Weak

Chapter Eighteen

The light beaming from my window scorches my eye. Waking up, my body feels sore. I must have passed out last night with all the shooting up. Looking over to my nightstand, my vision sharpens and I see it's 2:44 in the afternoon. I've done quite a bit of sleeping. There's an envelope beside the clock. I grab and take a look inside. It's money—a lot of money. I pull the money out and begin counting it. 100, 200, 300, 400...there's thirty-five hundred dollars in the envelope. I quickly put the money back into the envelope and find Jay. He's in his office.

“Jay!” I say, stumbling over my own feet. “This envelope full of cash was on my nightstand.”

Jay looks up from his computer at me. “Okay...” he says calmly.

“What is this for?” I ask, in a confused tone.

“It's your pay.”

“My pay?”

“Yes, your pay. For the job last night.”

“Wow. That much?” That was way more money than I expected.

“Well, yeah. It's not much, but--”

“It's fine! I-I'm satisfied.” I say, taking another peek into the envelope. “Boss didn't want to see me any? Give me another task?”

“He likes to keep his meetings to a minimum. Whenever he has another task for you, you'll find out. It's not like something you do everyday or something. They try to space the things out.”

“Oh okay.”

“And besides, your mom and Leslie should be home in a few hours.”

“Oh, yeah.” I say. Through all of this I sort of forgot about Leslie and Mom. I wonder if Leslie is still mad at me. Or better yet, I hope she didn't discuss anything with Mom. “Well I guess I'll go shower and put on some clothes.”

As I walk out of Jay's office, the doorbell rings. I look out the peep hole; it's Trish. I open the door.

“Hey Trish.”

“Hey there cutie!” she says, leaning in for a hug. I hug her back.

“Well, look what we have here.” Jay says, walking out of his office. “Hey Trish.”

“Jay!” Trish says in an excited voice. She runs up and hugs Jay.

“What are you doing here?” Jay asks.

“I was just coming to see if Chase wanted to hang out.” Trish says, smiling at me.

“Yeah, sure.” I say, scratching the back of my head. “I just got to clean up a bit and put on some clothes.”

“Well then hurry up!” she says.

“Alright, fifteen minutes!” I run upstairs, take a quick shower and change. “I'm ready.”

“Coolio.” Trish says. She and Jay are sitting on the sofa. She stands up and smiles. “Let's go! We are going to have some fun today!”

“Oh really, where are we going?” I say holding the door open for her.

“Don't worry about that.” she winks at me.

We get into her car and pull off. We while we're in the car we just chit chat. I tell her I used the rest of the heroine she gave me, she told me about a funny situation she got into after we hung out last night. Conversations seem to flow well between us. We pull into a large parking lot—we're at the mall.

“Why are we here?” I ask, getting out the car. She slams her car door and smiles.

“So you can help me pick out some clothes.” she walks over, linking her arm in mine. “Let's go.”

We walk inside the mall. There's a lot of people here. We walk pass all these big, expensive stores. I hate shopping. I'm perfectly fine just wearing jeans and T-shirts. I'm not sure why everyone in California is so into looks. After pushing through the flow of mall traffic, we get to Trish's store. I look up at the pink sign before entering—Kittens. The clothes in here look more urban. They're very colorful and they look pretty tight.

Trisha starts grabbing clothes off the racks and handing them to me to hold. When I finally start to buckle she asks the shop attendant for a dressing room. I go in to put all her clothes down and as I'm walking out, she pulls me back in.

“Where are you going, silly? You have to help me.” she giggles.

“You can just come out when you put something on...” she closes the door and puts on a pout face.

“That's too much work, Chasey.” she smiles and takes drops her skirt. “Care to help me with my shirt?”

I swear all my blood just rushed to my head. I help her with her shirt. Her body is awesome. She has a leopard print tattoo that stretches down her torso and continues half-way her thigh. She picks a black, skin-tight dress from the top of the pile.

“Zip me up?” she says, smiling at me. I do so. “How do you like it?”

“Looks nice.” I say, staring at her gorgeous body.

“Good. I love it too. Unzip me.”

She continues to try on clothes, but in the end she only gets a few items. She walks out the store, wearing the first dress she tried on. We head back to the parking lot and get in the car.

“Where to now? Another raving party?” I laugh.

“I think we should head over to my place.” she gives me a wink. I have no idea how this night will end. “Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah, sure.” I say, swallowing hard.

Trisha's apartment is far from what I expected—it's basically a penthouse. It's a nicely furnished sky rise on the beach. Standing on her balcony, the moon reflects on the water. The palm trees faintly blow in the wind. It's quiet and quite calming. Trisha comes onto the balcony with a blanket.

“Want to cuddle?” she laughs sweetly. “I don't know what you wanted to do, but I'm not that kind of girl.”

She lays the blanket on the ground and sits down. I sit next to her and she rests her head against my chest.

“I didn't really think you were that kind of girl. I'm not the best guy; sex isn't that important to me.” she smiles and gives me a kiss on my cheek.

“Thank you, Chase. You're really great, you know. I wish more guys were like you. You listen to me, and you actually want to understand me. You care.”

“I guess everyone needs someone to care.”

“I hope you can trust me to be there for you.” she looks into my eyes. “You can tell me anything.”

“There's so much going on with me, I wouldn't know where to start.” she smiles and gets up.

“I got something that can help you out.” she goes inside, and comes back out with a big bottle of alcohol and some dope. She opens up the alcohol and downs a bit. The way her ruby red lips puckers off the bottle is so sexy. She passes the bottle to me.

“We're getting fucked up tonight.” she says with an evil grin.

We got pretty messed up. When she was driving me home, the trees seemed to talk to me. The speedometer said 80 but it was like we were going 10 mph. She dropped me off in front of the house. I drag myself up the driveway. I'm so messed up I see a guy who looks a lot like Daniel sitting on the hood of Jay's lambo. He gets up and peeks through the front door. A man walks outside in the driveway. As I get closer, I realize he looks a lot like Dad.

“Hello Chase.” one of them says in a deep voice. He sounds like my father.  I straighten up a bit and realize that I'm not hallucinating. This was my father and somehow, this was also Daniel.