Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
This isn’t freedom.
It’s chains.
And I just locked them back around my wrists.
Coming down feels like sandpaper on the inside of my skin.
I wake in the hotel bed with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and a taste like pennies. The AC rattles. The curtains leak gray morning. The little bag on the nightstand is empty, a plastic ghost that laughs at me.
For one slow second, I remember why I quit. The meetings, the chips, the coffee that tasted like hope, the way Tommy watched me like I was the best thing in the room just for breathing. Then the second the memories end and the hole in my chest cracks open again.
The high didn’t fix it. Of course it didn’t. It just pressed the pause button on the movie of my brain. Now the movie’s back, louder: the woman on the beach, the phone calls, the egg aisle, the bar, the morning I woke up beside a stranger and drove until the world blurred. The look on Tommy’s face when I put the ring in his hand. The door closing. My own voice telling him not to follow me.
I think about calling Jenni. The thought is a needle I can’t bear to push in. I think about walking into a meeting right now, claiming Day One again. But the shame drags me down like undertow. Day One feels like admitting the worst thing about me: that I threw away what he gave me. That I chose it. That I’m choosing it again right now because the only thing I can hear is a hiss of one more hit.
The craving rises slow and then fast, like a storm building over hot fields, and by the time I’m standing, there’s no room for anything else. I don’t brush my teeth. I don’t shower. I don’t look in the mirror because I know what’s there: a woman who can’t stand on her own.
I find my shoes, my purse, my keys. The waitress uniform from last night is still damp where I spilled coffee; I pull it on anyway. My hands shake as I lock the door.
I tell myself I can keep it neat this time. Controlled. Just enough to sleep. Just enough to make the voices low enough that I can think.
It’s a lie, and I know it, and yet, I go anyway.
The alley looks different in daylight—worse. Streaks on the brick. A pile of black bags that might be trash or might be bodies. The man is there, hood down this time, eyes flat with a smile that doesn’t move anything but his mouth.
“You back already?” he asks or tells me or a little of both. Either way, he is not surprised.
“Yeah.” I hate how small I sound.
“Bring cash?”
I pull tips from my pocket, the rubber-banded roll I promised myself last night I would deposit this morning. It looks stupid in my hand. Childish, like play money. He counts it in two snaps, shakes his head, takes a few bills off the top, and flicks another bag at me.
More. He gives me more than I paid for.
“Careful,” he says, like a joke.
I nod and leave. My face burns. I imagine the whole town watching, all the eyes I learned to feel at my back even when there weren’t any. I imagine Tommy’s shape at the mouth of the alley, arms folded, eyes huge with hurt. I drive away fast, but the picture follows.
Back in my room, I pace. I dump the bag on the nightstand and fold it open like I’m unwrapping a present I don’t deserve. This time I don’t wait.
It hits harder. It always does when you’re trying to drop back into an old path. My body remembers the arc, but the gravity’s all wrong. The relief comes in a rush that makes me gasp—blessed to quiet the noise, awful because I know what I have done, and total destruction of the woman I wish to be.
For a few minutes, the hotel isn’t a cage. It’s a cloud. For a few minutes, the voice that tells me I ruined everything curls up like a dog at my feet and goes quiet.
I float until I sleep.
I blow through the bag in two days. That’s how it goes. The hole I was trying to fill grows teeth. It demands more. It always demands more.
The diner calls when I don’t show for a Saturday double. I let it ring. On Sunday the manager leaves a voicemail that starts “sweetheart” and ends “don’t come back.” I listen twice, not because I need the words, but because I need the tone: disappointment is a lullaby to the junkie inside me. Another reason to get high. I put the phone face down and tell myself I’m free now, that I hated the polyester anyway.