Dark Places

69 | don't make me do this to you, luz

CHAPTER 69 - Where Luz and Drake come DOWN on each other for ✨BULLSHIT✨

❝saying "fuck you, i miss you,
or i hate you so much,"
'cause girls only say "i hate you"
to the guys that they love.❞

☽

I GO CRASHING ONTO FREE STREET.

Everything is tight, and I'm dry heaving into a storm drain beside a discarded deer carcass. Its musty stench curdling my blood, pricking my eyes, closing my throat as I gag. My stomach rolls and rolls and rolls, inside out up my throat, ejecting itself. Soured. Nothing but a dry, acidic scrape of my scarce meals in Maine. I've been drinking too much.

"Melo!" His hoarse cry, being yanked off my knees before a fucking Subaru careens past... inches from us. "Hey, hey, I—"

"What the fuck?" I shout, shouldering around to shove him. He stumbles back a step. Honk! Screeching. A Toyota, bumping him off-balance, and Drake clapping a hand on its hood, raising a hand apologetically.

Perdón.

Honk! It swerves around him, leaving a haze of black smoke between us. Poetic.

His gaze flashes. "Okay," he mutters, stalking closer, "I am really fucking sick of you pushing me around, Luz."

"Oh, and I'm really fucking sick of you telling me to shut up, Drake."

"I—"

"Why do I listen to you? What... have I— Why do I believe you?"

I'm clean, Melo.

"Clean." I let out a bitter laugh, clipping his shoulder as I pass him to cross Free. Liar. "Clean. Mentiroso. God, I fucking hate you, Drake." His footsteps are frantic, but flighty, following, following, following. I throw a door open and stride up a concrete staircase, listening for a click behind him, before I hiss, "I'm not only holding a drug you use, but a drug you made, Medina!"

CURE YOURSELF

"I'm holding a—"

Drake shuffles ahead, cups a hand over my mouth, muffling a high-pitched shriek.

KILL YOUR DEMONS

If Jess is your ghost, you're my fucking demons, Melo.

"¡Suéltame!" I jab him off, gasping, emptying my jacket forcefully. Clap. Echoes off cold concrete of the Spring Street Parking Garage. Vaguely I recognize them. The Visual Diary of Frida Kahlo. Charcoal Drawings: Light & Dark. "What are they?"

"Libros," he says.

Okay. Inhale deeply, Luz.

"Where'd you get it?" I ask as I finger both bags of powder from my pocket; peruse them lazily. His gaze flits away. "Where?" I shove them into his chest, and Drake falls back, backs himself into a corner, pressed against a grimy concrete wall, dimly lit, a cloudy composition, grey-glazed by a dying lightbulb. Everything is desaturated in Portland. "Where did you get it, Drake? Drake?"

He knows I'm not talking about Black Smoke.

"No me digas... you're selling this shit, Drake?"

"No, no, I'm not selling i—"

"Who'd you get it from? Ciara? Johnny?" Mentiroso. What other junkie connections does Drake use to score H? What were their...