35. Aeron #2
I reach the bench, the same bench where I found Cinna months ago. Where I sat beside her, and she bumped my shoulder and said she noticed me. I sit down and set the bottles on the ground beside my feet.
I’m oddly calm. Maybe that’s because I researched everything.
I read forums, medical pages, firsthand accounts posted by people who’d pushed too far and somehow came back to talk about it.
When you combine cocaine and alcohol, your body creates something new out of them: a compound called cocaethylene that your liver was never built to process.
The combination stretches the high longer.
It also makes it easier to cross a dangerous line you can’t come back from.
Vodka and powder. Two things anyone could get at a college party. All too easy.
I pull four small baggies from my jacket pocket. I tap powder onto the back of my hand, pinch one nostril shut, and inhale. The burn is immediate, so I blink until the sting fades.
Then I pick up a bottle and take a large gulp. The vodka is cheap and tastes like rubbing alcohol. I grimace and wipe my mouth with my sleeve. I tip my head back.
The sky is endless, starless, and it makes me feel so very small. I’m small and my life doesn’t matter in comparison with all that’s out there in the universe.
Cinna and I looked at his night sky together. Once. She was sitting right here, folded into herself. I sat beside her, and we stared up together. Despite what came after, that was a perfect moment.
At least I have that.
I tap more powder onto my hand. Inhale. Chase it with vodka.
I know now that she wasn’t thinking of me when we had our night together. She was hurting and I was available, so when the hurt passed I became unnecessary.
Still, that memory of us is mine. Though it meant nothing to her, it was real to me. Her fingers in my hair. The gold flecks in her eyes catching the fairy lights. The way she clung to my body and moaned from the pleasure I gave her.
We made love. She may call it a hookup, but it’s my mind and I can rewrite it.
We made love.
I close my eyes and let the memory rework itself.
She holds me tightly and I say, “I’ve loved you for so long.
” She answers with a kiss that says she has feelings for me too, ones that are deepening.
I make love to her, and she calls out my name clearly.
“Aeron… Aeron… Aeron…” When I wake up in her dorm the next morning, she’s right beside me.
She’s curled against me, with her hair fanned across the pillow and the fairy lights still on.
She opens her eyes and smiles. “Good morning, handsome,” she says.
I snort another line. Drink.
We make love again, but slowly this time so we can savor every moment. She says my name and then, “I think I’m falling for you.”
The powder seeps into my bloodstream, and my scalp tingles.
My fingertips buzz. The vodka settles into my joints and softens my body until I feel loose and present, the jittery current of the coke smoothed by the alcohol’s slow drag.
My limbs feel distant in a good way, like they belong to someone falling asleep in a safe place.
I push the timeline with Cinna forward.
I take her on our first date, to a foreign film she’s been wanting to see.
She squeezes my hand during the sad parts and doesn’t let go after.
We have dinner at a place I can barely afford, but I don’t care because I only want to give her the best. She shows me pictures of new dried flowers she made and talks about Japanese pressing techniques and the way dead things can be more beautiful than living ones, and I tell her that’s the most morbid sentence I’ve ever heard, and she laughs.
That laugh. The one I carry inside me as a spark of light.
More powder. More vodka. The swinging lantern above me gets blurry and the whole world feels like it’s rotating. There’s no way to find my way back now; I’m absorbed in a new reality where I’m happy.
I never want to come back.
Cinna and I go on a trip somewhere warm, like the Bahamas.
She wears a sundress and reads on a towel in the sand while I sketch her.
When she catches me drawing, she doesn’t look away.
She poses and gives me her worst face first, then her best, and I draw both because every version of her is worth capturing.
I need to make sure I escape into this dream forever and never wake up, so I empty another baggie onto my hand. Breathe it all in. The burn is duller now, almost pleasant. I drink until the first bottle is empty then I switch to the second.
Cinna and I graduate college. I don’t see myself in a single career.
I’m piecing together freelance commissions and whatever small gigs come along, making enough to cover rent and art supplies and not much else.
A retirement plan doesn’t exist for me, but the artist living solely to make art is the only version of myself I’ve ever wanted to be.
Cinna opens a floral shop, a small storefront with dried flowers in glass jars and living arrangements for weddings.
Or maybe she becomes an illustrator because her art is so technically perfect it’s suited for that. Whatever she’s doing, she’s happy.
I propose on a Tuesday because nobody proposes on a Tuesday and I want to completely surprise her. She’s very surprised and cries and jumps into my arms, saying she loves me so much, over and over.
“We’re our own little family,” she says, and they’re the most perfect words ever spoken.
The wedding is small and outdoors. In this reality, my sister loves me and supports me, so I make her my best man.
She’s proud of me. Mom is in the front row, proud of me, crying happy tears.
And she always wanted me. She had me on purpose, so she often says, “I’m glad you were born. I wouldn’t change any of it.”
Carter is there. Dorien too because he’s moved on from June, and he’s with someone who matches his intensity. Carter, Dorien, and I are best friends, hanging out when we can.
Everyone, everyone likes having me around. Notices me when I’m around. I notice them too, though most of the time, my eyes are fixated only on my beautiful wife.
The world is tilting. Or I am. I’m not even sure if my eyes are still open, or if I’m really here, or if I actually created a new world.
I created this world where I’m loved, where I’m with Cinna, where I have friends and family.
I matter. I’m chosen.
I’m never coming back.
(Finally, happy.)