“So what?” I cringe, knowing I don’t mean it. He arrives at the bottom of the stairway and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking uncomfortable and scared to death. “I want to help you.”
“I don’t need help,” I snap, stepping back. A few of my neighbors are outside on their balconies and near their cars and they pause to watch the scene unfold. “You were never supposed to see me like this. This isn’t who I am. And as soon as you let me go into my house, I can clean up and we can forget about all of this. I can go back to the smiling, happy Lila.”
“No, you won’t,” he argues. “Sorry to break it to you but I haven’t seen that Lila for a while.”
“Well, I can at least give you the illusion of her,” I retort hotly.
He scratches his unshaven chin with a doubtful look on his face. “After you clean up and take a pill?”
I shake my head multiple times, but I can’t seem to answer him with words. “Please just let me through.”
“Nope,” he says simply, and then his hands come out from his pockets and he reaches for me. “Lila, I want to help—”
I cut him off as I skitter around him and sprint up the stairs, skipping steps even though my body aches and the metal of the steps burns the pads of my feet. Thankfully, I left my door unlocked last night and I get into the house easily. I make a bolt for my bedroom without so much as looking over my shoulder. All I need is one, just one dose inside my bloodstream and all will be forgotten. Everything will be okay and I’ll be back to the normal, happy, full-of-sunshine Lila.
When I reach my room, I jump over my bed to get to my dresser drawer. Right as I get my fingers around the bottle and relax, I hear Ethan enter my room.
“Don’t fucking do it, Lila.” His voice is unsteady, which is really strange for him. He’s usually full of humor and radiating calmness in unnerving situations. “Just give me the bottle and we can talk.”
I shake my head and slam my trembling palm on the lid, pushing down to twist it off. “No, please just go away. I didn’t ask you to be here or follow me. I don’t want your—”
His arms snake around my waist and I let out a spastic wail as his fingers come down over my hands. He tries to pry them off the bottle, but I wrestle my arms away, slipping out of his hold. I bend my knees to jump over the bed, but he catches me midleap and hauls me down onto the mattress.
“Ethan, stop it!” I cry as he holds me down with his body. I writhe my hips and jerk my shoulders, attempting to escape. “You’re hurting me!” It’s a lie, but I’m desperate, needy, obsessed with what’s in that bottle.
“Stop being a baby,” he says, kneeling up so my waist is trapped between his knees. “I’m barely putting any weight on you.’ ”
I hug the bottle to my chest. “Yes, you are!”
“No, I’m not.” He grabs my hands and then pins them down above my head, pressing his forehead against mine. With his free hand he pries the bottle out of my frantic grasp.
“No, please, Ethan. Please, stop it. Please… please… please…” I start to cry and hyperventilate and I despise it because I already look ridiculous as it is.
He doesn’t say anything as he climbs off me and then off the bed. I leap up from the bed, begging and pleading with him to give me the pills back.
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” I say, with my hands overlapped in front of me as I stand vulnerably before him. “Anything, you want. Anything.” I know it’s low to offer myself in exchange for a bottle that’s mine, but that bottle is worth more to me than any part of my used body, worthless mind, and empty heart.
“I don’t want anything from you, Lila,” he says, staring undecidedly at the bottle in his hand. “Except for you to get better.”
I lunge for him, but he rotates to the side, so I slam into his back. He thrusts out his arm and holds me back as he grips the bottle in his hand. The longer they’re out of my reach, the more I feel like I want to claw out of my own skin. I start to tremble as my blood pressure rises. “Please, please just give them to me,” I mutter as I start to sweat. “Help me, please… I don’t want to feel like this.
He suddenly lets go of me and for a second I think he’s giving in. Then he pushes down on the lid with his hand and twists it off.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my mouth salivating as he dumps one tiny pill into his hand.
I notice his finger tremble a little as he breaks the pill in half with his fingers and hands one of the pieces to me. “Take this.”
