This Cruel Love

He squeezed my hand tightly in his and played with my fingers as he spoke.

“I’m so sorry. I missed you, and I was struggling with shit. Nothing was going right for me so… I started… taking stuff to… you know… to dull the pain of life, make things more bearable.”

I gave him no choice this time. I yanked my hand out of his and stood up, towering over his pitiful frame. As much as I loved him, I couldn’t condone this.

“What the hell, Justin. What are you taking? How long? What the fuck is going on with you?”

I couldn’t take it in. Was he some kind of junkie now? Well, he had the sallow skin, the dead look in his eyes. He was sweating like a pig and shaking like a leaf, so I guess I already had my answer.

When he spoke next, it was with a quiet, weak voice.

“I do coke, smack, pills. Anything I can get my hands on, really. I don’t know what else to tell you other than the truth, babe. Ed, the guy who rang, he’s my dealer. The man he works for is chasing me for money… a lot of money. I’m so sorry. We don’t keep secrets from each other, and I can’t keep this from you anymore.”

I felt like I’d been shot in the heart with a bullet the size of a boulder.

“I thought we didn’t do secrets, but obviously, you do. I don’t know a lot about drugs, Justin, but I know enough to realise this isn’t a new occurrence for you. How long has this been going on?”

I stepped away from where he sat and went to the sofa opposite to get some distance between us. This was a hell of a lot to take in.

“Six, maybe eight… months.”

I gasped. I’d had no idea. How could I have not known? How had I not seen this before?

“How bad is it?”

He looked up at me now, and the lost boy sat across the room from me tugged so heavily on my heart strings. I couldn’t stop myself from going over to him, to kneel in front of him.

“How bad, Justin? I need to know what we’ve got ahead of us.”

He huffed out slowly, then gave me a sad smile, stroking softly down my cheek with his hand.

“So there’s still an ‘us’?” he asked, with tears glistening in his eyes, ready to fall.

“There’ll always be an ‘us’, Justin. That’s non-negotiable.”

I leant into his hand. The familiar warmth helped to ease some of the pain that was drowning my heart.

He sighed, then spilled the extent of his, or rather our, predicament. Justin was skint, broke. Worse than broke, he was in some serious debt to some very scary and dangerous people through his drug habit. A habit that’d cost him his car, his trust fund, and every friend he had. His family had disowned him, and he was living each day one hit at a time, apparently. The only reason he still had the apartment was because it was in his father’s name. He couldn’t cash in on it, which was a blessing in disguise. At least he had a roof over his head.

These people he owed money to were breathing heavily do

wn his neck and demanding their next payment. I asked what’d happen if he didn’t pay, but Justin assured me that was a road I didn’t want to go down. I suggested asking my parents for help, seeing as Justin had exhausted every option he’d had to find the money to keep these people happy, but Justin refused. I was secretly relieved, because I knew my father would say no anyway.

“Could you get access to any of your money?” Justin asked, referring to my parents’ trust fund, and the money my grandma had left me. He knew as well as I did that my father had locked it all down. I wasn’t seeing that cash for a few years yet.

“Not until I’m twenty-five.”

Justin’s eyes started to dart about erratically, as if he was thinking of a new plan.

“How much could you get now?”

“Maybe a couple of hundred at a push, why?”

“Could I borrow it? I swear I’d pay you back.” Some of the sparkle was coming back into his eyes as he spoke. It wasn’t lost on me, and I’d have done anything to keep it there.

“You don’t have to pay me back, Justin. It’s yours.”

The relief, albeit temporarily, ebbed out of him as I said this. I don’t know why he’d ever doubted me. I’d have given him my last penny if it made him happy. He was my whole life.