Existential Indifference (Joshler)

9. Speedball

Wait to start the song.
***Trigger warning for some domestic violence.***

Josh had never been more unsure of himself in his life than he was as he walked inside of his trailer. It was only six in the morning, so the likelihood of Ashley being awake was small, but he knew Debby would be. That was confirmed for him when he saw her sitting on the kitchen counter, drinking coffee. He loved her so much. Even when he absolutely hated her, he loved her. That made this hurt even more.

Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she dropped her mug in the sink as she scurried off of the counter and ran to him. It was clear she'd been crying. That didn't mean a lot to Josh, though, right now. At least, not as much as it would've before her girlfriend had fucked everything up under her supervision. If she was really worried about him, she would've looked for him instead of crying about his absence. She wouldn't be sitting here sipping coffee when he'd been AWOL for three days.

Still, he wrapped his arms around her when she hugged him, burying her face against his chest. "Oh my god! Where the hell have you been, baby boy?" She asked shakily, pulling back to hold his face and kiss him over and over again before wrapping her arms around his waist again.

"Apparently I drove to my mom's house Sunday night," Josh told her as he pulled away from the hug, much to her confusion.

"What? Why didn't she call me?" She asked him worriedly, and there was anger behind her voice-betrayal. She didn't know shit about betrayal.

"She was probably too busy trying to keep me from tweaking out and hurting somebody with all that cocaine in my system," he replied as he walked through the trailer.

Suddenly, Debby was frozen in place. "What? Baby, but you were clean. Why would you-"

He turned around and looked at her seriously. "Oh, I didn't. I'm clearly an idiot, but I'm not that dumb. You wanna know why I had cocaine in my system? Ask the bitch who gave me a fucking speedball. Let's do that right now."

Debby opened her mouth to speak, but Josh opened their bedroom door and turned the lights on, making Ashley groan and pull the blankets up over her head. Josh yanked them off of her and dropped them out of her reach. She whined.

"Dude, what the fuck?" She mumbled.

He chuckled irritably. "I was just going to ask you the same thing," he said as he opened Ashley's highest drawer in their dresser, digging around until he found the remnants of the drugs she'd had waiting for him when he'd come home from work on Saturday. Now that he was seeing them uncooked, it was all very clear to him. Debby's eyes widened when she saw the bag. He tossed it at Ashley, who looked confused as she picked it up. "Care to explain?" He asked her.

Ashley wiped sleep from her eyes, but Josh could tell just from one look at her face that she knew exactly what she'd done. She'd known all along. "It's heroin?" She said quietly, but it sounded like a question. She sounded scared. Good.

"It's a speedball," he corrected. "Part heroin, yeah, but part cocaine too."

The girls were quiet. Ashley looked at Debby, silently pleading for her to do something, but what could she do? The damage was done. Josh had relapsed without meaning to, and all that money his family didn't have that they'd spent sending him to rehab had been washed down the drain. He'd been told in NA that backsliding was normal, but this was beyond anything they could have ever prepared him for. This wasn't just a relapse. This was the complete collapse of Josh's trust in anyone.

"You have twenty minutes to pack up your shit and get out of my house," he told Ashley coldly.

That was all it took for Debby to break out of her trance. "Wait a second. That's not a decision you get to make, Josh. We need to all talk about that and figure out how best to approach this."