows up for me. She always shows up for me.
“Jami,” she stammered, voice breaking. “Please, please don’t do this alone. Move in with me and Crunch. We’ll figure it out together.”
Her arms wrapped around me, warm and desperate. For a second, I almost caved.
But then I pictured Crunch looking at me, seeing what I’d become, knowing what I’d done. I pictured Tommy hearing about me living under his brother’s roof.
And I shoved her away.
“No,” I snapped, harsher than I meant. “I can’t. Don’t ask me again.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Why? You’re my sister. You don’t have to—”
“I said no.” My voice cracked, but I held the line. “I need to do this myself.”
She begged. She cried. She told me she loved me.
I still refused.
Because if I let her hold me, I’d fall apart completely.
So here I am.
A hotel room with peeling wallpaper and a view of the parking lot.
I get up every morning, put on the scratchy polyester uniform from the diner down the road, and sling pancakes and coffee for truckers who don’t tip.
The work keeps my hands busy, but not my head.
The loneliness claws at me, worse every night. The bed is too big without Tommy’s arms. The silence too loud without his laugh. The ring-shaped indent on my finger feels like a bruise that won’t heal.
I tell myself I left to find freedom. All I’ve found is emptiness.
By the end of the first week, I’m cracking.
The guilt about that night at the bar still coils in my gut like barbed wire. The way I woke up next to a stranger. The way I never told anyone. The way I looked Tommy in the eyes and lied every time he asked me what was wrong.
And then left him bleeding anyway.
Every time I close my eyes, I see his face when I handed the ring back. The way his voice broke when he begged me not to go.
I hear the silence after I said don’t follow me.
It’s unbearable.
The voice in my head hisses louder every day. Trash stays trash. You were never clean. You’ll never be enough. Not for him. Not for anyone.
By Friday night, I can’t take it anymore.
I get in the car.
And I drive.
It’s too easy to find what I’m looking for. That is the thing about being an addict. We are very smart even when the world thinks we’re stupid. We will find a way to get a fix.
Once, I had to hunt. Now it feels like the whole damn world is waiting for me to slip.
A few blocks over from the diner, in an alley that smells like piss and grease, I see him. Tall, wiry, face half-hidden under a hoodie. His eyes catch mine, and he smirks like he’s been expecting me.
“You lookin’?” he asks.
My stomach twists. “Yeah.”
“Got cash?”
I nod, pulling a crumpled wad of tips from my pocket. My hands shake as I pass it over.
He palms me a small bag. White powder.
My heart stops. Starts. Stops again.
I haven’t held this in years. My whole body remembers it — the rush, the escape, the way it made everything disappear for a little while.
“Pleasure doing business,” he mutters, already turning away.
I stand frozen for a moment, the bag burning in my palm. Then I shove it into my pocket and bolt back to the car.
Back at the hotel, I lock the door and sink onto the bed.
I set the bag on the nightstand. Just look at it.
It’s small. Innocent. Just a little clear plastic with powder inside. But it feels like it’s got a gun to my head.
I pace. I sit. I stand. I pick it up, put it down, pick it up again.
Don’t. You’re stronger than this.
But you’re alone. You’re worthless. You’ll never get him back anyway. You already took who knows what with the man you didn’t even get his name. What is one more hit?
I try to pray. The words stick in my throat.
I try to call Jenni. My finger hovers over her name, but I can’t press send. I can’t hear her voice telling me I’m better than this. Not when I don’t believe it myself.
The guilt eats at me, sharper every second.
Tommy’s face. His hands. His voice whispering you’re mine.
The stranger’s face. His hands. The shame of what I don’t remember.
The woman on the beach, sneering trash stays trash.
It all swirls together until I can’t breathe.
I rip the bag open.
For a second, I just stare. My whole body trembles. My heart pounds so loud it drowns out the AC rattling in the corner.
Then I bend down. One deep inhale.
And I get high.
It hits like a bomb.
