Under the Influence ✔

21.

It's easier to be honest and vulnerable when you're lying in the dark, with the blankets pulled up around you as a shield. My skin is bare beneath the sheets and I can feel the heat radiating off of Wes' body even though there are inches and inches of mattress between us, and I want to un load this weight that has been baring down on my chest for days now to him - I want to say the words I can't seem to get past my lips. 

I want him to know. I want him to know that I love him - all of him - his messy hair that is standing up on his head from where I was running my hands through it and pulling just moments ago, his tattoo covered skin that has always looked like a work of art to me, his kind and selfless soul, his smile, his talent, his lame jokes and his ability to make the darkest times flood with sunshine. I want him to know that I admire him, adore him, care for him, can't imagine life without him anymore - that I love him. 

"What are you thinking about?" He turns so that he is laying on his side facing me and I pull the blanket higher so that it is almost covering my mouth now as I will myself to say it, to just spit it out and make his whole day. 

"Is it easy for you?" I don't know why those are the words that come spilling out of my mouth. I don't even know where they came from, it's just something I had been thinking ever since the dinner with my parents, and now - here at the wrong time and the wrong place, they decide to be spoken. 

"Is what easy for me?" I watch as his brows crinkle in confusion at my lack of context. 

"Staying sober."  Wes doesn't talk about it, he doesn't talk about his past - the years of drug abuse and addiction and ever since the day he stopped, it's as if he has no interest in it anymore. It taunts me, always there in the back of my mind inviting me back and begging me to give in when times get hard, but for Wes it's like one day he woke up and that was it - cured. My dad had said that Axel is on the right track now - sober, engaged. employed and enrolled in college, so why is it taking me so long to be okay? 

Wes studies me for a moment, as if he's trying to hear my inner thoughts and figure out why I'm asking him this question and what I'm feeling. 

Disappointment. That's what I'm feeling. I'm disappointed that I can't seem to shake the past, even when I so badly want the future. 

"It's not easy, Luna. I think about it too, especially when..." He trails off, looking over my head now instead of at me. 

"Especially when what?"

For a moment I don't think he's going to answer, but then he brings his eyes back down to meet mine and I can see that it does bother him - that just like me, addiction is in his mind and his blood, calling out to him and teasing him as if it's a playground bully. I can see in his eyes that when he thinks about it, he craves it - and I just made him think about it. "Especially when you were gone." 

"Wes, I'm sorry. We don't-"

"I felt guilty and I missed you, I was scared what was happening to you and I blamed myself. You wouldn't see me and they wouldn't tell us if you were making progress or not, so...so I relapsed. Just once, but I did and I immediately regretted it and hated myself for it." He's talking faster, the words tumbling from his lips as he relives those months in his mind, looking at me but seeing something else. "I distracted myself after that, I threw myself into music and the band, I wrote so many songs, Luna that I was filling notebooks with them in just a couple of weeks. I went to meetings at this church downtown, I met other people that help when it gets really bad, and I focused on you - on helping you once you were back, because...because I really, really hoped that you would come back."

"Of course I was going to come back, Wes. They couldn't keep me there forever."

"I meant to me, Luna. I hoped that you would come back to me." 

It's there, on the tip of my tongue. I can taste them again, sweet and warm as they dance and try to force themselves out of my closed lips. Tears are threatening to spill as he looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to reply, to say something - and I can't. I can't tell this boy who deserves everything in the world that I love him, and I don't know why. 

I didn't know that I had shed a tear until Wes reaches out to wipe it away, "I've never had a family, just foster family after foster family that didn't want me and made sure that I knew it, ever since I was a baby. I never had nice things until I worked my ass off to get them for myself. When I was sixteen I got a job at the music store because I knew that my clock was ticking in the system and I had to have money for when I turned eighteen. I taught myself how to play the guitar there, and that's where I met my first friend...I never had friends before then. I never had anything, Luna...so when my friends offered me alcohol and drugs, I figured why not? I knew why not, I knew I should have walked away, but I wanted to fit in so badly, I wanted friends, I wanted somewhere to belong..."

"Wes, I...I had no idea." He had never talked about his family or his childhood before, and I had always just figured it was because like me, it was easier that way. I had no idea that he didn't have a family to talk about or that his childhood was so harsh. It makes my addiction story look silly - rich girl feels sad so she turns to drugs. 

"I've never told anyone that. Everyone just assumes that my family and I don't get along." He gives me a sad smile as he brushes my hair out of my face. 

I don't know what to say so I say the only thing that comes to mind, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. That's the point, I hoped you would come back because you're my family. You're the only person I've ever felt close to or loved and I...I didn't realize how bad I wanted that or needed that until you were gone. So yeah, the addiction is hard to battle, but the reward of being sober - of having you - it makes the fight easier."