Tweaker

xviii. the battle begins

xviii. the battle begins

"You know, a little bird once told me that giving up is easy. It's carrying on and continuing the fight that is the hard part," Finn whispered as he stroked my hair and pushed it out of my face.

I looked up at him and smiled a little. We were sitting on my bathroom floor, in an empty house, with no food or heat and very little water. I was freezing, so cold my hands and feet had gone blue and were so painful to touch, that I refused to move. 

I had nearly forgotten what withdrawal was like. I hadn't had to deal with the pain in so long, that it was something foreign to me. There wasn't a day that went by that I had thought I'd be back in this place - not recently, anyway. To me, there would always be drugs. There would always be the distant feeling when the needle touched my skin. There would always be the tight pinch and the warmth that the liquid I pushed so hard into me brought. I thought that's what my life was, and I had welcomed it with open arms, because at least when I was high, I didn't have to think about all the things I had left behind. 

However, I had never realized just how much I was leaving. 

I never thought that Finn - the real Finn, the one that wasn't clear with the high but rather cluttered with sobriety and pain, was gone with me. I never thought I would have to feel the pain of reminding myself that I had gotten him into this mess . . . and I had never thought that he would be the one to pull me out of mud that was so thick and delectable that I couldn't stay away from it. 

"Greyson?" He whispered, pulling me out of my thought. 

"Yeah, Finn?"

"Do you think we'll ever be more than this?"

At first, I thought he was talking about us and our friendship . . . and then, I looked into his eyes and knew what he had meant, but I couldn't speak, because I didn't have the answers. 

Not this time. 

"I don't mean more than friends, Grey," he muttered, seeming to regret that statement. "I mean more than the drugs. More than being lost in a sea of drugs and a wave so high, that we never wanted to come down and see how beautiful everything was without our minds being contorted. I mean sober. Do you think we'll ever be truly sober, again?" 

"I don't know, anymore," I admitted. 

A sad smile swept over his lips and he sighed, "You're the one who's always given me direction and I fell in love with you because of that . . . "

"But?"

"But, I don't know if I could ever be with you, Greyson."

I frowned and nodded, "I understand." 

"No, you don't. It's not that I don't want to be with you. It's not that I wouldn't love to be able to say you're mine," he paused and looked away from me, out the window and to something beyond this world that I couldn't see. "But, Greyson, we aren't made for one another. We aren't meant to be together and this isn't me spouting because I'm sobering up and regretting the things we've done even after we promised each other that the battle began on that bridge a month ago. I know it did . . . but I'm losing, okay? Me and you haven't even been down to see Benji. Preston only comes home to get high and forget why we're all sitting here together, waiting for the call that his little brother is either out of the woods or gone for good."

"I don't understand what you're getting at," I admitted.

"My point is," he paused and searched for the words he was looking for, but couldn't seem to find. "Honestly, I don't know what my point is but I do want to tell you that I love you, and I always will, but I'm not good for you, Grey . . . and you aren't good for me. I'm always going to be here for you, and I just hope that whoever you find yourself with down the line isn't like me. I don't want you to be dragged down. I don't want you to cry in your room a year from now because I'm gone."