"Looking for something?"
The unexpected voice causes me to jump and drop the contents from my hands. Pens, change, and half empty lotion bottles fall to the hardwood floor of my bedroom and I mumble a curse under my breath as I bend down to pick them up.
I've only been home for a little over an hour, and already I feel like a stranger invading someone else's personal space. This doesn't feel like my room, my bed, my belongings. There are a hundred little details scattered across this apartment that say it's mine - this is where Luna lives - but somehow they don't seem to fit me anymore. Maybe they never did.
"You're a little jumpy." His voice floats into the room again and I bite my tongue, having decided on the hour and a half drive here that ignoring him will be my best plan for the duration of his stay. Which reminds me, I should really ask my mom how long this ridiculous sleepover has to go on for.
"Luna, what are you looking for?"
I throw the items back in my bedside drawer and walk over to my dresser, pulling out the top drawer and looking under everything inside of it, ignoring Wes.
"Luna."
"Luna, what are you doing?"
"LunaLunaLunaLunaLunaLu-"
"WHERE THE HELL IS IT?" I shout, cutting off his insistent chatter and finally turning to face him. He's standing in my doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. Amusement dances in his brown eyes as he watches me frantically search my room. He always loved it when I would get annoyed and yell at him, and here I am, falling in his trap. His hair is still damp from the shower he just took and a smirk pulls at his lips as my eyes helplessly roam over his body, taking in every inch of inked skin as if it's not burned into my memory. "Put on a shirt." I mumble, all the anger and annoyance drained from my tone as I tear my eyes away from him and walk back towards my nightstand.
Wes ignores me and enters my room, making himself at home on the corner of my bed, so close that with the slightest movement of my hand, I could be touching him. I almost do it, I almost stretch my fingers and feel the familiar softness of his skin. I almost allow myself to forget that he turned my world upside down - twice, in two very different ways. I almost go back on everything I swore to myself that I wouldn't do. "Leave."
"Tell me what you were looking for." I can feel his eyes on me, but I don't dare meet them. I can hear the concern, the regret, the love in his voice and I don't want to see it in his eyes too.
"You know what I'm looking for, Wes." This is why he's here, because I am a creature of habit and I can't be trusted to be alone. Maybe my parents are right, I mean look at me, I've barely been home a minute and I'm already relapsing. Although, is it really a relapse if you never really recovered? I was forced into sobriety, starved of a fix, so does it count? Am I recovered?
No.
I'll never be recovered. Not from the drugs, not from the alcohol, not from the gaping black void in my life that I can't put a name to, and not of Wes.
Because when my eyes finally do meet his, I see it all - I see what we were and I see what we could have been.
That's what scares me.
It scares me that Wes was able to change everything about himself all for me and a future he wanted so badly for us to have. Wes got clean, he dropped the filth and the dirt from his life and he became a better version of himself. Wes is strong and brave, he's more than he ever thought of himself to be and I'm incredibly proud of him.
I just wish he hadn't done it all for us, because there is no us. There is Wes and there is Luna, but there is no Wes and Luna.
I know that he knows I was looking for the bottle of prescriptions pills I still kept in my room, just in case I ever needed them, but he doesn't say anything as his eyes stay locked onto mine. I can tell he's searching for something he won't find - a glimmer of hope that I'll become the girl he wants me to be.
He was looking at me so intently that I was expecting him to reach out and take my hand, or brush my hair behind my ear while saying something about me being beautiful.
But he didn't.
Instead, he stood up and broke eye contact, looking down at the floor as he walked back towards the door. I watch him go, noticing a new tattoo on his shoulder blade just as he turns back towards me. I couldn't tell what the tattoo was, but there were words wrapped around the picture, and I know he didn't have that a few months ago. "Go to sleep, Luna. You won't find that shit here, I threw it all out."
"You know I can't sleep. Not without it." I know he doesn't care, he's not going to give in and get me what I want. Wes isn't that type of person. He believes that he's doing what's best for me and he'll stick by that, even if it kills me.
He shrugs as he closes my bedroom door, "Maybe try some Melatonin instead. Goodnight, beautiful."
"Fuck you, Wes!" I call after him, only to hear his laughter float down the hall, a melody I hate to admit that I have missed.
So much for ignoring him.
"Okay beautiful, we've introduced you to acid and weed, so now it's time to meet Molly." Wes pulls me along with him through the tightly packed hallway that leads to the back of the club. I look behind me, but there's so many people that I can no longer see the main room or the stage that Wes and his band had performed on just minutes ago.
