I shrugged. “Easy. You don’t.” A wide smile spread across my face.
I lean back in my chair, scrubbing a hand over my face. That fucking smile has become synonymous with me. It’s become a perfected mask. People don’t look too hard when they see a smile, do they? If it reaches your eyes, they question even less.
Damn, that makes me sound like a sociopath. But they mimic because they can’t feel. Sometimes, I wish that were my problem, but it’s not. Mine is a carefully crafted façade perfected over decades of practice. It’s a masquerade I live every day in an attempt to protect everyone I love from seeing the darkness inside me. They think it’s just pain over the guilt I carry, but it’s so much more.
I throw the pen down in frustration.
“You’re drifting again,” Bryan says as he perches on Bastian’s motorcycle.
I don’t even acknowledge him. He doesn’t get brownie points for stating the obvious.
“Fucking genius, all right,” I mumble. “So goddamn brilliant, I’m aware that I’m losing my mind.”
I grip the glass of whiskey, tossing it back without tasting it. But it’s not enough. My last hit was hours ago. I’ve long since fallen into the suffocation of sobriety.
That’s when you know something is wrong. When sobriety feels foggy and congested.
All of Bastian’s work to get me clean was wasted time and wasted tears. I knew with every agonizing minute it wouldn’t last. Worse, I had no intention of staying clean even from that first excruciating ache.
But he tried. They all tried.
I grip my hair by the roots. My heart hammers in my chest,and my mind races. I need to get these words down, but until something calms the turmoil in my spirit, I’m going to struggle.
I pull out a stash from my pocket. Bryan watches as I break the drugs into a fine powderand thenheat the spoon. My hands shake; whether in anticipation of relief or fear, it won’t come, I don’t know.
I wrap my belt around my arm then inject the poison into my veins. My eyes close as I wait for relief to come. As I wait for the effects to take over. To quiet the noise.
Seconds later, my eyes snap open,and my mind settles. My racing heart slows,and my hands stop shaking. The speedball has the power to get me through this, but my time is limited. Its effects never last long.
With a deep breath, I settle back, grab the pen, and pick up where I left off.
“What am I going to do with you?” she laughed as she ruffled my hair again.
“Love me until the sun stops shining,” I told her with a grin.
“And the birds stop chirping.”
“And pigs fly.”
“I will always love you no matter what. You will always be my very special boy.”
She always called me that. I once thought it had to do with the music. With the fact that they all thought I was some sort of musical prodigy. Now, I wonder if she didn’t know about me even then. Did she know how inherently fuck up I would be? Could she see the signs?
But that wasn’t what she told me when I asked her a few minutes later. “I call you that, Madsy, because we chose you. That’s what makes you special.”
“You didn’t choose Chris or Callie?” I asked because I had no idea what she meant.
“We did, but not the same way we chose you. One day you’ll understand just how much we love you. How much I love you.”
“I already know, Momma. You love me because I play the piano the best,and you love the piano.”
She laughed at my cockiness, about to say something,when she pressed a hand to her head and began to sway a little. My stomach flipped as unease washed over me. “Are you okay, Momma?”
She gave me a weak smile that did nothing to ease my mind. “I’ve got a bit of a headache. I think I’ll lie down for a bit. The timers are set, and your lessons are on the board.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I nodded, then watched as she went upstairs.
I worked on my lessons for a while, but it was harder to stay on task without Momma. I wanted to go outside. When the alarm for my break sounded, I ran up to her room to ask permission.
