VALERIE

Ninety Seven

They buried her a few days ago.

In the Laurent family mausoleum back in Washington.

Nick was in Miami.

Losing his mind.

Begging to die.

He had stopped fighting and he had stopped crying.

He was getting high off cocaine and drinking himself into darkness each day.

It was the only way he could blur her memory from his mind.

But she'd always come back.

Every night he'd lay on the disgusting motel bed alone with a bottle of liquor in his hand, his pupils dilated, and a lit cigarette in between his fingers.

He'd stare at the ceiling and just remember.

There was no escaping her, she was everywhere.

In his dreams and his thoughts and it was slowly killing him.

Rotting his mind. Poisoning his blood stream and injecting itself into the remaining pieces of his heart.

He felt nothing but hatred and self-pity.

He blamed her for all of it.

But he really blamed himself deep down.

Tonight he was crying.

He missed her.

When she left him, she took a large piece of him if not all.

He couldn't stop or control it, he just missed her so much. No amount of stimulants could make his pain go away.

Everything he ever did was for her. To protect her. To love her.

But, he believed he failed to protect her because he let her lose her mind to the demons in her head and the physical demons she called family.

His phone rang for what seemed to be the hundredth time that day.

"Hello?" He asked when he answered it without even acknowledging the caller ID.

"Finally you answered." Marco exclaimed on the other side of the line.

Nick didn't answer him but Marco heard him take a drag of his cigarette.

"Nick, fuck dude like foreals though you need to come back I don't know where you are but I need to give you something."

Nick ashed his cigarette on the mattress before flicking it onto the floor where a few other cigarettes laid.

"I don't want to see anyone right now." Nick's morbid and emotionless voice caught Marco off guard.

Marco sighed, "I have something for you." You could hear Marco shuffling about, "She left a note for you, I found it on the dresser. I don't want to open it."

He choked on his words before any of them could even come out. The lump in his throat hurt.

"Meet me somewhere." He finally managed to say as he sat up his bottle of whiskey tipped of his body and fell onto the carpet where it immediately spilled and soaked up into the carpet.