The bands drummer Otto was behind me, and when he gave me a flirtatious smile that send chills down my spine, I gripped Wes' hand tighter and turned back to him. I could still feel Otto's eyes on my as we made our way to the back room where a group of people Wes knew was waiting for us. Before we stepped into the room, Otto's hand lightly touched the exposed skin of my thigh, right where my dress ended and my boots began.
Before I could react, he was gone, off to the other side of the room, as if it had never happened.
"You okay?" Wes looks down at me, his hair curling from sweating on stage. He always gets this adrenaline high after a show, and just being around him and that energy, brings out a side of me I never knew I had.
"I'm great." I reach up and cup his face, pulling him down to my level so that I can kiss him and taste the drug less high he's chasing right now.
Watching Wes perform quickly became on of my all time favorite things. It's as if he forget who he is or where he is in that short period of time, and that's all I've ever wanted - is to forget, to be someone else. When he's on stage, it's just him and his guitar, off in his own space, forgetting about the crowd below that is watching him.
After the show, Wes is hyper, full of life, and ready to take on the world. He wants to keep the feeling alive and drown in it, breathe it in until he suffocates. And I want to too. I want to feel what he's feeling, see what he's seeing - I want to be free of my mind too.
Which is why I never question of hesitate when he and his friends hand me an escape - whether it be a pill, a joint, a strip, or a line.
When Wes pulls away from our kiss, I bite his lip between my teeth, "Now introduce me to Molly."
"Right this way." He steps behind me, his hand finding its way to where Otto's way just moments ago - erasing the grimy feeling caused by his band mate and replacing it with a heat that has me agreeing to anything he asks.
I couldn't sleep.
Even in rehab, I couldn't sleep. I would stare at the four walls of my room and try to fight back memories and feelings until finally my mind would shut off. Now that I'm back in my own room though, it's as if my brain is refusing to stop. No matter how hard I try, I can't stop thinking about him.
I can't stop thinking about all the times he drove me to the dark side, fueling my addictions and tempting me. Wes was dangerous and exciting, and I wanted nothing more than to ride the wave in the middle of the storm with him.
I can't really blame Wes, though. It's not as if he ever forced me to do anything, I was always more than willing. When we met, I was already on the path of destruction, he just aided me and hurried along the process.
And then he tried to save me, even though I'm already damned.
As much as I want to focus on the bad aspects of our "relationship", I can't stop thinking about the good.
Because there was a lot of good.
There was bowling, holding hands, movie marathons on his couch, laughter, singing, and even some baking. There were long talks about life, there were shopping trips, concerts, snowball fights, and cuddles.
Wes always made me feel wanted, he made me feel as if he cared. Now I know that he did, and even though I hate that he feels that way and I don't feel the same, it's 3 a.m and I can't sleep.
I could always sleep when I was with Wes.
I'm not thinking straight.
Hell, I don't think I'm thinking at all, but I open my bedroom door and walk down the hall and across my living room until I'm standing directly in front of my spare bedroom.
He's laying in the extra bed, a blue comforter thrown across the lower half of his body, leaving his chest exposed. He didn't put on a shirt like I told him to, and I feel stupid for standing in my own apartment staring at a boy that I've seen shirtless a thousand times.
I feel stupid for thinking I can just walk in here and pretend everything is fine after all that I've done - after all that we've done. He looks so peaceful, and that's something he will never be with me in his life.
I can't use him, not when he's done so much and worked so hard to get where he is. I can't let him fill the hole in my heart or dull the screaming in my brain - not when I can't give him what he wants in return.
I reach to close the door, to leave Wes behind and deal with my demons on my own, but before my hand touches the handle, he sees me. I freeze, embarrassed to be caught, and also unsure of what to do in this moment.
Wes scoots over and stretches an arm out across the now empty side of the bed, "Come on, beautiful. We both know you'll sleep better in here."
I should have said no. I should have turned and walked way, but I didn't. I crawled into the bed and let Wes wrap his arms around me as I felt the sense of security and warmth that I had always felt with him drape over me like the blankets on the bed.
"I love you, Luna." He whispers, his lips brushing the top of my head as his words shoot daggers at my pounding heart.
I don't say anything in return and I know he didn't expect me to, but when his breathing lets me know that he's asleep I answer him,"I know, and I'm sorry."