Rock Bottom (6 page)

Chapter Thirteen

A man clad in nothing more than a stained pair of tighty-whiteys stepped into the kitchen. Short, wiry gray whiskers sprung like coils from his chin and his beer gut which flopped over the elastic waistband. When he smiled, a sickening collection of chipped yellow and blackish teeth appeared.

“She’s none of your damn business. Leave her alone.”

His eyes hardened as they turned on Elijah. “Is that the way you speak to me, boy? You ungrateful, useless little pain in my ass. You better get your shit together or you’ll be out on your ass so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

I gasped at the cruel words this man was spewing. A mistake I realized the moment his attention swung back to me. “You decide you want a real man,” his gaze crept over me, making my skin crawl, “you know where to find me.”

He grabbed a beer can from the fridge and collapsed on the couch, popping it open.

“Come on.” Elijah took my hand, his grip tighter than necessary as he tugged me toward another door further down the hall.

He knocked the door shut, while I openly gawked at his room. The entire thing was painted black, but not in a creepy-goth sort of way. Black and white photographs hung everywhere, lending it an artistic feel.

Some were large, poster sized reprints of images I’d never seen before. Nothing famous, nothing tacky—no muscle cars of girls in swimsuits—just ordinary people, doing ordinary things. A man in torn pants and a dirty shirt, smoking on a front porch. A woman in a polka-dot dress reading on a park bench. A group of people leaning against a tall fence, obviously witnessing something with great interest. You couldn’t tell what they were watching from the image and my mind ran through a million possibilities—everything from a rodeo to the construction of a new building—and maybe that was the point. They could be doing anything. The only limit was your own imagination.

Other images were more modern. Mostly average sized photos pinned to the walls. I even recognized a few of the faces and places from around town. The rusted, run-down playground a few blocks from the elementary school, a few different angles of the lake, and that damn deli on Main were among them. If it didn’t sound too girly, I’d have gone as far as to call it elegant.

“Sorry about the ass-wipe.”

“Was that your father?”

“My foster dad.”

"Right. Sorry."

“It’s fine. Come on. Sit with me.” He stretched out on the bed and patted the mattress beside him. “Sorry about the lack of seating arrangements.”

“I don’t mind.” Truthfully, I might have been thrilled at the lack of additional seating.

Crawling up beside him, I leaned back against the headboard. For a few long minutes we were both quiet, lost in our thoughts. I was startled from mine when the mattress shifted. Elijah was rooting around underneath it for something. I have no idea why, but what he came back out with stunned me. I couldn’t stop staring at it.

Elijah's laugh was deep and rich, and soothing in all the right ways. “It’s a joint, Ry, not the anti-Christ. It won’t bite you.”

I relaxed back into the mattress with an exaggerated eye roll. “I know what a joint is.”

I’d actually never seen one in person before, but I didn’t live under a rock. I had cable.

“Do you mind if I . . .?” He lifted the joint and I realized what he intended to do with it.

Not wanting to look like the total prude I was, I shook my head. “Go ahead.”

He reached over me to grab a lighter from the night stand and lit it up. “So, you want to tell me what happened today?”

“I needed to get away for a while.”

“From your folks?”

I nodded as the soothing scent of pot wafted toward the open window. The drug itself might have made me uncomfortable, but I did like the smell. “We had a fight.”

“About your report card again?”

“I got benched from the track team.”

“Shit, Ry.” His shoulders sagged. “What a clusterfuck this is turning out to be.”

It was the truth. The entire situation was one massive clusterfuck. But something about hearing him say it out loud like that made me want to laugh. Not an amused laugh. More of an ‘I’m losing my ever loving mind’ sort of laugh. The kind that led to full-blown hysterics. Maybe I really was losing it.

“You want to know what’s really funny?”

“I’m not seeing how any of this is funny.” Elijah was good and pissed.
For me
. And somehow that made things better.

“I never even liked running in the first place. I mean, I liked it when I was doing it—just running—but all of the practices, and work-outs, and competition, and the pressure . . . I only did it because I was good at it.”

