A month after Ash had gotten into rehab, Hayden had tried to remain clean, as if. She had mostly been trying to sleep her way through the two months gap. Sleeping is useful when you're an addict, you're knocked out and don't get to think or even feel. The hours awake were frustrating. She would seem to fall every time she'd set a foot in front of the other, hence the scars and bruises she got during that time. She wanted to sink every time she took a bath, so she started taking showers. Worst of it was having a drink at diner without anybody noticing it was her fourth. But it was the only way she could go back to bed and sleep for another thirteen hours straight. She remebered where Ash's place was, she remembered there were drugs hidden in the cabinets the cops had not found. She knew there were. But she couldn't get in. She started couting the amount of days she had been clean and hated every part of herself for that. All she wanted was to feel powerful again. She wanted to feel the veins in her arms and the beating of her heart. She was sick all the time, and it only made her remain in bed longer.
At some point, she took a bus to Beswick, looking for Lou. Looking for the garage she'd heard about. They had only met when she was high, here it was different. When she finally found the place, she was so clean that her pure blood probably smelled when she set foot in. Lou was an endearing guy, you wouldn't know what business he was into before speaking with him. His mouth had a way of twitching anytime he was high. That's how his body would screw up. Like Ash's eyes do, or Hayden's. When Lou welcomed Hayden at his place, he got her to sit at the stupid garden white table he'd kept from his mom. She sat there like a refugee, hoping to find help in the worst place ever, not knowing whether they would act nicely towards her or not.
Around the table were a couple other guys, Vinny whom she'd met the night of the arrest, Alex, football player whose scholarship had been refused when they found out he was using. Lou smiled as Hayden sat and offered her some weed "on the house". She smiled back, laughed while lightning the joint and gave him a hundred pounds bill. He gave her meth and coke. And so she met Jane, Lou's girlfriend whom he once used as a shield when the cops had found out about the dealing. The hours started ticking by and Hayden gave a twenty pounds note to Lou, finally she met Garrett.
He showed up while she was setting the coke aside, a beer in one hand and some unknown other powders laying next to her drugs. She calmly grabbed the heroin Lou had prepared in a bag for her and tucked it inside her jacket's pocket. Garrett sat in a corner, siping on his beer and waited half an hour before reaching for her. She had laid back against the brick wall and had been staring at the lamp above her haid for a moment before a couple tears started falling. Garrett appeared then. When she first broke down so he could pull her up.
"Come on girl."
***
Ash looks down at Hayden's face and notices her eyes are fine. It's the first time since he's out that she isn't high or in withdrawal while with him. And right now, right this moment, maybe she should. He grabs her right arm and pulls her aside, near the alley next to the theater entrance. He starts shaking while he's pulling her, he can almost feel her bones slightly cracking under his fingers. They are deep in her skin now, the bruises will be bad but he doesn't give a shit.
"Lou told me to say hi. From everyone. They miss you H. Which is weird since, you've never been to the garage, right? I mean, even before rehab I would have never brought you there. So tell me, what the fuck happened?"
Hayden looks up and the darkness in his eyes shakes her. The coldness in his voice breaks her into pieces. She thought she'd already been shattered a thousand times, but this one is harsh.
"You were not here. We- we weren't anything Ash. We were drug addicts we only had sex or saw each other when we were high! It doesn't mean we were something-" she stops herself there. Ash is staring back at her, straight in the eyes. Where he can feel the tears, the anger, and the heat all meeting together. A thing he hadn't experience in a very long time.
"I settled for you Hayden," he starts, still shaking, "for whatever the hell we were. And you probably even shagged someone because you needed drugs. That's what you did, didn't you? You were looking for drugs and ended up fucking someone?"
They do not talk after that, both thinking the same : she did the exact same thing when she first met him.
YOU ARE READING
Settle Down
Romance"She came and it was two in the morning. She'd been crying. She started screaming in my backyard. She was yelling for me to let her in while I had never met her before. Mate, she was nuts. She wore that fucking purple dress. You know, the dark one...
