“I love you too. Thank—”
“Austin!” Mitch called out, peeking his head through the door, interrupting our special moment.
I had forgotten that they were here. Which was surprising since they were here more often than not. I didn’t get fucked up with Austin nearly as much as I used to. I thought if I stopped partying, if I led by example, then he would follow in my footsteps.
I was wrong.
He just got new friends to party and get fucked up with.
“Your phone is ringing off the damn hook in here. Either answer it or turn it the fuck off,” he said, holding Austin’s ringing phone out in front of him.
Austin glanced over at me silently asking my consent, and I nodded. He walked away from me to grab the phone. I stayed by the railing, admiring my blanket.
He was so fucking sweet when he wanted to be.
“Yeah,” he answered, his tone and demeanor quickly changing. “No shit, motherfucker, it was supposed to be here last week. You either make it happen or I’ll find someone who will!” he snapped, making me jump.
I stopped going on runs with him a long time ago. He didn’t need me with him anymore. I was just another thing for him to worry about during deals. I hated the person he would turn into. He wasn’t my Austin when he was working. He was a complete stranger. The power, the money, and the drugs took over. It didn’t happen over night. But as weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, the more I started to see him become someone I didn’t recognize anymore.
Someone that scared me.
Someone that reminded me of my uncle.
I just stopped going, and he never asked why. I think a part of him knew. It was easier for him to be that person if I wasn’t around. To let the darkness take over. He loved the power and the respect. The money was just an added bonus because what he really loved.
Were the drugs.
It was no longer about the pain in his back. For years I justified him popping pain pills like they were fucking candy. That he was actually in agony from the muscle spasms, to have to take the Percocets, the Vicodins, the Oxys that I supplied him with. Anything I could get my hands on to help him get through the day. That wasn’t the case anymore.
There were days that I couldn’t tell if he was high or sober. Sometimes it all blended together, and that terrified me. I lay awake waiting for him, not caring if he came home high, just as long as he came home to me.
Wrapped his arms around me.
Told me he loved me.
That I was his girl.
That I was his everything.
Promising me a future that I desperately wanted to believe in, but as the years went on, the more it became a dream than a reality. At times I felt like an outsider looking into the life I caused. The life that I brought him into, the life that he had because of me.
No one else but me.
There were days that I felt so lost, not knowing what happened to my life. The life that I hated was now replaced with a life I didn’t recognize.
The irony was not lost on me.
I was home alone one day a few months ago. Austin had gone on a run. He had been drawing all morning, still pictures of me, of us. Always capturing the happy memories, never the sad ones. For some reason I went into the closet and grabbed his old notebook, the one that I had opened for the first time years go, wanting to finally see a part of his life. I sat on our bed, my favorite place in the entire apartment, smelling him all around me.
Craving him to be there holding me.
Feeling like I was found in a moment where I felt so lost. My fingers turned to the very first sketch he ever drew of me. The drawing where I was dancing, so free not knowing that my life was about to change forever. Taking a drastic detour to the love I’d always wanted.
I tore the picture out of the notebook, instantly turning it over. I started writing. After years of reading books, I began writing the story of my life. Starting from the day Daisy Mitchell died. I transferred the few paragraphs to a Word document on my computer. Every so often I would pick up my laptop and write a few more paragraphs, a few more sentences, a few more pages. Usually when I felt lost again, which seemed to be happening a lot more lately.
“You have two days, do you hear me? If it’s not fucking done, you’ll have to answer to me, and trust me, you don’t want to fuck with me.” Austin hung up the phone, bringing me back to the present.
“Sorry about that, baby.”
He was like night and day with a flick of a switch. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a blink of an eye. But the man I loved was back. He kissed my face and pulled me into his arms. As if he knew what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what I needed that only he could ever give me. And just like that. He made everything…
Go away.
Chapter 26
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