I'd started to think of myself as more of a person who lived by the phrase, “carpe diem,” rather than someone who threw their life away each time they were struck with a particularly reckless whim. The two things seemed at least a little different to me.
My mother was really putting a damper on that carefree and self-secure sort of attitude outlook when she handed me a plate of cookies – the ones with huge chocolate chips – and insisted that I bring them to West for a surprise visit.
Of course, I argued with her, telling her that I was most definitely not bringing a plate – wrapped in ribbon, as if it wasn't bad enough already – to the Monroes just because she was trying to set me up with West.
She really was trying to set us up, only getting stronger with her attempts and more obvious each time. It would have been funny to watch her spend hours in the kitchen baking sweets for someone to conveniently drop off at the house of another's, if it wasn't for the fact that I was the piece in her matchmaking game.
I wanted to tell West about it, but I was too uncomfortable to admit that not only did my mother want us together, but I wanted it almost as badly, if not more.
I continued to back away from her, trying to keep my distance from her and the cookies until she finally cornered me by standing in front of the door and refusing to move unless I took the cookies. She even said she'd be making a call to West's mother in twenty minutes to see if I'd shown up.
With a groan, I took the cookies from her, giving her a rather unamused glare before stepping outside. I struggled to balance the cookies in one hand as I lit the cigarette between my lips with the other. The nicotine didn't seem to be doing it for me anymore, not as thrilling as it had once been.
It took three cigarettes in the place of what had once been one, which made sense when I thought about how my health teacher in high school had talked about tolerance. The more a person had of something, the more they grew used to it and the more they needed of it.
I wondered if that was how it was for me with West, if I'd grown a tolerance for him and would only continue to need more.
I stood across from West's house on the other side of the street, my cigarette still pressed between my lips and the cookies beginning to feel heavy under my arm. I was glad that my mother had put them in a container and wrapped them up, otherwise there would have been a sidewalk full of fresh chocolate chip cookies.
When I finished my cigarette, not wanting to bring it across the street and into West's house, I threw it to the ground and crushed it a bit beneath my shoe. I wanted to stand on the corner for a little while, smoking as many cigarettes as I felt was needed until I felt like I'd had enough – maybe then the urge would go away altogether, although unlikely – because something was gnawing at the pit of my stomach like I subconsciously knew something was wrong.
Deciding that it was just a misread vibe, I waited for the car coming down the lane to pass before I crossed the street. I climbed the steps and knocked on the door, smiling a little when Mrs. Monroe's face lit up upon seeing me like she always enjoyed my visits.
I saw Krissy walk past her, probably checking on her mother and whoever was at the door, and she paused when she saw me. “Hey, North.”
I smiled, stepping past Mrs. Monroe when she stepped aside and gestured for me to go inside. Since Krissy was standing nearest to me, I handed her to cookies, turning halfway towards Mrs. Monroe when I said, “My mother wanted me to give you guys the fresh cookies she baked.”
She smiled, taking the cookies from Krissy and starting to untie the ribbon. “Your mother is such a nice woman, and from what I can tell, you're much like her.”
That would have offended me before – before my mother and I had come to a compromise of sorts, however unbalanced it was – but I simply smiled, taking it as a sort of compliment seeing as my mother really was a nice woman, even if she sometimes had opinions so big they often came off as overpowering and controlling.
“Which one of my children are you here for this time?” Mrs. Monroe asked and I caught Krissy grinning from the corner of my eye.
I almost started to tell her that I had only come to drop off the cookies and that that was all, but I decided that if I was already there, I might as well pay a visit to the boy who plagued my mind more often than I would have liked.
“Is West home?”
She nodded, taking a cookie from my mom's package. “He's upstairs, you can go on up,” She said, gesturing to the steps and pausing when she took a bite of my mother's cookie. “This is heavenly, could you ask your mother for her recipe for me?”
I smiled, heading for the steps. “I'll relay the message,” I told her and I decided that I would.
I knocked on West's door before entering in case he wasn't exactly guest appropriate, but he didn't answer. I knocked again, leaning my head against the door and listening to see if I could hear anything. When I decided that I couldn't, I turned the knob and walked in, finding West's room empty.
His room was a little messier than usual, clothes and a sheet strewn across the floor. When I reached out and lifted the sheet from the floor, I found an array of empty beer cans beneath it. My chest tightened a bit when it crossed my mind that he'd broken our pact and drank without me, giving up his attempt to beat the addiction, but I forced it away and tried to convince myself to give him the benefit of the doubt – the cans could have been before we'd decided to quit cold turkey.
That hope was quickly squashed when West stepped out of the bathroom connected to his room, obviously tipsy because of the way he was walking. He finally noticed me, perched on the corner of his bed, and he suddenly stopped, letting out a quiet, “Shit.”
I stood up, stepping away from the bed and heading for the door, trying to force down the growing knot forming in my stomach from the betrayal. I'd thought we were going to do it together, kick the very thing's ass that had kicked ours, but clearly I'd been misinformed.
“North, wait, I can explain –“ He called, his voice almost pleading.
