Chasing Butterflies

Pills and Pillows

"Just sell me five more," she pleaded.

"I sold you eight pills two days ago, where are you putting all this stuff?" The guy cocked his head to the side, making the black fabric of his hood shift a bit on his head, but it never revealed his face. "Are you sure you should be taking this much?"

Izzy scoffed, "What the hell does it matter to you how much I take? I give you money and you give me the pills, that's the arrangement. You don't ask about my personal life and I don't ask about yours," she was seething. This guy had absolutely no right to question anything she did. He was the one selling drugs!

"Whatever," he dismissed the issue and held out his hand. Izzy eagerly placed all the money from her last few shifts at the cafe into his open palm and watched anxiously as he proceeded to count it far too slowly. "Here," he tucked the money into his jacket and chucked a baggie of seven white pills at her then she was off.

Izzy rushed down the street while trying to conceal the pills in her pocket. Her shift at the cafe had finished not even fifteen minutes ago and her first stop was to that dim alleyway to get her daily vice. The pills worked well at first, but the more she took the less effect they had on her, and the more she now had to buy. What she was doing—taking morphine and hiding it from the boys—was bad, but she couldn't stop. Especially not when those vile words never stopped circling in her head. Sweet Cheeks. Jae had called her that a hundred times over and she resisted the urge to gag every time he did so. But what really and truly had been eating away at her for the past nine days is the fact that Youngkyun had referred to her by those same exact words when he had been in the cafe fighting with Mrs. Lee. Izzy hadn't realized it until Wednesday night when she sat squished between Jungkook and Jimin on the couch as they munched happily on their food. It had taken her two damn days to figure out why Youngkyun's words had sounded so familiar. And it was taking her nine damn days more trying to figure out why he even called her that. In the two years that they had dated, those words had never slipped from his tongue; Jae was the only one who had ever called her that. So what the hell did this mean? Was it just a dumb coincidence? Or did Youngkyun and Jae somehow know each other? Sure, Youngkyun had been the one to introduce Izzy and Cassie in the first place, but that was before she started dating Jae. Izzy's hands tore out hair at the roots as she wracked her brain for answers. But none came. It simply didn't make sense.

Her feet slapped heavily against the building steps as she ascended to the apartment. A horrible thought crossed her mind just as her hand reached for the door knob and Izzy immediately hated herself for thinking it. I hope the boys aren't home. She was a horrible, despicable, wretched excuse for a friend. Those boys had taken her in, given her a home, and kept her as happy as they possibly could. And how did she repay them? By bringing drugs into their home, lying, and ignoring them. Izzy sighed and opened the door.

The sobering side of Izzy told her that she was an awful person for being so dismissive with them lately. But the exhausted part of her that was suffering withdrawals after only a few hours without her fix hissed only about how the boys were overbearing. They kept a constant vigil on her, continuously asked her how she was doing, they treated her like a patient and she was so damn sick of it. And no matter how many times she uttered the words "I'm fine," Namjoon's steely eyes never dropped their suspicion.

She stepped into the apartment. The lights were on inside and the boys lounged lazily around the room. Izzy heard the faint sound of water running, someone must be in the shower, and after a quick look around the living room she determined that it was Jimin. Perfect. She would have just enough time to hide her stash. Izzy mumbled a quick hello to the boys and rushed into her bedroom. Tunnel vision overcame her; when her mind was focused on the drugs she couldn't see anything else. Which is exactly why she didn't notice when the shower shut off or when the bedroom door creaked open.