For the first time in years, the noise in my head goes quiet. The shame dulls. The ache in my chest numbs.
I lie back on the bed, eyes closing, body floating.
For a few stolen minutes, I’m free.
But even in the high, somewhere deep inside, I know the truth.
This isn’t freedom.
It’s chains.
And I just locked them back around my wrists.
Coming down feels like sandpaper on the inside of my skin.
I wake in the hotel bed with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and a taste like pennies. The AC rattles. The curtains leak gray morning. The little bag on the nightstand is empty, a plastic ghost that laughs at me.
For one slow second, I remember why I quit. The meetings, the chips, the coffee that tasted like hope, the way Tommy watched me like I was the best thing in the room just for breathing. Then the second the memories end and the hole in my chest cracks open again.
The high didn’t fix it. Of course it didn’t.
It just pressed the pause button on the movie of my brain.
Now the movie’s back, louder: the woman on the beach, the phone calls, the egg aisle, the bar, the morning I woke up beside a stranger and drove until the world blurred.
The look on Tommy’s face when I put the ring in his hand.
The door closing. My own voice telling him not to follow me.
I think about calling Jenni. The thought is a needle I can’t bear to push in.
I think about walking into a meeting right now, claiming Day One again.
But the shame drags me down like undertow.
Day One feels like admitting the worst thing about me: that I threw away what he gave me.
That I chose it. That I’m choosing it again right now because the only thing I can hear is a hiss of one more hit.
The craving rises slow and then fast, like a storm building over hot fields, and by the time I’m standing, there’s no room for anything else. I don’t brush my teeth. I don’t shower. I don’t look in the mirror because I know what’s there: a woman who can’t stand on her own.
I find my shoes, my purse, my keys. The waitress uniform from last night is still damp where I spilled coffee; I pull it on anyway. My hands shake as I lock the door.
I tell myself I can keep it neat this time. Controlled. Just enough to sleep. Just enough to make the voices low enough that I can think.
It’s a lie, and I know it, and yet, I go anyway.
The alley looks different in daylight—worse. Streaks on the brick. A pile of black bags that might be trash or might be bodies. The man is there, hood down this time, eyes flat with a smile that doesn’t move anything but his mouth.
“You back already?” he asks or tells me or a little of both. Either way, he is not surprised.
“Yeah.” I hate how small I sound.
“Bring cash?”
I pull tips from my pocket, the rubber-banded roll I promised myself last night I would deposit this morning. It looks stupid in my hand. Childish, like play money. He counts it in two snaps, shakes his head, takes a few bills off the top, and flicks another bag at me.
More. He gives me more than I paid for.
“Careful,” he says, like a joke.
I nod and leave. My face burns. I imagine the whole town watching, all the eyes I learned to feel at my back even when there weren’t any. I imagine Tommy’s shape at the mouth of the alley, arms folded, eyes huge with hurt. I drive away fast, but the picture follows.
Back in my room, I pace. I dump the bag on the nightstand and fold it open like I’m unwrapping a present I don’t deserve. This time I don’t wait.
It hits harder. It always does when you’re trying to drop back into an old path. My body remembers the arc, but the gravity’s all wrong. The relief comes in a rush that makes me gasp—blessed to quiet the noise, awful because I know what I have done, and total destruction of the woman I wish to be.
For a few minutes, the hotel isn’t a cage. It’s a cloud. For a few minutes, the voice that tells me I ruined everything curls up like a dog at my feet and goes quiet.
I float until I sleep.
I blow through the bag in two days. That’s how it goes. The hole I was trying to fill grows teeth. It demands more. It always demands more.
The diner calls when I don’t show for a Saturday double.
I let it ring. On Sunday the manager leaves a voicemail that starts “sweetheart” and ends “don’t come back.
” I listen twice, not because I need the words, but because I need the tone: disappointment is a lullaby to the junkie inside me.
Another reason to get high. I put the phone face down and tell myself I’m free now, that I hated the polyester anyway.