This is Me Trying ⭑ Rafe Cameron

thirty

He scoffed a bit, leaning back slightly. He propped his shoes up on the toilet seat, mirroring Cassie. After a moment, he spoke. "Have you relapsed?"

It was a sudden question. One that she didn't really expect, but also wasn't thrown off by, given the fact that they held shared experiences with drugs. She shook her head. "Not since the cargo ship. Haven't really had much time to even think about it. Which I guess is a good thing?" She answered. "Have you?"

Rafe was quiet for a few moments. "I want to."

Cassie bit the inside of her cheek, then nodded slightly. "Yeah. I do too." She almost got a laugh out, at the irony of it all.

"Why'd you even start?" Rafe asked, the pink towel still pinned to his head.

"Doing drugs?" She asked.

He nodded.

Cassie shrugged. "My mom died. Well— she was killed. In a car accident. I was there too and really messed up my collarbone and my leg." She turned her leg to the side, bumping into his knee, to show the scar from her surgery. "So they put me on painkillers and stuff, which was just really bad timing, 'cause I was only eleven and in my head, I was like— oh, yeah, my mom just died, but when I take these I don't feel as sad. And so I just got so scared when my prescription was up, that I just started taking whatever I could get my hands on, and then— you know."

Cassie didn't even question the fact that she'd just dropped all of this on him. She didn't hesitate, didn't let herself think that she didn't feel comfortable talking about it with him. Because she didn't. There was something about talking with him, with someone who knew these feelings like she did, that held no shame.

"What about you?"

Rafe nodded, like he had been as Cassie spoke. Then he shrugged. "Yeah, my mom died too. When I was thirteen." He said. "She had breast cancer, and it started getting really bad right as I went into middle school. So—" he took a deep breath. "That just made it harder than it should've been. School, and everything. And she died kind of unexpectedly, too. The doctors had said treatment was going well, and then one day I was going to the batting cages with my dad, and then he got a call from—" he pauses, and takes another breath. "Sarah, and she was like— 10, or something, at the time. And she'd found her unresponsive upstairs. And, so—" Rafe looks at Cassie, then shakes his head quickly. "Anyways, I—"

"I didn't know." Cassie spoke quietly.

He shrugs again. "Yeah, I mean, my dad kind of acts like none of it ever happened, and so no one ever talks about her anymore. Like, I'm out, and I see people that were her best friends, or that worked with her, and they just act like she never existed." He narrowed his eyes, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of it all. "And my dad wasted no time in getting remarried. And it was really confusing for Sarah, too. Wheezie was too young to understand it at all, but I..." he trailed off, shrugging again.

"Took it hard?" Cassie asked, her eyes steady on him as he spoke.

He nodded, swiping his tongue across his bottom row of teeth. "Started getting into a lot of fights, and all that." He waves it off. "Got expelled my sophomore year for knocking a kid out, but my dad, he made a donation to the school and got me back in. And he just did so much shit like that, where he just ignored it and tried to cover it up, instead of sitting down and talking to me about why I was acting up so much. And he knew why, and I knew why, but— I was a kid, I didn't know how to—" he shrugs, shaking his head again. "How to deal with all of that shit? And so I just started drinking a lot. And partying, and started dealing, which just made it all worse."