You are a drug and it is quick

Chapter Fifteen

As the night turned into the early hours of the morning, they lay in bed silently, still naked and draped in sheets. Abby rested her head on Zac's chest as he mindlessly ran his fingers through her hair.

"Tell me something about you that I don't know." He finally said, breaking their silence.

"Why?"

"Because I want to know everything about you." He replied simply.

"Zac, we've been room mates for months and friends for even longer. I've told you everything there is to know."

"That's not true. You never talk about your past."

"Sometimes the past is better off being left there..."

"Your past is part of what made you, you. It's important."

"More like painful."

"If you don't want to talk about it, it's okay. Just never mind."

"No, it's fine. I'll tell you. What do you want to know?"

"How did you end up in foster care? Do you remember your parents? Do you ever hear from them?"

"I don't remember them and I've never heard from them. I'm not even sure if they are dead or alive. All I know is that they were drug addicts, and abusive toward one another. And neglectful. They actually had two kids, myself and an older sister. She died in their care when she was a baby. They never got charged with anything that I know of, but because of the circumstances and their past, I was taken from them the very second I was born."

"Oh..." Zac paused, unsure of how to respond. "That's...terrible."

"Yeah. So as awful as foster care was, I was obviously better off. Every home I ever lived in was a good one, just not stable. They were all nice enough, though. I just never felt like I belonged because I wasn't a real part of the family. I went and lived with my uncle for a while when I was really small and that's the closest I ever got to a real family. He had been estranged from my father for several years at that point but he got wind of my situation and wanted to help me. Not long after though, he started having health issues so I was put back into care. He's the one I inherited the money from."

"Did you at least keep in touch with him?"

"For a few years he would come and visit, or take me for ice cream or whatever now and then. But as his health deteriorated, I heard from him less and less. Which I totally understand. There isn't anything he could have done and we had no other family so there wasn't anyone to help him. Eventually he had to go into hospice care in Arizona and spent the last several years of his life there."

Zac didn't respond, just continued to run his hands through her hair, but Abby decided to continue anyway. It felt good to talk about it, better than she had thought.

"I think...I think that's why I got married so young. I just...wanted to feel like I belonged to something, to someone. I met Adam when we were in High School. He was actually in foster care with me at one point. He had no one either, we understood each other. Basically as soon as we were eighteen and left on our own, we moved in together and got married not long after. I'm not sure we ever really loved each other so much as we both loved the idea of having someone."

"That makes a lot of sense."

"We managed to make a half decent life together for a while. He did well as a musician, between being hired for studio time with various artists, and playing his own stuff locally, and even though I only worked in a coffee shop, I was raking in the tips and we lived a comfortable life. Comfortable enough that I was finally able to start traveling and following you guys on tours and stuff. Which, if I'm being totally honest....is a big part if the reason I stayed with him for so long after things started to get bad between us."