I shake my head at the tiny piece that’s not going to do shit for me at the moment. “I need more than that.”
He shakes his head. “That’s all I’m going to give you and I’m only giving it to you so you’re body won’t freak out from withdrawals.”
“They’re not yours to hand out!” I shout and lunge for him again, but he catches me in his arms and holds my weight as my legs give out on me. “They’re mine! Not yours.” I’m shaking from head to toe as my mind screams at me to take the half and then do whatever it takes to get more from him. “Ethan, please just give me the bottle. I’ll do whatever you want…” I shut my eyes and take a deep breath before I offer him something I’ve offered other guys before in exchange for pills. “I’ll let you fuck me. And I mean fuck me, without any of the relationship, needy crap afterward that I know you hate.
His arms tighten around me as he presses me closer to his chest. “Lila, stop. I already said I don’t want anything from you except for you to get better.” Then he moves the insignificant-sized pill into my line of vision.
I hate him so much right now I can’t stand it. I can’t stand myself. I can’t stand a lot of things, but I still take the pill, and once it touches my tongue, the bitter taste spreads through my body and for a brief second I feel slightly better. But then I remember he has the rest in his hand and I can’t get another bottle until Monday, which is two whole days. Two very, very long, tiring, emotional days.
A switch I never knew existed flips inside me and unwanted emotions spring loose. “I hate you!” I shout. Fear and rage pound through me so badly and all I want to do is hit him. I start hitting him in the chest, over and over again as tears slip down my cheeks. He doesn’t do anything, which makes me angrier. At least if he hit me or something it’d distract me from the aching pain growing inside me. “I fucking hate you!’ I yell it over and over again until my arms and legs are so sore I sink to the ground, clutching on to his shirt. Every emotion I’m feeling cuts at me like a knife.
Ethan silently scoops me up and carries me to my bed, even though I protest. I turn on my back with my head on my pillow and stare up at him through a veil of tears.
“I hate you so much,” I say, even though I don’t. “I really do.”
“No, you don’t,” he replies imperviously as he stands at the edge of the bed, staring down at me.
“Yes, I do,” I lie and flip to my side so I don’t have to look at him anymore. I turn the ring around on my finger, over and over again as I stare at the wall.
I think he’s going to leave me there in my bedroom alone, which I don’t think I can handle—at the same time, I’m fuming with so much rage that I don’t want him to be there. There is no good solution to the situation. No matter whether he leaves or stays, the pills are with him and I can’t get a refill for two days because they guy who writes them for me is gone for the weekend.
Ethan doesn’t make a sound as he stands beside my bed, like he’s waiting for me to say or do something. I shut my eyes and pretend he’s not there. Finally he shifts and I think he’s leaving, but then the mattress sinks down and a second later he’s lying beside me. He drapes his arm over my side, his muscles tensing, and then he inches closer so our bodies are perfectly aligned.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against the back of my neck, brushing my hair to the side so he can trail his fingers across the base of my neck.
I’m not sure exactly what he’s sorry for, but nonetheless I start to sob as I roll ov
er and bury my face into his chest. He smoothes my hair down as I cry my heart out, and even though every single part of my body and mind wants to wither and die, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel utterly alone in the world. And the strange thing is I can feel the emotion behind it—I can feel everything.
Ethan
I’m completely out of my element. I’ve never been one for affection, even with London, but London wasn’t affectionate either. She liked to kiss and have sex, but other than that, the touchy-feely thing was nonexistent in our relationship. She’d cried a few times in front of me, but she always pushed me away or diverted to sex when I tried to comfort her. And she never ever told me anything about the cause of her problems and sometimes I wonder if she didn’t trust me enough.
As Lila clings on to me, crying her heart out, trusting me completely, I feel more awkward than I ever have. But a few things make the awkwardness bearable. Like knowing that I’m making the aching need inside her the slightest bit less painful, and that’s what keeps me in the bed with her.
