“OK, doctor.” I jiggled my knees, feeling the candy box rattle in my lap. It would be so easy to slip my hand inside and open the bottle, palm one pill, and pop it onto my tongue without anyone seeing. It would mean I wouldn’t have to wait a single second longer to stop feeling so shitty and sad. It might even take the image of your face out of my head, when you were standing by the doorway looking at me like you could see right through me and were disgusted by what you saw.
“I’m serious, though,” Dante said. “I could only get you ten, so that’s got to last. The doctor out in Bayonne who hooked me up is a little jumpy about our arrangement, so until I prove I can sell it, he’s squeezing them out one by one like a human Pez dispenser. Don’t pop this shit like it’s Advil.”
“I won’t,” I groaned. I reached into my bag for my Tic Tacs, hoping maybe I could get a little placebo effect going. While I was in there I counted out ten twenties from my wallet and folded them into my hand. My savings account, courtesy of one commercial voice-over I’d booked junior year, was getting dangerously low. If I didn’t get some means of income soon, I’d have to resort to “borrowing” mom’s ATM card again.
“There are some side effects, but they’re not bad,” he said. “Dry mouth, nausea, dizziness . . .”
“Imminent death?” I asked with a smirk.
I was kidding, I was kidding, Jesus Christ, I was kidding.
“Stop,” he said. “You’ll be fine if you space them out. Now, you ready?”
I nodded.
“OK, well, see you later gorgeous,” he said loudly, pulling me up and wrapping me in a bear hug that felt better than I wanted to admit. I dropped the bills into the pocket of his hoodie and slipped the fake heart into my bag.
I was only about seven blocks from Joy’s place. We’d barely hung out lately—things had been tense already, and then rehearsals had consumed our lives—but I knew that if I texted her, right then, we could meet up for coffee or a movie, or sit barefoot on her couch watching some terrible rom-com on cable, eating an Entenmann’s cake out of the box with plastic forks and talking shit about anyone who seemed happier than us. I needed that. But in the Joy version of my afternoon, I couldn’t take the pill, and I needed that more. I just wished I didn’t have to be alone.
Which made me realize, maybe I didn’t have to be.
Looking back I see myself slipping, sliding, clawing at a fire escape ladder. That split-second decision was when I started to fall.
“What are you doing now?” I asked Dante. I smiled at him expectantly, trying to pretend that I liked him more. He wasn’t nearly as cute as Diego, but he had a kind of gruff charm when he wasn’t trying too hard.
“Just going to chill with a few friends over on the east side,” he said.
“Can I come?” I asked. The question seemed to take him aback.
“Uh, you seem cool, but I don’t like to socialize with customers,” Dante said. He looked me up and down and smiled. “Besides, you’re a little stuck up for this crowd.”
“Besa mi culo,” I said sweetly. Kiss my ass. I knew it was a gamble, but I was betting he’d laugh, and he did.
“I don’t know,” he sighed, rubbing his chin, which was covered in a thick growth of black stubble. “I mean, not that rolling up with a beautiful girl wouldn’t make me look good, but . . .”
“I’m not really a customer, anyway,” I said. “I’m your cousin’s friend. I could just be your friend.” I was still smiling, but I said friend firmly. I needed Dante to know that I wasn’t interested in him that way. And besides, I was already sort of dating someone else I wasn’t interested in that way.
“That’s the thing, though,” Dante said, frowning. “Customers aren’t friends, and friends aren’t customers. You pay me, you’re a customer. So I don’t want you coming around next week trying to get me to front you because we’re buddies now.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Can you be cool?” he asked.
“I’m always cool,” I said. But the pulsing in my temples and the sour ache in my stomach told me otherwise. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, so on our walk east we stopped at a deli, where I got a granola bar and a Diet Coke. I had the pill in my mouth before we were out the door, the carbonated bubbles tickling my throat as a loud chime rang out over my head, making me feel like a boxer stepping back in the ring, getting ready to start a new round.
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