“So what, you were stoned?” she asked, snorting derisively. “That hardly makes a difference.”
My grip tightened on the handle of the shovel, until my knuckles were white and the wood creaked beneath my palms. “I was a hundred percent sober,” I told her. “Not that I need to justify my actions to you, but I was one hundred percent sober.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “I heard you on the phone. It sounded like you were hardly there when you told me you couldn’t meet up.”
“Because I was busy helping Brent fill out the forms he needed to check into the rehab center,” I spat before I could really think about the words. Then, I winced, hating that I’d just admitted that to her after I promised Brent I would keep his secret.
There was no taking it back, though, as Vanessa’s eyes widened and her hand crept up to cover her mouth. “You were helping Brent get checked into a rehab center?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell whether she was feeling embarrassed at having slammed my behavior before or if she was more worried for Brent.
“Yeah,” I said simply, kicking at the dirty straw under my feet. My mouth twisted bitterly, and I decided I might as well tell her the whole story. She probably wasn’t going to let it go until I did.
“Brent’s apparently been addicted to heroin for a while. I probably should have noticed, but apparently I’m too much of a self-centered fuckhead that I didn’t even know until the other night when I saw the track marks. I mean, you would think that when someone’s your best friend and they start acting like that, you’d realize something was up. But I didn’t. I never thought anything about the way he acted. I never managed to put two and two together.”
“It’s not your fault,” Vanessa said quietly. “I’m sure he was doing his best to hide it from you.”
“Of course, he was,” I said. “But that doesn’t excuse the fact that I didn’t notice. I hit rock bottom a long time ago. I know how drugs work. I should have recognized the signs. I should have realized he was doing more than just weed, that weed and alcohol wouldn’t change his personality like that, but I never even questioned it.”
Vanessa was silent, but rather than feeling condemned by her lack of words, I could tell she was waiting for me to continue.
I swallowed hard. “I knew he was getting into fights,” I said. “And, I know the drug business gets rough sometimes, but if he was just dealing weed, things probably wouldn’t be like that. I should have started questioning it. Or questioning the other signs. But I didn’t.”
She finally held up a hand. “Brent wouldn’t want you to be beating yourself up like this, would he?” I paused, considering it, but Vanessa forged on. “You helped him get help,” she reminded me. “Maybe it took a while. Maybe you should have realized things sooner. But in the end, you helped Brent get checked into a clinic, didn’t you?”
She paused, and her next words made me flinch. “You’re not caught up in any of that stuff, though, are you?”
“Heroin?” I asked in disbelief.
She looked uncomfortable, her gaze shifting off to the side. “Heroin, or anything else. Any other drugs,” she said. “And, I’m not just asking about using. I’m asking about dealing, too. I could never get involved with you again if I knew that you were...” She trailed off, looking unhappy.
“I haven’t even smoked a joint in over three years now,” I told her flatly, hating that she had asked. “When anyone tells you that I’m drug-free, you can believe them.” I realized I wasn’t being fair to her. She didn’t know the full story. She didn’t know my reasons for cleaning up my act.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said, suddenly needing to be out of the tight, claustrophobic feel of the barn.
“Okay,” she agreed, much more quickly than I’d expected her to. She trailed after me, out of the barn and across the dewy grass.
“I hit rock bottom,” I told her after a long moment. “It was about a year after you left. I was missing you pretty badly, and things with my father were difficult, to say the least.” I paused.
“I don’t really remember what happened, and that’s the part that still scares me the most about it. I don’t remember if there was a conscious decision to overdose or if it was a stupid accident, but I woke up in the hospital. I’d been out of it for a while already at that point. The doctors all had thought I wasn’t going to survive, and I had all of these cards and flowers and things, from what seemed like half the town.'”
I paused, taking a deep breath. It was a time in my life I rarely thought about anymore, let alone talked about. I could still feel those tendrils of fear, just thinking back to it. I was terrified I might end up there again.
“No one’s really sure how or why I pulled through,” I continued. “The doctors said I must have realized I had something to live for. I didn’t want to tell them, but they were wrong. Part of why I got that low in my spiral was that there wasn’t anything to live for at that point. I was just going through the motions, trying to pretend that everything was okay. But I had no prospects. I had nothing. That’s when your father came to visit me.”
“Why?” Vanessa asked, shaking her head. “I just don’t understand why he came to visit you. It’s not like you and I were still dating or anything.”
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” I admitted. “To be honest” — I paused and then shrugged — “I’ve always kind of been afraid to ask. My life was in such a tenuous place at that point, if he hadn’t come to visit me, I probably wouldn’t be alive today. And that is such a fine balance that I’ve always been terrified to know how close I’d actually come to dying.”
Vanessa frowned, looking over at me. “But how did he help you?”
I shook my head. “He just told me, in the simplest words, that none of it was my fault. That my father hadn’t been much of a man to me. That he hadn’t been much of a man in general.
“It was the first time someone tried to tell me that none of it was my fault. That meant a lot to me. And when he offered me the job here at the Lazy J, I couldn’t turn him down.” I paused again, taking a deep breath. “This job gives me a purpose. And your dad’s been ten times the dad my father ever was. He told me I’d have a place here and support here for as long as I could stay off the drugs. So I did.”
I grimaced. “The thing is, I know I could still be better. I quit drinking for a while, but that never really stuck. I started falling back into my old patterns, and I started fucking around with various women. But from the time I started working here, I’ve never gone too far.”
“That’s good,” Vanessa said faintly,
and I could tell from the look on her face that she was thinking things over. Probably wondering if she could still be friends with me. I doubted that she’d ever agree to go on a date with me after hearing my story. Of course, she’d known that I was involved in drugs back when we were teenagers, but it was one thing to deal and one thing to smoke weed sometimes. It was another thing entirely to admit that you’d overdosed and ended up in the hospital because of it.