Elijah shook his head. He didn’t look angry so much anymore as . . . sad. “You’ve got some serious shit to work out, Ry.”

“Ya think?” The tightness in my chest returned as I heard my father’s scathing words again. “They . . . they think I’m a failure.”

Elijah set the joint aside and rolled over to face me. “They said that to you?”

“He said I’m a waste. I’ve done everything. Everything they’ve ever asked me to. Everything they’ve ever expected me to. And this one thing . . . It wasn’t even my fault.” The tears rushed up on me before I could stop them. “I try . . . so hard . . . to . . . to live up to their expectations. And it’s ruined. It’s all ruined.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” He shifted closer, slipping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me into him. I burrowed into his solid chest as he ran a hand over my hair. “It’s okay. This isn’t your fault. You work harder at everything you do than anyone I’ve ever met. If they can’t see that then they must be blind. You’re amazing, Rylie. I know that. You should know that. And anyone who doesn’t know that can kiss your ass because it’s the truth.”

“But I let them down, Elijah. I let myself down. We were all counting on me and I . . . failed.”

“Princess . . .” He tipped my tear stained face up to his. “You have got to stop basing your self-worth on what other people see in you. You’re never going to be able to please everyone. You’re slowly killing yourself trying to. If you keep this up, the disappointment will destroy you.”

“I don’t know how to s-stop.”

“Start by trying to please just one person.
Yourself
. What do
you
want in life?”

“To study pre-med at Harvard.” It was my automatic answer. “I’ve always wanted to go there. I have pictures of me wearing a Harvard onesie when I was three months old.”

Elijah tipped his head. “Somehow I doubt you picked it out yourself. That sounds like what your parents want. I’m asking what
you
want.”

I leaned back against the headboard and examined the vibrantly decorated wall at the foot of the bed. Strangely enough, I’d never actually considered that question. No one had ever asked me what I
wanted before. They just
told
me.

Elijah seemed to recognize my need to think and leaned back beside me, reclaiming his joint.

“I’m not sure it really matters what I want. At this point it’ll take a miracle for an Ivy League to accept me.”

“Of course it matters. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. What you want should matter more than anything. And if Ivy League is what
you
want, then it’s not out of reach. You’ll just have to work for it . . .
Hard
.”

I couldn’t help laughing. Elijah had a way of making me feel free of all the things in my life that weighed me down.

“Yeah. Really hard. An eidetic memory must be nice.”

“Not always. There are some things you don’t want to remember.” His foster dad’s bitter words from earlier came rushing back to me. “But I can’t forget them.”

A sudden thought struck me as he took another pull on the joint. “Is that why you do this? The drugs, I mean. To forget?”

He thought about it for a minute and shrugged loosely. “That’s part of it, I guess.”

“Can I try?” Nerves danced the Mamba in my stomach, but I held to Elijah’s words. And right then, I
wanted
to try.

“Weed?”

“To forget.”

Chapter Fourteen

Elijah studied me for a minute, trying to decide if I was saying what he thought I was saying. Then, he carefully passed me the joint.

“Be careful not to burn your fingers. Just pinch it, here.” He eased my fingers around the edge of the damp paper.

For a long moment I just looked at it sitting there in my hand. The desire to try something new warred with the old, unquenchable need to consider what my parents would think. In the end, that’s what decided it for me. I needed to
stop
thinking about them so damn much, which meant I needed to stop thinking so much, period.

“How do I . . .?” I peeked sheepishly up at Elijah.

“Bring it to your lips.” His gaze dropped to my mouth, which suddenly went inexplicably dry.

I did as he instructed and his eyes came back to mine.

“Don’t hold it too tight.”

I loosened the death grip I had on the thing.

“And inhale. Hold it as long as you can and then let it go.”

I took one last, long look in his molten eyes, feeling oddly like I stood on the precipice of something. Then I inhaled.  And immediately burst into an unattractive coughing fit.

Elijah broke out in laughter, removing the joint from my hand before I hurt myself.

“Jesus.” I rubbed my chest as the fit came to an end and I collapsed back onto the bed.

