Chapter 11
chapter eleven
There wasn’t enough time. There was too much time. I was confused and uncertain. I wasn’t even sure what I was uncertain about. Something important, I’d bet. Did it really matter, though, if I couldn’t even remember what it was?
I didn’t know. Maybe it was the whiskey talking. Damn whiskey—the one drink I hated the most. Especially cheap whiskey like what I was downing now. I’d gotten it off one of the guys that were usually around the subway. Traded it for a sandwich I’d stolen from the hospital.
How pathetic. How sad. Woe is me, Tobi Weaver, too fucked up to commit to the one thing I used to beg for in silence.
I’d wait until I knew whoever it was I was living with was asleep, and then I’d whisper it into the dark.
I’d whisper wishes of getting better. Getting out.
I wished and wished and even wished upon a thousand stars, yet none of those wishes ever came true.
Now that it’d been dangled in front of me, I’d done the only thing that’d made sense at the time.
I ran.
Hayden, the sweet nurse from the hospital, had tried to talk me out of it. He’d even brought a doctor in to tell me how dangerous it would be to drink right after getting over alcohol poisoning. I told them I understood. I told them I didn’t care, and to discharge me.
Thank god they didn’t have an address on file for me. I knew the hospital bill was going to be outrageous.
I scratched over my beard, missing the way it’d felt to take a hot shower with the heavy-duty antibacterial soap they’d had there.
I missed how clean the gown had smelled, no matter how offensive and strong it was.
At least it’d smelled like disinfectant rather than old, musty, and moldy, like the clothes I’d been wearing for far too long on the streets.
I watched people pass by from the little alley I’d found to rest in, away from everyone and everything. I was shielded from the world here. There was some guy way down the other side, but he didn’t bother me. He was drinking too, actually.
How sad.
I wondered just how pissed Callum was right now.
He’d said he had to go take care of something and get his car.
It’d only taken me a few minutes to make the decision to leave.
There wasn’t enough time to explain it to him.
There wasn’t enough time to understand the decision myself, even though I was the one who made it.
Callum was too perfect. Too good. Too easy to fall into comfortably.
All I’d do was ruin it all. I knew how detox worked—I knew what he’d have to see me go through, and the lengths I’d be willing to go to for the lies I was willing to tell.
Once an addiction took over the mind, it took over the body, too.
I’d already been craving more after agreeing to go home with him.
It was an automatic response. Maybe it was survival, or maybe it was selfishness.
I’d run before. I was capable of doing it again, though I didn’t really want to. I just didn’t want to face it all. Face the life I’d built for myself, with nothing but pain and alcohol and bruises and lies and lies and lies and…
I tilted the bottle back, letting the burn coat my throat and chest from the inside out. If only I could be number than I had been earlier. That was the goal, right? To be so numb that nothing mattered anymore?
Maybe then I’d stop feeling their hands all over me. Thompson. Mason. Stephen. Tyler. Their touch was still heavy on my skin all this time later. When would I feel lighter again? Would I ever? If I drank enough, maybe I’d float away.
Like a feather.
Like the pure, innocent, white chicken feathers I’d find on the ground at home when I was a kid. I’d pick them up and face them toward the sun, staring at the way they moved in the wind, even when I held them up. When I’d let them go, they’d float away. Fly away. Soar away.
I wanted to be light again. I’d never be innocent. I’d never be pure. But I so desperately wanted to get rid of the heaviness in my chest, in my bones, sitting directly on top of me and pushing me further into the ground. An early grave, just like Thompson had deserved.
Closing my eyes, I leaned back against the brick wall behind me.
The stones cut through my shirt, scraping against my skin.
I let it happen, barely even feeling it from all the alcohol coursing through my veins.
I welcomed it because it was easier than focusing on the phantoms and ghosts of a past I wished I couldn’t remember.
Only a few more sips, and maybe I wouldn’t.
Would Callum hate me? Callum, Callum, Callum… The name felt unfamiliar in my thoughts and on my tongue. It tasted bitter, like hope.
Did Callum hate who I’d turned into? The image he used to have of me was gone. A mirage of a person who used to be, rather than who was. A husk where everything bad had overtaken the good and left me a heavy, empty shell of pure nothing.
The whiskey was doing its job. A false sense of peace had washed over me, making it far easier to relax against the wall and let my hand drop the bottle. It tumbled out of my palm so easily, I barely noticed it at first.
How many more stars would I have to wish on?