She hurt him like every other woman he's known. All the lyrics he's sung about the bad girls he's tried to make good. She knew. She was his shoulder when in need and he loved her so damn carelessly. And she hurt him.
Normally, he'd plaster on a smil...
I had everything I could ever want. I had money, people who loved me, the love of my life. I would wake up in my palace and do as I pleased, go off to a job where I was the center of attention and everyone worked to please me. I go to make art that touched peoples' souls. But when I would get into my king-sized bed at night, when I closed my eyes and drifted off, all the memories that I'd worked so hard to push deep down inside.....
They found me.
All I could see were the flames of a burning house or my crying, battered mother. My dad trying to sell me for drugs. Men forcing themselves on me. And that shit, after a while, it's hard to sleep with those thoughts constantly finding you. At first, it was just Adderall, something to keep me up and productive. Then it was Percocet. First one pill, then two, three and then I was trying to get Safaree to take them to ease the guilt of me doing what I know I shouldn't have. Imagine claiming to love someone and then trying to give them poison.
I was so selfish. Am so selfish.
Because although I know it wasn't just the drugs. It was the screaming, the belittling, the anger I had acquired for him. I guess for not being able to relieve me of all the horrors of my past, or for calling me out on them when I sure as hell didn't need a reminder. It was always "you need therapy" and "no one gets over something like that—even with money". It was me, all that I had become, but maybe if I had been sober, I'd have had the right mind to fix it.
Sobriety. Huh. That word is cold on my tongue and sharp in my throat. I don't know sober. I used to. But now we avoid each other at all costs... now that he's gone. Now that I've lost everything.
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As I sit at the edge of plush chair in my hotel room, I think about all the ways I could have saved my relationship, and the pain seeps through the cracks of my mind. Cracks that never become undone when I'm high. I chew on the tips of my thumb and index finger as if to physically keep myself from thinking about it. What I want. What I know I don't need. But it's a fail, not thinking about it just makes my body feel the withdrawal and yearns for it even more. I sneak glances at my pink diamond-covered duffel bag in the corner of the hotel room. I never go anywhere without security. After minutes of talking myself into it, I walk across the room and unzip the small pocket on the side of the bag and wriggle my fingers around until I feel paper. I pull out the small piece of paper with a ten-digit number on it then grab my phone from the bed and begin dialing the number. They pick up on the third ring.
"Hello," the person says groggily in a sleepy, you-just-woke-me-up kind of voice.
"Hi, is this Rashawn," I inquire.
"Yeah who dis," he asks in what I recognize to be the remnants of a Jamaican accent.
"Nicki, Smoove gave me your number," I state.
"Wassup, you need some of dem tings?"
"Yeah, I'm on the top floor of The Adelaide Hotel. Call me when you get he-,"