I stopped in front of the door, my hand on the knob and my back facing his. His voice, so raw and pleading, had forced me to stop. I couldn't take the risk of turning to look at him, that would only allow him a time slot to worm his way past my anger and back into my good graces.
I briefly wondered if it was hurting him as much as it was hurting me, the wedge that had suddenly been driven between us tall and almost impossible to ignore.
“Please, just stay.” His voice was quiet, so quiet I had to strain to hear.
The angry voices in my head quieted for just a moment, long enough for my shoulders to drop and the tension in them deflated as I suddenly felt how tired I really was.
I didn't take a seat, but I did turn around, complying to his wishes despite how everything inside of me was against it. Once he was satisfied that I was going to stay, he sank down onto his bed, his shoulders sagging and his hair falling into his eyes when he put his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on the messy floor.
“I couldn't help it.”
I felt the anger spike in me again – it wasn't easy for anyone to overcome this sort of shit – but I forced myself to remain calm and at least hear him out.
“Kevin called to see how you were doing, and I just – I just lost it. I bought two bags of whatever he could give me and I let it take over me. After all, it was going to happen sometime anyway, right?” He asked, and I had to look away from him, focusing my gaze on the floor.
“I just wish it wouldn't have hurt you in the process. I – I wanted to do it for you, North, you can't possibly know how much I want to do these things for you and be. . . good. But I can't.” His voice broke at the end, and my eyes met his before I could help it.
The look on his face was so raw, so completely lost, that it broke something inside of me. It reminded me so intensely of the face I saw staring back at me each night when I stared in the mirror, the eyes empty and cold like the only way I knew to be.
I grabbed a bottle of vodka that I noticed on his dresser, taking the cap off and gulping it down. I'd been three weeks sober, three weeks that suddenly felt so pointless. There seemed no point in getting better when the rest of the world would remain just as hopeless.
I sank down against the door, pulling my knees to my chest and sucking in deep breaths as the sobs started to wrack my body. Holding them in for any longer just didn't seem possible, like a volcano erupting after being forced down so long. It was explosive, the first sob that escaped my body jarring my insides and leaving my skin feeling raw. I suddenly wished that I could be different, peel away the skin I had to find something better, so much better, beneath it.
I finally let myself fall apart, the carefully tied knots that held my sides together fraying at the ends and pulling apart. The tears were streaming down my cheeks so rapidly that my vision was blurred and I was unable to feel anything. I wanted to let them drown me right then, sitting against West's bedroom door.
I'd never let myself feel so much at one time, especially not in front of another person. But sitting there, on his floor with my entire facade coming apart and me unable to stop it, I knew deep down that this – where I was right in that moment – was the safest place for me to shed my protective layer in order to make room for a new one.
I vaguely felt West's hands touching me, one of them threading in my hair and the other wiping away the stray tears that he couldn't kiss away, his lips on my cheek only causing my body to shake more. The world was just so goddamn wrong, and being near him was something so right it shouldn't have even been possible.
When the tears stopped running down my face and I realized that I'd soaked my shirt and bits of my hair, West wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him, my head resting against his chest. The consistent thumping of his heart against the side of my face was comforting, and even though I knew that I needed to pull away from him and put back up the shield of strong that I tried so hard to always keep in position, I suddenly felt so drained and I knew that there was no way that I'd find enough energy within me to do that.
“I'm sorry,” He muttered against the top of my head, his lips brushing against my forehead.
“If you can't do it, then how can I?” I asked, my voice sounding raw and as if I'd had to tear the words from my throat.
“I'm sorry,” He muttered again, “I'm sorry.” He repeated, quieter. He continued to apologize, rocking me against his chest as his voice continued to dip lower, eventually disappearing altogether.
“I care so much about you,” I said quietly, and I felt him stiffen against me, but I decided I could continue to speak anyway. I had broken down in front of him, just about losing every bit of dignity I had, so there wasn't really much left for me to lose.
“I think about you so much. . .so much it scares me. I didn't want to feel this way, ever. But you – you're just so easy to care about, so easy to lose myself in. God, I just – I can't lose you, West, not like I lost myself.” My voice was barely above a whisper and I felt fresh tears pricking at my eyes, so I squeezed them shut in hopes of forcing them away.
He was still rigid against me, the hand that had been combing through my hair having gone still against my head.
“West. . .I'm in love with you,” I whispered, sliding my arms to wrap tightly around his waist, as if that would keep him and I anchored together. “And I just want you to get better.”
His breathing hitched and he stayed still for a moment longer, before his hands wrapped around my waist and he brought his lips down to mine. It was a sweet kiss, full of all the feelings I'd been containing so long. His lips were soft and slow against mine, and I found myself moving closer to him, so that we were flush against each other.
His lips were right against my ear when he pulled away, the warmth from his breath against my ear and the side of my face sending shivers down my spine. “I love you, North, more than I've ever cared about being intoxicated.”
I refrained from mentioning that he was my intoxication.
I love you, North, more than I've ever cared about being intoxicated.
Even though everything else in that moment was wrong – from the fact that both West and I had broken our sobriety to how we were more or less messes upon his floor – that one thing, those twelve words, were right enough to make the rest of it seem unimportant.