Milk and Cigarettes

Chapter 17

I didn't respond at first. Because I was in shock, I couldn't fully process the information at that moment.

"I know that's probably not what you expected to hear." Leo sighed and I didn't notice my mouth was hanging open until I felt how dry it had become. "But I never told you the real reason why I left New York, and I felt like you needed to know." I looked over at him for a moment and he sat there with his knees up and his elbows resting on them. His eyes squinted towards the sunrise and I felt it in my bones in that moment. I felt that it didn't matter what had happened to us before, who we were or what we did. The only thing that mattered was that moment, who we were that day, what we did. I remained quiet, because I couldn't gather my thoughts in a sentence that would make sense. "You can stop me at any moment, Wendy." He cleared his throat and began. "I lived in New York with my mom. My dad left when I was 3 and I have no memory of him. My mom had several boyfriends throughout the years, all of them were complete dicks." Leo's lips tightened and I wondered if I should stop him just to put him out of his misery from reliving his past. "I was rarely home, ya know? I was out most of the time with friends. Or, whoever." I felt uncomfortable in my sitting position at this point and yearned to be closer to Leo, to soak his pain out of his system. His legs were out in front of him with his ankles crossed and I laid my head on his lap and continued to listen. "Everything happened sorta fast. This one guy who was maybe a couple years older than me, I was almost 17 at the time, asked me if I wanted to help him distribute." Leo ran his fingers through my hair and untangled my knots. "I agreed to it, I don't know why. But, shortly after that, I started selling to people." He stopped for a moment and I just kept thinking about how awful it must have been for him to tell me all of that. It broke my heart to think that he was nearly prepared for me to drop him after hearing this. "I only sold to users, though, people who had done it before. And, I never tried it. I didn't want to. I'd seen what it'd done to people and I couldn't just give my life away to the drug. So, I just sold it to make some extra cash. Cash to get me out of my mom's apartment, out of New York. And that was my plan, to get enough money to leave and quit being a distributor." Leo's voice cracked and I tugged his hand into mine, holding it. "But then all of the sudden my mom started dating this new guy, different from all the others. He worked with the NYPD and somehow he found out. My mom begged him not to send me away to Juvi, I would've been put straight to prison on my 18th birthday. But he talked to the cops and they arranged to send me down here with my mom's brother and keep everything else quiet. They figured I couldn't find any trouble in a town with a population like Spokane's, and only decreasing." I sat up and Leo looked over at me, almost as though he was yearning for acceptance. I leaned in and kissed him.

"Everything that has happened has led me to you, and I'm so thankful for that, Leo." I laid my head on his shoulder and hoped he would be released from this pain.

"They thought it was the town that would heal me," He pulled out his box and placed a cigarette between his lips. "but it was the girl in the wrestling helmet that did." Leo lit the lung burning object, I felt the warmth of the sun against my face, and our story was still only just beginning.