I rolled my eyes and flushed. Then I walked back outside and fixed him with a glare. “You mean the bag of pot in your front pocket?”
“Fuck,” he said, smiling at me with a half-assed expression of guilt on his face. “Found it, did you?”
“Yeah, I found it,” I said, unable to keep the irritation from my voice. “I found it at the perfect time, too…just when I had been pulled over by a cop.”
“Fuck!” Brent said, his eyes going wide. “They took my pot?”
“Is that all you’re concerned about?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, sounding clueless.
“I could have been arrested, you realize,” I said. “I’m a fucking firefighter. I could be fired if I’m brought up on charges of drug possession.”
“It was just pot,” Brent said flippantly.
“Still a drug, numbskull,” I said, pushing him out of my way as I headed over to the couch. “And still illegal. I can’t believe you’re still using.”
“It’s purely recreational, to relax from time to time,” he said, as though that made a world of difference. “I don’t do anything hardcore.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, knowing that Brent was a good liar when he wanted to be. “Then why was there so much of it?”
Brent smiled sheepishly. “I need to relax a lot.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” I said. “It’s a slippery slope.”
“Ugh,” he moaned. “You’ve become so preachy lately.”
“Because I’m trying to make something of my life,” I snapped. “And it doesn’t help when my friend leaves drugs lying around my apartment. You could have at least told me.”
“You wouldn’t have brought my jacket back then.”
“Didn’t I just bring your jacket back?”
“Without the drugs,” he said, fixing me with an accusing glare.
“Oh…oops.”
“Fuck you, man,” he said. “Where’s my pot?”
“Must have misplaced it.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You flushed it, didn’t you?”
“You’re smart for a drug-addled idiot.”
Brent groaned and threw his hands in the air. “That was high-quality pot,” he complained. “The best there is.”
“I wish I could muster up the strength to care,” I said, collapsing onto his sofa.
“Geez…it was something fun we could have done together,” he said, sitting down next to me and reaching for his beer.
“You expect me to light up with you?” I asked.
“Why not?”
“What part of ‘new start’ do you not understand?”
Brent rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you were a drug addict or anything.”