September. (A Josh Ramsay Fic)

Fourteen - The Drug In Me Is You

He was smoke and cold coffee.
He was sweat and whiskey, euphoria and heroin.
A sweet eternity inside of two seconds.
Josh was all of these, but seconds later, he was also gone.
I was left alone in the dim room, my pale fingers ghosting over where his lips had been seconds before.
I wasn't given much time to think, Matt saving me from overthinking by bursting through the door, telling me to "hurry the fuck up" and that "the band already left".
Josh had left without me.
How fucking dare he. How dare he kiss me and run?
Because he knows you won't leave him, I thought, suddenly realising Josh's mentality. He knows that at 4am, I'll slip into his house through the back door, and tiptoe into his bedroom, just as I always did. That bastard.
"Are you okay?" Matt asked, waving a hand in front of my face. "You kinda spaced out"
"Oh" I laughed, moving out from the booth I still hadn't left, straightening out the sides of Matts' shirt from where Josh's hands had been balled into it moments earlier.
There was no way in hell I was giving Matt this shirt back.
We walked for hours. I had already told my mom I was staying at Matts that night, so I didn't have to worry about being home. We were lying together on a roundabout in some park we had found on our walk, laughing and telling each other shitty stories. It might have seemed strange, seeing at Matt was only 13,
but he was quickly beginning to become my best friend.
An alarm beeped from my phone, which lay discarded a short distance away from us. I rushed up to check what the alarm was for.
Josh!!!!!! (3:45AM)
Shit. I was a good twenty minutes from my house, and I knew I wasn't going to make it in time. Ideally, I normally get into Josh's room at 3:50am, as it only takes me 5 minutes to make myself at least slightly presentable and then slip into Josh's basement. But this time? There was no way I was gonna be there on time.
"Look, Matt, I love you and everything, but I really need to go. It's really important, I promise. You know if it wasn't I wouldn't be leaving you. I'm sorry, I can't tell you, but I swear it's important." I rambled, gathering my things from the park floor in a rush.
" 'tember, its okay, I trust you. Go do whatever it is that's so important, I promise its okay" he reassured, sitting up from where he was laid.
"Thank you" I beamed, grinning pathetically before beginning to jog in the general direction of Acadia Road.
I was running for a while before I was stood outside Josh's house. And a little too late, too. 4:45am, my phone screen screamed at me through the darkness. The pulsating glow emanating you fucked up, you fucked up, you fucked up.
I attempted to regulate my breathing, before jumping the fence into Josh's backyard. I slipped through the back door, which was unlocked, as always, and made my way towards the basement stairs. I stopped at the door. I had no idea what was waiting for me at the bottom of those stairs.
Holding my breath, I creaked open the door slowly, walking down the stairs softly, as if I had the potential to break each one.
I reached the door which lead to Josh's room. I tried to push it softly open, as I had with the others, but was simply met with dead weight on the other side. Was Josh sat in front of his door?
"Josh?" I hissed into the darkness, "move your ass so I can get in, you dick."
I began to panic when I heard no response from the other side of the door. Not even a "fuck off", or the whines I had been accustomed to immediately after he smoked.
I resorted to using my weight to push the door open. As I did, I could smell the vinegar stench of heroin, stronger than it had ever been. The room seemed to be filled with smoke, so much so that it billowed out of the door as soon as it was opened. I knew he'd taken some without me being there, and I felt the guilt rise in my stomach. I had confiscated the key to his "dope drawer" the day i had found out about it, so I wondered he had even gotten into it at all.
After scanning the room quickly and finding nobody there, I looked behind the door. And there, laying at my feet, barely conscious, was Josh.
I did the only thing I could think to do, which was to sit him up against the wall and attempt to get him to respond to me.
"Josh?" I asked, as loud as I could dare without waking anyone up. I could see the paraphernalia lying on the middle of his bedroom floor, the tinfoil blackened past my own memory, and two empty baggies on the floor.
"Josh, how much did you take? Josh?" I asked, tapping his face lightly to try to prevent him from slipping into unconsciousness.
"A... lot..." he slurred out, eyes glassy and drooping shut slowly.
I moved to quickly shove everything back into the wardrobe drawer, and I discovered how he had gotten to the heroin- he had torn off the lock. It scared me to think of him alone in his room, shaking the way he did when he needed a fix, desperately trying to tear the lock from the drawer.
It was then I knew I had spent too long bothering over the hows, because when I turned back to Josh, he had collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
"Hello, 911? I need an ambulance please. My friend's overdosed."