22. Gage
22
GAGE
T here’s a recognition of the situation that shouldn’t feel comfortable to me. Deep down, under the extreme hurt and the intense worry, it’s there, calling to me, reminding me we’re old friends and have a sordid history.
It’s obvious. I know what they’re on. I see it in the way they jitter and smile, the glaze to their eyes, and the guilt on their faces. I see it in the smashed bowl on the floor and the shifty looks they share through wrong-sized pupils, trying to come up with a story to explain this situation away. Been there. Done that.
But then I see the baggie.
It’s a promise.
The promise of a fun night with my brothers, bonding in a way we never have before. I’ll never get to take them for a drink or go to a party with them like most older siblings do, but I can have this one night. There’s still enough left in the bag for me to join them in their high.
We could laugh and feel no pain. We could have so much energy that we feel invincible. We could chat without expectations and buzz with a vibrancy that’s been dead since I returned home.
Because the drug-addicted part of my mind isn’t reminding me that coke is a downer for me. It’s promising liveliness and fun. It’s not recalling the comedown and the dope-sick feeling that comes when it wears off. It’s telling me the trip will be worth the fall. It’s not being responsible enough to put the facts in order. The fact that they’re seventeen and experimenting with a drug that could ruin them, and doing it very irresponsibly. That they brought drugs into a house with a recovering addict. That it should hurt me because it’s not my house and they shouldn’t have to conform for me. But this is our mom’s house! How fucking dare they disrespect her like this? No, it’s just fun and happiness and energy. It’s a way to calm my ADHD.
And I want it so fucking badly.
I’m shaking. Maybe in excitement. Maybe in restraint. I’m staring at the baggie and drooling at the thought of the taste. I’m picturing myself snorting the coke and numbing my mouth, bitterness dripping down the back of my throat.
“Gage,” one of them says. I don’t know who because I can’t look away from the bag. “We’re sorry.”
I don’t need them to be sorry. I need them to toss me that baggie and chill the fuck out.
My phone is vibrating in my hoodie pocket, and a faraway part of me is remembering there’s a number on there I should call in a situation like this. But can I? I treated Alexei like a piece of shit after he asked me to trust him, and now I don’t know if I have the right to call that number. I hurt his son. I disrespected my slow-moving boyfriend.
But I’ve already fucked up, right? Might as well fuck up a little more. I take a step.
“Gage?”
Alexei. I can’t look at him because his voice is shaking, and it sounds like he’s crying, and I don’t want to look at him crying because I know I’m the cause of it. I never meant to hurt him.
The coke will wash that guilt away.
Cole tries to grab the baggie, but I growl at him. “Don’t. Fucking. Touch it.”
He snaps his hand away, his back bumping into Nick’s chest. “Just go outside, Gage. Please,” he says, his voice also shaking. “Please. We’ll clean up and make sure?—”
But the bag is in my hand. I grip it so tight, almost wishing it’ll disappear in my fist. It’s enough to get high, but it’s not enough to keep the high going for as long as I’d like it to. I shouldn’t do it. It’s not enough.
But Brian might have more. I could snort this and then take him up on his invitation to stop by. He hasn’t gone to rehab yet. He probably won’t. Not if I have anything to say about it because he’s my enabler, and drugs are lonely. I need my druggie friend and the pills he provides! He’s perfect for the role. Becky is, too. Pregnant or not, she’ll get high with me.
I open my fist. People are calling my name, but I don’t hear them because the coke is calling it louder.
I don’t even know why I want it. It’s not even that fun. But… it’s the courage I crave. The invincibility and to use it as an excuse. Nothing can hurt me while I’m high because that’s the whole point. The chasing and the numbing and the cycle of chasing and numbing. Feelings don’t matter when you can numb them.
And there are so many feelings lately. Happy ones that I don’t deserve. Doubtful ones that will haunt me forever. In-love ones that feel guilty because I’m not a good soulmate for Alexei.
I can turn them off with this bag of numbness.
We get what we deserve, right? And this is what I deserve. A life of ups and downs because I can’t self-regulate. A lonely path with no true friends and no real connections to anything but the cycle of chasing and numbing. No love. No friendships. No family. I’ll scare them all away and chase them to the edges of their sanity until they give up on me completely. That’s what I deserve. For them to give up on me. I’m not worth their worry. Their love.
I’m Gage Loser Rossum. Addicted to… everything.
I open the bag.
“Gage.”
And I’m turning at the sound of his voice. Not because it’s particularly different from anyone else’s, but because my stupid, slow brain has somehow linked him in the contacts of my mind as a safety net. He’s my rehab. The thing that will keep me alive when I can’t do it myself. He’s standing there, right next to Alexei, looking at me with no understandable expression on his face.
Nathan. My sponsor. The man I’m trying to impress because I love his son. The holder of my medication and the lifeline I need.
“It’s your choice, but don’t let it trick you,” he says, nodding to the bag clutched in my hand. “I’m here. We’re all here. Alexei is here.”
My eyes are starting to water, but my anger is still here. I don’t even know where it came from because I shouldn’t feel angry. I should feel embarrassed for how weak I am, and then I should ingest this coke and forget about it. Instead, my eyes are shifting to the icy blue ones that are watering on Alexei’s beautiful face.
He’s not sobbing. He’s not angry. He’s not judging me or yelling at me or hating me. He’s scared because I’m scaring him. And that… shit. That loosens my hold on the bag. Not enough to drop it, but to think about it.
Will you hate me if I relapse?
“Hate? No. Hurt? Yes.” Alexei’s voice shakes but his chin lifts.
And it takes a fucking minute. Like a monumentally long minute that is pathetic and feeble, but I drop the bag. I don’t look at it. I can’t look down and see it on the floor. I hold Alexei’s eyes and start to shake all over.
“Go,” Nathan says.
So, I go. I abandon my brothers like a selfish dick. I escape. I run like a fucking loser out the front door, and I don’t stop running until I’m at the falling-down mansion that has become a second home to me when I didn’t intend to make it a home. And I want a cigarette. I want a hundred cigarettes. I need something to fill me up with more than emptiness and pain and longing for a life of freedom that I’ll never have. Ever. Never again. I lost it when I was fourteen, and I’ll never get it back again.
Alexei doesn’t come. But Nathan does. And he brings cigarettes and water and says coffee is coming. And I’m smoking and trying to slow myself down, thinking without being able to catch a clear thought.
“My brothers,” I croak. “Someone needs to make sure they’re alright.”
“Alexei is,” Nathan says.
Then, a pack of smokes later, Mom is here, having left her girls’ night. She’s holding coffee mugs, mine that says ‘ welcome intruder’ , and Nathan’s black one with ‘ world’s okayest dad’ on it, and now my mom has one, too. It says ‘ come at me, bro’ , and it has a sword on it, and I love it so much that I start laugh-crying, falling against her while she holds me.
Then I break.
The old me breaks away from the new me, and it hinders as much as it heals, and the whole fucking process hurts like hell.
I can’t breathe.
Mom says she loves me.