Playing (Inked Hearts 2)

He leads me onto the sand, lays the blanket down, motions after you.

I lie back. Stare at the stars. They're beautiful. Bright. Perfect.

He lies next to me.

Two dozen feet away, waves crash into the beach with a soft roar.

The back of his hand brushes my wrist.

I take a shallow breath. Try my best to exhale slowly. "I don't know where to start."

His fingertips brush my palm. "At the beginning."

"I'm not sure where that is." I take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. Wrack my brain for the best place to start. Okay. That works. "I was miserable after college. That was true. I hated my job. I hated my friends. I hated how much I hated them. And I did try hobbies for a while. Working out. Reading. Even knitting."

He nods.

"It was a little after New Year's. I was determined to revamp my life, to find fulfillment no matter what. That was when I started seeing Ross."

"The guy you left for rehab?"

"Yeah. He was a clean-cut programmer type. But he also liked to party. I thought it was just booze and pot. But it wasn't. He didn't do it around me at first. Don't get me wrong. We'd get drunk as all hell. But that was it. I knew it wasn't healthy. But it felt normal. Especially with Lily's friends. You know the bro-grammer stereotype?"

"Yeah."

"They were like that. Always getting plastered. So I started getting drunk too. It was an easy way to forget."

"I've been there."

"You have?"

"Of course. The last few weeks… I want to do whatever it takes to make this ache go away." His fingertips brush the back of my hand.

"I'm sorry, Walker. Really. I never wanted to hurt you."

"I know."

"I was terrified to tell you. But it was more that I wanted to believe the past didn't matter. I wanted to believe I was more than a bunch of mistakes. You looked at me like I was this fascinating mix of passions and ideas and quirks. Whereas, whenever I looked in the mirror, I saw a recovering addict, period. And I wasn't ready to let go of the way you saw me. I needed to believe I was more than sobriety."

"I did mean it."

"But you…"

"I can't explain it either. I still don't understand it."

"Oh. Well… Where was I?"

"Your ex drank a lot."

"Yeah. He did. That was normal for a while. One day, we were at his friend's birthday part. It was a little after I got my second round of terrible GRE scores. It was all I was thinking about. And I was so tired of thinking about it. I wanted to do anything to make it stop. Or I thought I did. Because when I saw his friend using—"

"Using?"

"Shooting up. Heroin. I thought it was ridiculous. Like something out of a movie. Who did heroin? Didn't they know about blood communicable diseases? Hadn't they seen Requiem for a Dream? We got into this huge fight about it. I told him I was never going to hang out with those people again. He called me uptight. I called him an asshole. We both apologized, agreed not to talk about it."

He moves closer.

"But his friend was at the next party. He looked so calm, so at peace. Like nothing could be wrong. And everything felt so wrong. And I thought… well, I thought that maybe Ross was right. Maybe I only judged because I didn't know how good it could be."