“You’re an addict,” he spat.
Pixie walked over to the steps to the studio and sat down. Her movements were jerky. Like her body was about to give out on her. But he’d seen that before with his mom.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes looking like they’d had all the sunshine ripped out of them.
Dred paced and pulled on the anchor so hard the cord broke. Of all the moments in his life, when he’d pulled on the anchor to compose himself, he’d never broken it. Until now.
Drowning in fury, he roared as threw it as far as he could down the alley.
Drugs and lies surrounded him. They always had. He couldn’t remember a time when his mom hadn’t been an addict. But she had always told him she wasn’t. She’d told him she could stop any time, but every attempt she made to go more than one day without a fix ended up with fits of anger and violent shaking and that desperate need for more drugs.
The first time he was taken into care, she’d screamed for him, but only lasted two days in the treatment center. Two hellish days where he’d been placed with a family of older boys who’d made his life miserable. When she’d taken him from school, swearing she was clean, she’d sneaked them onto the green-and-white GO train headed for Toronto without any tickets.
The very idea that drugs had touched his snowflake made him want to weep. He’d built an illusion of her. His perfect girl, yet she was no better than anybody else.
“How long were you a user?” he asked without looking at her.
“Two years, but it’s not what you think, Dred. I’ve been clean for six years.”
Six years. It felt too convenient. He needed to check. “Have you used while we’ve been together?
“No. I haven’t used since the day I set foot in Miami. The very next day I met Trent and Cujo and they helped me get clean.”
Dred paced the concrete, itching to let go of the last thread of control, to hit something hard enough to bring about a different kind of pain to the one currently cleaving him in two.
“But when I asked, you said you are an addict, right?”
“Yes, I did. I’ll always be an addict, but I’m sober. You know this. You’ve seen it with Nikan.”
“Don’t you dare bring my brother into it. He had his reasons.”
“And so do I!” Pixie yelled back at him.
He marched over to her, stood mere footsteps away, torn between wanting to believe her yet needing to leave. “Yeah. And what are they? Wanted to fit in with the cool kids?”
“You’re being an asshole, Dred. I was scared of telling you because I didn’t know how you’d respond. If I’d known it was this,” she said, tears filling her eyes, “I would never have bothered getting involved with you.”
“Yeah, well, I have enough junkies in my life without adding another one.”
“You’re not going to give me a chance to explain, are you?”
“Explain what? You’re an addict, and I don’t want anything to do with that. I don’t want my daughter around that. Good-bye, Pixie.”
She stood on the third step, bringing them close to eye-level. “Just like that, we’re done?”
Dred tried to ignore the tears spilling over her whiskey-colored eyes. A small voice told him to stop, to stay and talk it through. But the roar of rage was too strong. He needed to step back. Get some distance. “Yeah, just like that,” he said sadly and walked back into the studio.
Without stopping, he grabbed his bags and headed straight out of the door.
He marched toward Collins Avenue and flagged a yellow cab to the airport. Perhaps there was an early flight he could catch. The plan had been to hang out with Pixie, so he’d booked himself on the latest flight available. Now, he desperately wanted to get the fuck out of Miami.
Finally a taxi pulled over and he got inside. He spared one last glance down the street toward Second Circle, then closed his eyes until he reached the airport.
Once his flight had been changed, he’d made his way to the VIP lounge where he helped himself to a beer. Seated in a large brown leather chair facing the runway, he tried to force the feelings of remorse and shame down, but they were as insistent as Petal when she needed feeding.
How could he forgive Nikan for his addictions? Wait, forgive wasn’t even the right word. He didn’t forgive Nikan for anything, but he understood. He knew why Nikan needed to escape, was even willing to work around it when he relapsed. Anything to help his brother. Pixie was right, she and Nikan were the same, but he had treated them completely differently. It wasn’t the fact they had both suffered addictions. It was the fact that Pixie’s addiction was the same as his mom’s and Amanda’s.
But unlike his mom and Amanda, it sounded like Pixie was clean. Unless she was lying to him, which drug users were adept at.