To the Beat of My Heart

The Darkness Inside

I wake to the absence of Clay, my hand gliding along the soft cold press of the sheets. And then I hear his voice, hushed. He's over by the window and it sounds urgent. I roll over ever so gently and look at him through groggy half-asleep eyes. He's facing the window, phone to his ear.

"...in fucking ages. No. Not even his meds." Meds? "Like... there's the urge, or a like momentary feeling but I always shut it down. I don't need that high. Haven't in a long time." He hums for a bit and then starts going on about it being four years, over fourteen-hundred days. He says he's lost count. Who the fuck is he talking to about his recovery?

I'm always at the heart of these talks. We went to the meetings. Clay managed his rehab better because he didn't fall into many of the familiar pitfalls. Clay had it bad but not catastrophically so. If it was just weed or coke... This might be a different story. Gateway drugs. I know he did speed. I know pills that were handed around like candy were involved. He's told me, and it terrifies me even he doesn't know what most of them were. Awful enough to leash him to them, a dependency that rotted away at him. He suffered from withdrawal and that next fix was that much harder to find because he didn't have an easily accessible network of people he could turn to for drugs after we finished school. Less than a handful and I kept him far from all of them. Not like he had the money. It was months before he started doing small gigs and in the meantime, his mum had hidden anything of value that could be sold. A precaution. He hated that but he understood she meant well.

Fuck, it was scary at times but he didn't show the signs. He was always accounted for and our little post-high-school celebratory-holiday to Sicily proved he was at a place of contentment.

We still played it by ear and his mum took him to regular meetings and I tagged along for a lot of those. He hated having to go those first few weeks. Kept insisting he didn't need them. I sided with his mum and he took a fist to my heart when he replied bluntly that he had me. Like fucking hell! He shared everything with me. Every craving, dizzy spell, migraine, his weakest and darkest moments, how desperate he was to reclaim a little of that bliss even if his life was finally back on track. Some nights were the absolute devil. He'd sob and hit things, throw pillows and go the whole mile. He'd always come back to my arms. As his face crumpled and his sobs became strained, snivelling enough to shatter my already bruised heart, he told me to give up on him. I never did.

First, it was fifty days. Then a hundred. The closest scare we got then was when he was staying over at my place and he told me not to let him out of his sight. I asked what he was planning. He said he didn't know. I guess maybe he was worried he'd nick some of mum's jewels and sell them but Clay's control was a hell of a lot better than it was half a year before that. Anyway, it worked out well because I just got to hold him in bed. He was a mess, shivering, then sweating, then finally breathing quickly. Then quiet. He guided my hands down. Our hormones got the better of us. As they usually do. 

We got around to two hundred and things were looking amazing. He stopped going to meetings, but he promised to text or call if he was ever bad enough to relapse. Thank god I never found him with a bottle of pills or a needle in his arm. I didn't have to track him down to known haunts or go to the police. Anything he had to say, he'd say to me. Clay was kickass.

So who...?

Clay hangs up, no love you, just a tired goodbye and I narrow my eyes further as he spins to face me. I keep deathly still. Clay stands there, the morning light casting him in shadows. I can't see his face. He puts his fingers to his mouth, chewing at his thumbnail. He's wearing a beige turtleneck and his frizzled blond curls are golden in the sunlight. I want him so bad, just to hold him close. The pain of yesterday hits me like a fucking train, a grim reminder. So I say nothing.