She cries for half the night and then sleeps until midafternoon. I get up around ten when a text message goes off on my phone. Sighing, I delete the message from Rae and then tuck my phone and the bottle of pills into my pocket. Then I wander out to the refrigerator to get a snack, trying to shake the rising emotions inside me. All that she has is some expired milk and a rotten sandwich and the fridge isn’t even on. I shut the door and check the light switches and sure enough the power is out.
I knew she was having money trouble, but this is way worse than I thought. I start to question why she didn’t tell me just how bad things were getting, but then I realize that I’d probably do the same thing. In fact, at this point, I’d probably have packed my shit up and hit the road, living in my car or something, which actually doesn’t seem so bad at the moment.
As I slam the cupboard shut, there’s a knock on the door. I debate whether to answer it, but then they knock again so I open the door. There’s an old dude wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and a pair of cargo shorts, and he has a piece of paper in his hand.
“Is Lila…” He glances down at the paper. “Summers here?”
“No,” I lie breezily, leaning against the doorway. “You just missed her.”
“Can you give her this?” He shoves the paper at me.
“I guess.” I take it from him and he walks down the steps as I shut the door, reading the paper over. It’s an eviction notice. “Shit.”
I remember when I was coming down, after I’d decided to make the decision to stop doing drugs, I was very touchy about everything. I even remember yelling at my mom because I couldn’t find any socks. Everything pissed me off and upset me, and an eviction notice… I can’t even imagine what that would have done.
As much as I’d just like to pay her past-due amount for her—because that’s the easiest solution—I don’t have the funds. I could ask her to ask her parents, but from the stories I’ve heard about them, I don’t think they’d help her. They might make her come home, but I don’t think she’ll go and I kind of don’t want her to. There’s only one more solution, one I’m not very fond of, because of the many things that can go wrong. Still, I ball up the eviction notice and toss it into the trash.
When I go back to her room with a glass of water and half a pill in my hand, she’s awake, curled up in a ball, hugging a pillow. I linger near the doorway for a while, trying to figure out what to say to her. “So,” I start, realizing it’s probably the stupidest thing to say at the moment, but honestly anything that comes out of my mouth is going to annoy her.
She frowns and scowls at me. “Who was at the door?”
I step into the room and sit down on the foot of the bed. “Your landlord, I think.”
She gradually sits up, blinking her eyes and clutching on to the pillow. “What did he want?”
“He dropped off an eviction notice,” I explain and her face crumbles. “Your power’s off, too. Did you know that?”
She shakes her head and rests her chin on top of the pillow. “It was on last night.”
“Well, they must have turned it off this morning,” I say. She smashes her quivering lips together and I scoot closer to her and hand her the glass of water and the pill. At first she just stares at it with a disgusted face, but then reluctantly she takes it, popping the pill in her hand and then taking a gulp of water. For a second she looks relieved, but it quickly erases and she starts glaring at me again. But that’s okay. The half doses of pills aren’t supposed to numb her pain, just keep her body from freaking out on her.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I say, setting the glass of water down on the nightstand when she hands it back to me. “You’re going to get cleaned up and then you’re going to come with me to find some boxes. Then were going to pack up your stuff and get you out of this apartment.”
Her lip pops out as she frowns even more. “Where am I supposed to go, Ethan? I barely have any money left and even if I pawned off my ring”—she raises her hand in front of her and wiggles her finger—“it still wouldn’t cover a new deposit and rent for another place.”
“Yeah, but you’re not going to get another place,” I say, giving her leg a gentle squeeze before rising to my feet. “You’re going to come stay with me for a while.”
“What!” she exclaims, throwing the pillow aside. “Why?”
“So that you don’t have to go home or go live on the streets,” I say, bringing my hand away from her leg. She clamps her jaw shut and starts to pick at her fingernails. “I don’t want to live with you.”
