Falling From Disgrace

Jack searched his apartment for Adrianna’s purse and found it sitting on a chair in his kitchen. He was careless when he grabbed for it and the strap caught on the back of the chair. The purse tipped, spilling half its contents onto the floor at his feet. He quickly gathered her cell phone, a pen, and a hair clip and shoved those back into her bag, but when his hands closed around the plastic cylinder that rattled, he brought it closer to his face to inspect.

Adrianna had a bottle of Vicodin. Well, he thought, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. The label had her name on it so they were prescribed to her, but still, his stomach twisted with concern. He was too familiar with the misery of being addicted to painkillers. He tried recalling if there were any signs from Adrianna that he missed but he didn’t come up with anything solid. Then again, he didn’t spend more than a few hours at a time with her and those were a couple of days a week. She didn’t have a job and she didn’t go to school. She didn’t talk about herself and was always fidgeting. Pieces were starting to come together for him.

When Adrianna heard Jack knock on the bathroom door, she quickly took her purse, thanked him, and shut herself up again. Popping two pills, she sat on the closed lid of his toilet, and prayed the effects would take over soon.

Jack drove Adrianna home in silence. When she had emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes after he had delivered her purse, he had been hoping she would go back to bed with him. Unfortunately, she had insisted on going home and after putting up an argument for another ten minutes he finally relented. He didn’t understand why she was shutting him out.

He thought they were great together and he was really beginning to care for her. Not in just the “I know when I see her I’m going to get laid” way, but as a person he enjoyed spending time with. He thought she felt the same way and when she fell asleep in his arms last night he thought they had reached a bit of a milestone. Every other time they had sex she would go home if they were at his place and she never invited him to stay the night at hers. He really thought their relationship was going somewhere but now that she lied to him about her back injury he wasn’t sure. In addition to that, he had the nagging suspicion she was hiding something more than just her injury and that bothered him. He didn’t know if he had it in him to get involved with a troubled person. He had seen what that did to his mother.

When he pulled the Charger up to her apartment building he was disappointed that she didn’t ask him to come up, but still he got out of the car to open her door for her.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Jack. Don’t worry about me,” she promised.

“Get some sleep and call me later,” Jack told her and placed a sweet kiss on her lips.

Chapter 6

Twelve hours later, Jack hadn’t heard from Adrianna and he was pissed. He didn’t know what the hell was going on but if she didn’t trust him enough to tell him the truth, maybe he should just end it now. She obviously was hiding something, if not several things from him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to put forth the effort to build their relationship.

She was worth it though, wasn’t she? He saw things in Adrianna that he didn’t see in others and he really felt that he would be missing out on something if he let her disappear from his life. He remembered when they went to Starbucks after going to dinner the one time she actually let him take her out. They had passed a homeless man on the street corner that Adrianna had given a sad smile to. Then, she had ordered three coffees, which she insisted on paying for since Jack paid for dinner, and took one back down to the corner to give to the man begging for money. She handed him the coffee, offered him a cigarette, and both she and Jack chatted with him for a few minutes before Adrianna wished him well and they went on their way. A girl who would go out of her way like that for a total stranger was worth fighting for, wasn’t she?

Jack found himself standing outside her door later that evening, again showing up after she didn’t answer his calls. He knocked loudly, but could hear music blasting from inside her apartment and he figured she couldn’t hear him. He knocked one more time, waited a minute and then just tried twisting the knob. Lucky for him, the door was unlocked.