“What about you?” I ask, needing to divert my mind to more appropriate things. “Do you like it here?”
“I love it.” He downs a gulp of his water, and my eyes,once again, travel, my groin tingling at that damn throat of his. “I mean, prior to moving here, I’d never stepped foot outside of Utah. Hell, I hadn’t really even ventured far outside of our town. This is just… it’s so different, but in the very best way.”
“That’s exactly how I felt when I first moved to Nevada.” It was one of the greatest feelings ever, realizing there’s more than what you’d been given in the world.
Segan holds my gaze, not saying anything for a moment, but I know he wants to. He drags his bottom lip between his teeth, biting down for a moment before he releases it and finally asks, “Did you date? When you moved to Nevada?”
The question hits me right in the gut, a sucker punch, knocking the breath right out of me. Hurt lingers in his eyes, the sage green drowning in the need to know. “I did, yeah,” I reply honestly. “Nothing that ever stuck, though.”
“Why not?” he asks quietly.
“The truth?”
He nods, eyes searching mine. “Please.”
“They weren’t you?” I don’t know why I phrase it like a question. Probably because it sounds so damn cheesy saying that. It’s not like I’ve spent the last eight years pining over him, endlessly depressed and unable to move on. But it would be a blatant lie to say I didn’t compare each and every man who ever crossed my bedsheets to Segan.
It would be dishonest to say the idea of settling withanybody, no matter how great they were, sounded worse than pulling teeth because I knew they couldn’t compare to howhemade me feel in the brief time we spent together.
And it would be utterly untrue if I said I didn’t erect impenetrable walls all over myself any time anyone tried to get close to me, yet those same walls seem to have vanished into thin air the moment I quite literally ran into Segan again in that coffee shop.
Nobody ever stuck because nobody was ever him. No one ever could be him.
Segan’s breath hitches slightly at my response, but other than that, he shows no outward signs that my words affect him. He doesn’t even bother responding to it.
A question crosses my mind—a question that has plagued me since the funeral—and the urge to ask it becomes overwhelming. I don’t want to piss him off or ruin whateverthisis, but I need to know. “Are you still using?”
Segan glances over at me, gaze unreadable as his thumb absentmindedly rubs across his bottom lip, his elbow propped on the arm of the chair. He’s quiet for so long, I begin to think he won’t answer. My stomach sinks, dread building. But then, finally, he does.
“I’m not.” It’s simple. Two words, and it feels like I can breathe. “I meant it when I told you back then that I wasn’t mixed up in the shit Lana was.”
“I believe you,” I say softly. “And I think even back then I believed you; I was just too buried in grief to see it.”
He nods, his gaze far off. “It was different,” he mutters. “Drugs, I mean. The way Lana and I viewed them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Looking back, for me, it was always recreational. It was experimenting and having a good time, and I thought it was that for her too. It wasn’t.” Segan’s voice breaks, and a haunted look crosses his features. “For her, it was addiction. It was a disease. And I didn’t get that… for years, I didn’t get it. She was sick. It was just… it was different for us. I didn’t start using drugs alone, until shit got really bad with her. It was a way to numb everything, but after I got out of the psych hospital for the second time, I took my health seriously. It wasn’t a challenge for me to stay away from drugs because, for me, it wasn’t a disease. And it took me so many years to realize that, to process it, and to accept it. And I wasn’t able to forgive her fully and truly until I did.”
He glances over at me, eyes glossy, but he doesn’t say anything else. Goosebumps are covering my body, the weight of everything he just said, sitting on my chest.
Clearing my throat, I say, “I’m glad you found peace and were able to forgive her. That’s not easy to do.”
He doesn’t respond. Silence covers us both for a moment. After what feels like an eternity, he offers, “After Lana died, I tracked her dealer down.”
The sentence sends chills down my spine. It’s no secret Lana had demons. It’s no secret that it was her demons that stole her life from us. But it’s still hard to think about, even all these years later. For so long, Lana was this bright, cheerful person. Despite all the shit we went through in our community, she was a beacon of light. When her light blew out, it wasn’t instant or obvious. Her light dimmed slowly. So slowly that those of us closest to her couldn’t even tell at first.
When you hear about tragic stories such as Lana’s, you naturally can’t help but wonder why nobody closest to them stepped in. Did nobody care enough to intervene? Were they blind to it all? The truth is, it’s neither of those. At least, it wasn’t with Lana.
We cared, Segan and I cared, so much that sometimes it physically pained me. But she hid it well, and like I said, it wasn’t an overnight change. She didn’t go from being happy and cheerful one night to waking up with a needle full of heroin in her arm. It was slow, and we were only kids when it came down to it. We were in over our heads, and I think, in the way youth deludes you, we thought we were all invincible and that everything would be okay. I don’t think Segan or I ever even considered that dying was an option. I’ve felt the guilt of failing her every single fucking day since.
“Did you find him?” I finally ask, nervous about what he’s going to say.
Segan huffs out a laugh through his nose, the sound dry and lacking any humor. “Yeah, I found him. Remember that guy we met when we were at the fair with Lana and her friends?”
Eyes widening at the realization of what he’s insinuating, I ask, “That was him?”
“Yup.”