I bite down on my tongue, getting pissed off. “Why the hell not?”
“Because I don’t.” She looks away at the wall with aggravation burning in her blue eyes. “I’d rather live on the streets.”
“You wouldn’t last a God damn day on the streets and you know it.” I lean in front of her line of vision. “You don’t want to because you think I’m going to make you stop taking those stupid pills.”
“No, I know you’re going to make me,” she snaps back, her head whipping in my direction. “Because apparently you’re an asshole who will give me only half a dose, when clearly it’s not helping me at all.”
“Damn fucking straight I’m an asshole,” I retaliate. “And those half doses are going to help you freak out while you quit.” I grab her arms and pull her to her feet. Steering her by the shoulders, I move her in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself, Lila. In the last month you’ve completely fallen apart. You’re not the girl I met a year ago.”
“Yes, I am! I’ve been falling apart for years, and just hid it better than I have lately,” she says and then her eyes enlarge as she bites down on her lip so hard it instantly starts to swell. “I didn’t mean that. I’m fine, so stop telling me things to try to get me to see clearly.” She steps forward to move away, but I pull her back.
“Look at yourself,” I repeat, because it’s important for her to see what she really is at this moment, when everything the drugs have done to her is showing. “When I was doing drugs I never really saw what I’d become until I was pretty far into it. I’d lost a lot of weight and my skin looked like shit. Plus my personal hygiene was nonexistent. This”—I gesture at her filthy clothes and matted hair—“is what you look like because of those pills. Can you handle that?”
“This is an exception,” she argues, glancing in the mirror. Her hair is all over the place, her makeup smeared, and her lips are chapped. “I usually don’t look like this. Last night was an exception… a minor slipup.”
“No, you look like this every morning that I’ve had to pick you up. I always thought it was a morning-after sort of thing, since every other time I saw you, you always look so put together, but now I’m kind of realizing that you just hide it well and that the mornings I had to pick you up were just slipups.” I take a deep breath. “And last night wasn’t a fucking slipup. You could have died if I didn’t find you. Do you realize that? How cl
ose you were to dying?”
Her eyes enlarge for a split second, but then narrow on my reflection in the mirror. “I hate you,” she says, her shoulder shaking under my hands.
“No, you don’t.” And I know she really doesn’t. She’s just furious, not even at me, but at the fact that whatever she was masking with the drugs is probably surfacing. “And FYI, that’s getting a little old.”
She glares at me, fire scorching in her eyes. “Then leave.”
I shake my head. “As your friend, it’s my duty to not leave you alone for a while, at least until we can get you down from the half doses to no doses.”
She laughs sharply and crosses her arms. “What? Are you just going to follow me around all the time then, until you get sick of me? Didn’t you get the hint the other night that I don’t want you?”
It hurts like a knife slashing into my skin, deep, violent thrashes, but I know enough to know that she’s desperate right now and will say anything to get me to leave. “If I have to.” I realize as I say it that I actually mean it and the feeling is bluntly real. “If that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.”
She drags her hand down her face and then she notices the small blue-and-purple bruises on her arms. “Where’d these come from?” She touches them lightly with her fingertips.
I shrug, removing my hands from her shoulders. “I have no idea. You had welts there last night when I found you in the bushes. If you ask me, it looks like someone got a little rough with you.”
She winces and then glances at her reflection. “I’m going to take a shower.”
I sit down on the bed and cross my arms. “Okay, I’ll be right here when you get out.”
“What? Aren’t you going to come take a shower with me?” she asks derisively as she yanks open the dresser drawer.
I notice there are candy canes in it and it makes me mentally smile, thinking about when I gave them to her, but I quickly shake the thought away. “Nah, I’ll wait for you here.”
She scowls at me as she snatches a pair of black lacy panties out of the drawer. “Fine, but how do you know I don’t have any pills hidden in the bathroom?”
The Temptation of Lila and Ethan ts-3 Page 13
