paper rings (l.h.)

48

Somewhere in LA later that evening, Luke's POV:

He shouldn't have stayed here. Shouldn't have stayed alone.

Or so he kept telling himself, sitting on the balcony with cups upon cups of half-drank coffees beginning to pile up in the sink. Plates he had filled with food, only to pick at the fries or whatever else he knew he should have avoided. The air didn't seem so thick when Mary was around, the LA heat seemed more tolerable. People didn't upset him half as much as they did now, and the idea of facing the public didn't seem so intimidating with Mary at his side. A reminder of why he worked so hard, a reason to keep going.

That reminder was still there, a thousand miles away. Perhaps he needed her now, more than he had before. He hated how it took the distance, her getting a new job she was excited for, for him to realize it.

But the bags on his eyes were beginning to set back into his face. The cravings were always there, always at the back of his mind even when he was long out of rehab. It never quite went away, and he at least had a thousand miles of absolutely nothing back home. No one he knew well enough to ask, to risk his reputation once again being ruined by his own actions. Here, he knew every corner. Could name about three buddies living on every street, and exactly where to get the substances he craved more than anything.

More than life some days, still. It was an effort not to sneak out before Mary woke up to satisfy some of those cravings. He would never have touched it, had he known that nearly a year later he was still wanting the sweet release of Xanax. Still sat up at night dreaming about what it'd feel like after this long, how it'd be like the first time again.

But he never did. Mary was his future, his past didn't control him anymore. At least, he didn't spend long thinking about it until now.

He sat shirtless on that balcony they once spent their evenings together on, staring at the joints in the ashtray that they shared after the Grammy's. At the red marks across his forearms from his nails against skin. To forget the cravings. To pretend that it wasn't beginning to swallow him whole.

He called Mary whenever the cravings were unbearable, which was most of the time. He only ever dialed her number a few times a day, wondering if she'd be annoyed if he did call her when that need ever did start to suffocate him. It was soon, he was beginning to understand. A hard gulp danced down his throat, blonde curly hair in his eyes. Luke knew that someone would notice. He needed to get himself together, before Mary found out before he got a chance to tell her.

Would she stay? If she knew what he was feeling, thinking about, dreaming about...

Of course she'd stay. He knew that, but he also knew that she'd blame herself for a relapse such as this. She'd blame the distance that she couldn't help, and the promises she made before he was ever in the picture. He knew she'd find a way to love him despite it all, but he knew how to hurt people in the deepest pits of his addiction. Knew what to say when he was withdrawing to hurt, knew where to strike. He was well aware of the person who he tried so desperately to heal, so that he could be patient with himself and kind with others. He practiced until it was second nature, finding ways to be optimistic instead of finding things to complain about. It took him a while to believe the things he was saying, to ignore the constant whining in his head and used his tongue only to speak kind words. He kept those thoughts to himself, truly thought about what he was and who he was hurting by saying them.

His hands were shaking as his sore fingertips running across his phone screen. He had spent most of the afternoon staring at this sky, at the pinks melting into oranges, then into navy, until the once star-covered sky was nothing more than dark. Mary was right, the stars were prettier back home.