by V T Turner
“My friend? She twisted her face. “You’re my boyfriend, my--”
He shook his head and she stopped herself. She chewed over her words, stared at him as she pondered and then asked, “What happened to you anyway?”
He looked himself up and down, turned his eyes back on her. “What do you mean?”
“You look...” she searched for the right word. “Clean.”
He smiled. “I got a job,” he told her. “Nothing special, I’m a lackey for the local newspaper. But I’m doing journalism and creative writing courses at the college as well.”
“That’s excellent!” she said, genuinely happy. “I always knew you could do it. I knew you could get your act together.”
They grinned at each other, his eyes drifted towards her appearance again and she followed them.
“Let’s go out for a drink,” she said, dismissing any thoughts that threatened to remove the cloud of sedation over her mind. “To celebrate.”
“I stopped drinking.”
“Oh,” she looked dejected for a moment, then snapped alive and said, “I have some dope on me.”
“I stopped the drugs as well.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “You helped me to do it. You were the reason I sobered up.”
She smiled at that, seemed pleased. She had been the push he needed to find the job and take the course, but most of what he had done had been because he had seen how destructive the lifestyle could be when he saw the worst of it in her. He’d needed that, needed to be close to someone killing themselves like he had been; close enough to realize the damage he was doing to himself.
“I’m proud of you,” she said with a haunting and fake smile, her mind elsewhere as she pulled a joint out of her pocket. She moved to light it, he stopped her and took the lighter from her.
“Come on,” she hissed. “A little bit won’t hurt you.”
He sighed. “You need to take a look at what you’ve become,” he told her, clenching the lighter tightly in his fist. “You need to stop this.”
She shook her head dismissively. “I’m fine, I--”
“You’re not fine.”
“Who the fuck are you to say that?” she snapped, suddenly finding a spasm of anger. “You said you’re not even my boyfriend anymore -- that’s your loss by the way -- so you can fuck off if you think you can change me.”
“I just want to help you.”
She stood up quickly and glared down at him, her glazed eyes looking ferocious. “Fuck you Markus,” she snapped, ripping the lighter out of his hands. “I like who I am. You can’t change me.”
She stormed out of the living room. He stayed seated, listening to her grumbled curses as she opened the front door and slammed it loudly behind her.
He sighed to himself, gave his conscience a dismissive shrug and then retired to bed; he had an early start in the morning.
Out on the street, with the wind nipping at her cheeks and slicing into her legs, Maria started a long walk back to the bar. She had paid for a taxi to Markus’s house and she had enough for the return journey, but she had other plans for that money. She needed to get drunk, to forget the encounter with her old boyfriend and return to the abyss.
Thank you for reading
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You may also be interested in these other titles by V T Turner, available on Amazon Kindle:
Sinister Touch
My Paid Angel
5 Days a Week
Voyeur
Forbidden
Betrayed
Troubled
The Interview
