Best Friends Forever

“Maybe it was hotel staff about to be caught with it, or a roadie?”

I shrug. It’s plausible, for sure, but it doesn’t feel right. I don’t really think many hotel employees are off shooting up heroin in their downtime. Mostly because it would make their job impossible. Maids are more likely to take uppers to make their work faster, not the other way around.

And I can’t think of any reason why a roadie would be near my bags. They stay on the bus while we take the jet. I guess it could have happened while they were unloading or something, but I don’t know. Nothing about the situation makes any sense.

I want to think it was an honest mistake, that someone stashed something without thinking about it and now I’m taking the blame for it. But I can’t help but feel like it’s targeted somehow. Like someone was trying to get me out of the picture. But who? Someone worried I’m damaging Chelsea’s reputation? Someone thinking she deserves better? Or someone trying to take me down a peg? Maybe even someone trying to sabotage my comeback?

It’s all possible, but now I’m starting to sound paranoid to myself and that kind of thinking isn’t good for me.

“Is it possible it was leftovers?” he asks carefully.

I sigh. “I mean… anything’s possible, Serge, but I don’t think so. You know we were always more careful with shit than that. I wouldn’t just leave a needle and shit lying around in my suitcase in a Ziploc bag.

“Do you still have the stuff she found?”

I shake my head. “No way. You know I couldn’t keep it around. Even if it would give us some clues. Too dangerous.”

He nods. If anyone can understand the siren call of addiction, it’s Serge. “It could help, but it also could set us both off, so it’s for the best.”

“Hey man, don’t put yourself at risk for me. If you need to get back home and stop thinking about all this, I understand. You’ve come this far. Don’t let me be the thing that brings you down.” I still remember all too clearly waking up in a jail cell, being told that my friend OD’d. That’s all they told me. All anyone would tell me. And I knew I was the reason he was dead. I knew I was the one that scored that night, I was the one that convinced him to take another hit when he said he was good, and I was the reason he was dead.

When Merrill finally bailed me out and told me Serge was recovering in the hospital, it was like he’d come back from the dead. And that was enough to make me change my act. I’d made a million promises to anyone that was listening that as long as Serge pulled through, I’d never touch the shit again. I’d go to rehab, I’d actually work the program, and I’d be the guy my friend needed me to be to keep him alive.

And I did. I went through with all of it—a first for me really—and I’m not going to let him try to throw it all away in the name of helping me. I don’t want him going through the staff and crew and trying to pick out heroin users that might have planted the stuff. Because once you find another addict, it’s only one small step to using again.

Serge looks at me for a long time, sitting back on the couch while I’m working through all this in my head. He’s totally silent, like he’s listening to every word I’m thinking, and knowing him, he probably already knows what’s going through my head. We know each other like that. Living and touring and doping with someone for fifteen years has that effect.

“I’ll be all right,” he finally says, draining his coffee and dropping the mug on the coffee table between us. “But not without some creamer for that swill. I was wrong—it’s pretty awful.”

I look down at the mug in my hand and realize I’ve hardly drunk any of it. And when I bring the mug to my lips, I can’t really tell what it tastes like. It’s like chalk and I have trouble swallowing it. Maybe I don’t need coffee after all.

“I think they’ve got some kind of continental breakfast downstairs. Bill whatever to the room, I don’t care.”

“You’re not hungry?” he asks.

I know what he’s really trying to do. He’s trying to get me out of this room, out of my self-pity, but I just shake my head. I don’t really want to move. Getting up to answer the door is as much as I’ve done since I got back here last night, and now that I’m on the couch, staring out the big windows as the city slips into its morning routine, I feel stuck. Because if I move, if I go on with my life, that means I’m accepting that it’s real. That everything that happened between me and Chelsea is over and there’s nothing I can do about it. Maybe if I just sit here long enough, refusing to accept it, it won’t be true anymore.

I know how ridiculous that is, but that’s where my mind’s at right now.

“All right, well, I’ll be back soon. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

I arch a brow at him, almost managing a smirk.

“Me now, not past me,” he says sternly with a friendly glare.

“Don’t worry, I know how to behave. Contrary to popular opinion.”

That makes him look sad and I feel instantly guilty for spreading my misery to him. But he leaves without another word and then he’s gone for a long, long time. So long, that I finally manage to take a brief nap with the early-morning sun bathing me.

Chapter 19

Chelsea

“Are you hungry?” Rosa asks. I’m still staring indifferently at the TV. It’s been a few hours since she left and I to

ok a shower, but she’s back and hovering over me like a worried hen.

I shrug. “Not really?”