“That happens to everyone the first time,” Elijah assured me.

I glared up at him. “A little warning might have been nice.”

“It’ll be easier the next time. Here, try again.”

I eyed the small, white, deceptively benign looking thing in his hand and considered how big of an ass I’d make of myself if I did that again. Probably not as big as if I didn’t even try.

With a deep breath of fresh air to calm my burning lungs, I took the joint back and tried again. This time I was able to hold on a little longer before the coughing started.

Elijah took a draw himself and then offered it back again. “You want more?”

“What do they say about practice?” I grinned at him and accepted his offering. Before long I was giving Elijah a run for his money, and damn proud of myself for it.

“Damn.” He broke out into coughing laughter after a particularly long head-to-head challenge that I’d won.

“I obviously have the better lung power in the room.”

“Not for long you keep smoking like that.” When the joint was burned almost to the nub, Elijah tapped it out on an ashtray hidden in his nightstand drawer. “How are you feeling? Not gonna puke on me again, are you?”

I took a deep breath and considered my stomach. It felt strangely fine. “Nope. I feel great, actually.”

“I bet.”

“Shut up. What time is it?”

“After six. Why, you have to get home?”

“Nope. No curfew.”

“No curfew?”

“It’s hard to give someone a curfew when they’re storming out of the house. I even packed a bag just in case they kicked me out.”

Oh, the drugs were definitely working. Somewhere inside my far too sharing-is-caring brain, I knew I never would have revealed that I’d packed for an overnight stay otherwise. I just couldn’t figure out why not or why I should care. That’s when I realized I didn’t. I didn’t care. About anything. And it was
the most
amazing freedom I’d ever experienced.

“They didn’t, did they?”

“Huh?”
What were we talking about?

“Your parents. They didn’t kick you out, did they? For coming here?”

“No. No one told me not to come back, so I don’t think so anyway. Not that I’m in any hurry to go back. But I am hungry!”

Elijah chuckled and tucked some loose hairs behind my ear. He did that a lot. Like he wanted an excuse to touch me. I wanted him to touch me. He didn’t need an excuse.

Flopping somewhat like a fish out of water onto his chest—not my smoothest move—I pressed my lips to a very surprised Elijah. At first he gave in, kissing me back, and it was everything I hoped it would be. But then he stopped. He pushed me away and an overwhelming sense of rejection swamped me.

“Not like this, Ry. Not now. You’re high. I’m high. I do want you, Princess, more than you know, but not like this, okay? We should wait.”

His sweet words eased away some of the sting, but it lingered on my skin and in my veins. “Fine.”

“Don’t be mad. I just want everything to be . . .
right
between us.” His dimples winked at me and I groaned.

“Nothing is ever going to be fair with those damn dimples in your arsenal.”

“What?” Elijah laughed and it was such a nice sound. Something else that wasn’t fair.

“Nothing. Never mind. Are you gonna feed me, or what?”

He shook his head and crawled over me with a smile on his face. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Being high was a little like being drunk—not that I’d been that particular brand of inebriated more than a couple times—only more . . . mellow. I didn’t feel the urge to jump around or go do something wild or crazy. I really,
really
wanted to sit. And not think. I was always thinking. My whole life all I ever did was think. About the future, about the past, about things I had to do, things I should have done. And worry about what other people thought. People like my parents. It felt nice not to think or worry for a change and to just . . . sit.

So I sat. I sat on Elijah’s bed and didn’t consider all the possible repercussions
that
could have, especially considering the overnight bag he now knew was waiting in the backseat of my car. I just sat and looked at his walls. They were fascinating.

The first thing I did was seek him out. I scanned face after face in the photos that wallpapered his room, but couldn’t find him anywhere. He wasn’t in a single one of them, which led me to the realization that he must have taken them. Which led me to the realization that they were good.
Very
good, in fact.

I moved closer to the door to study another batch and heard raised voices coming from somewhere else in the house. “Just stay the hell away from her. I mean it, Andy, you touch her, I’ll kill you!”