BLACK ROSE

Sex in the air

Alex.

For a while now I've been wondering if I would ever need to make the drugs myself. Because making them and dealing them are two very opposite things.

I fish up the 'secret' documents I have safely stored away in my drawer. Ace brought them right before he left and told me this month would be very beneficial. Over the years he's become my secretary. Besides having his own side hustles and occasional jobs from Cal, he's been managing my paperwork. He could've dropped it multiple times, turned his back on me, yet he's always only replied with "I've made a promise." A simple phrase that breaks my heart every single time I hear it.

A month ago we had a quiet moment. People seemed to have stocked themselves up and I sold almost nothing compared to other months. I nearly lost half a quarter of my customers, but I got through this temporary economic crisis relatively well. In the end I managed to make more money out of it than we calculated.

I open the document with a long list of my customers and their usual preferences. I have around eleven kids buying from me at school, around twelve college students who have been buying from me from the very beginning. What surprised me the most was when my clientele expanded with five old seniors. They tip well, though. Then I have another group of college students who joined this drug family only recently, about three single mothers with small kids, and around fifteen worked to death adults, mostly working in some crappy office doing crappy office work and bitching on their bosses. This makes it around 60 customers. Considering I'm working basically alone, and I'm only eighteen, not some middle-aged Mexican with a big cartel, I think I'm good on it. I could also widen the range of my products, get someone to spread a good word about me, but for now I think imma stick to what I have, and we'll see how it all turns out.

It's a regular monthly routine, although I almost never do it alone. It takes up some time and going through all the papers and calculations on my own is simply too time consuming. So I have Ace by my side, doing his secretary work just exceptionally. Though this time he had to ditch on me and take a little family trip to Canada.

It's past one o'clock when I finish. Three hours spent locked in my room doing math more focused than on a school test and making tables on my laptop. I join my parents and sister for lunch, but never finish it whole. I excuse myself, lying that I have an urgent meeting with my friends. Well, technically it's not all a lie. I do have an urgent meeting to show up to, it's just not with my friends, though I will see those afterwards.

Every time I leave the house, a lie escaping my lips, I feel a kind of guilt and shame I cannot explain with words. I've been continuously lying to them for too many years about too many things. Every once in a while the thought of someday telling them the truth crosses my mind. It happens too rarely, but I always remind myself how stupid that would be. I've been keeping all those things from them for exactly one reason – to protect them from unnecessary additional pain. They've already been through enough; I don't need to add to the fire. Sometimes keeping the truth hidden is better.

I put everything I need in my backpack, take my keys and helmet, and leave. Driving through the streets I think of only one thing – home. A pretty abstract term with different broad definitions. Though if I were to narrow it down to one location, it would without doubt be New York. It never occurred to me to even think about leaving this city. I cannot imagine living somewhere else.

When I get to the location, I realise I'm a bit late. I open the heavy doors and inhale the very familiar air filled with alcohol, marihuana and...... and something I still haven't been able to identify. But someone recently said it smells like sex.

I walk down the dark hall quite fast. Instead of walking straight ahead all the time, I decide to take one turn to the right. I don't want to go through the main room and have to greet all the people. I'd rather take the long way around. It's a very narrow and short hallway, not a good place for someone with claustrophobia. It ends with big, grey, metal doors. I push them open, with almost all the strength I have. Most people think this passage is closed, but the truth is it hasn't been closed for over a decade. It's just really hard to open so most people give up. Only a few know about this.