Destitute

Chapter Eleven

The oblique darkness inside of the bathroom made Andre's skin arouse with goosebumps. The type of goosebumps that sense something is wrong, the type that jot up your spine and feather your neck. The type that signify to leave wherever you are before you get engaged in something you shouldn't be. That darkness shut out with the flick of a lighter. Cherry's red lips poised her cupid's bow once her blunt was carefully placed between her lips and lighted. She was high as a kite with an imagination of a junkie on speed. Her presence shuttered Andre, he could do nothing but observe the smoke thinning into the air. It wasn't until darkness was shut out once more and Cherry flicked on the bathroom light.

"Oh, it's just you." She breathes taking another solemn hit from her blunt, her enticing yet strange eye contact kept Andre quiet. He only came to the bathroom at this hour because he knew what he had access to, something that would make him forget about her. He refused to feel used or mistreated, he let his insecurities tell him that he was being used. With a weak mindset and limp heart beat, Andre wanted nothing more than to be numb. From his own understanding he told himself drugs would be a one time thing, that it wouldn't happen again. But once that vulnerability sets in, drugs aren't your good best friend, they're you're bad. Drugs become tempting and addictive, trying once isn't how they work. "You're thinking." Cherry slides her hands down her light wash mom jeans and smirks to his acknowledgment.

"I'm tired of thinking tonight, I don't want to feel how I'm feeling..." he parts his eyes from Cherry and steps before the mirror to look at his appearance. His cheek bones had begun to sunken into his face and his eyelids heavy of stress. He mentally beaten himself down after he left the apartment, falling back into a hole where he knew he'd never survive. But risks were something he wasn't afraid to take, even if it made his pain temporary.

"Let me tell you something Andre. You are in control of how you feel, you are the one who controls you. If you don't want to feel anything anymore, you don't have to. If you want a temporary highness then you take the opportunity. There's nothing in this world that will make you feel happy, nothing Andre. If you're chasing happiness down the road, you're never going to catch up. There's no way, that's what I've told myself." She gazed at him in the mirror, watching his jaw clench of indecisiveness. He didn't want to believe her loaded theory or fall into it, but he couldn't breathe in the space he was in now.

"What makes you happy?"

She laughed and hoisted herself onto the grungy bathroom sink. "Not a god damn thing. I should've left this world long ago, I don't know why I'm still here."

"Were you supposed to die?" His curiosity raged on like an eagle pursuing a snake, both ravenous and focused.

"I like to believe I was on my death bed when my ex was raping me on my dorm room bed, I really thought he was going to murder me until he was murdered. This isn't even up for discussion."