I could feel everyone looking at me. The people who already knew were probably wondering why we were bringing it all up and everyone else just looked confused. Brooklyn awkwardly detached himself from me as I stared directly at Michael who had been the one to speak. "I'm in recovery and it was never a major thing."
"You haven't relapsed have you?" Tyler asked in a quiet voice. He timidly took a few steps over to me with Cosa who looked equally as worried for my mental health.
"No," I said with a smile.
"I think I am just going to leave you to it," Mali said. "Come on boys - we can go for a walk and they can talk back at ours."
"I want to know," Luke said. "She is my friend as well, not just Michael's."
I nodded slowly as I took a few steps forward with Brooklyn. "Stay with Tyler and Cosa. I want to do this on my own."
"Are you sure?" He asked. "I can stay with you."
"I will call you if I need you."
I made my way across the road to the boys' house with Michael and Luke who both looked confused and concerned. Luke unlocked the door and we all went into the living room slowly. I sat in the single chair and the boys sat on the sofa opposite. "Explain then."
"It's a long story," I warned them. "It started when I moved out to Los Angeles about a year ago. I took the move hard - I had just lost my friends and my boyfriend. I was in this new world all on my own and I despised it. I blamed my mother for it all and when the chance came to spite her I wanted to do it. It was only meant to be one blunt but then it turned into ten and soon enough it was a routine. I would get up stumble through the day and then meet Oscar. We would get drunk and smoke weed until the early hours of the morning. My mother didn't even notice. Worse than that, Brooklyn didn't. I mean, at that point we weren't speaking so realistically I knew he wouldn't but I just hoped that he would."
"So it was only weed and nothing else?" Luke asked. "I mean, it's a relief that it was only that. It could have been something worse."
"An addiction is an addiction," Michael snapped back at him. "What made you stop?"
"I was in New York for the weekend - visiting my father and going to an awards show."
"Typical weekend," Luke said with a smirk. "I'm just trying to lighten the mood."
"My father was the type of person to notice when you had been doing something you weren't supposed to so I was determined to not smoke when I was there," I said. "It didn't start off well. The first night I was there I ran into Brooklyn who was out with some actress. I thought it was his new girlfriend. That night - once everyone was asleep I crept up onto the roof of the building where my father lives and had a smoke. It just relieved the tension.
"The next night was the awards show. My step mother went into labour that night and gave birth to my sister the next morning. I decided then that I didn't want to fuck up her life like I had fucked up everyone else's. That was the beginning of it all really. I have been clean and much happier for nearly two months now. I got back with Brooklyn not long after I stopped it all."
"Stop crying," Michael said to me quickly.
I wiped away the tears that had fallen without me noticing and looked up at them. "Do you hate me because I am a fuck up?"
"You aren't a fuck up," Michael said quickly. "If you were a fuck up then you would be still smoking pot every day and you wouldn't be here right now."
"We don't hate you," Luke said. "Far from it. It must have taken a lot of guts to do what you did."
"I should go," I said quickly. "I've left Brooklyn with my brothers and cousin and mother. I don't think it was a good idea."
