"You don't have to do this. You don't have to face this alone. I want to help you."
"Help me do what? I haven't asked you to do anything but leave me alone and forget what you saw."
"Help you see that it's worth it. You've been in your suite all this time, and the island's bigger than that. Your life is bigger than that."
"Oh, I don't appreciate my life? Thanks, Dr. Drew. I didn't know this was an intervention," I said sarcastically. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know what I saw, and I know that whatever you're going through must be extremely difficult. No matter what it is."
"No. Stop it. It's nice that you want to help, but I didn't fucking ask you to. Whatever happens when I am in my suite alone is none of your business. Don't come in my room again." I stood up, taking my plate with me. I walked away, not bothering to see whether she had followed me or not.
That bitch. She wanted to teach me that my life was worth living? My thoughts were swirling around my head. What I needed her to do was stand at that front desk and leave me the fuck alone. Why did she think she had the right to come up to me and say that shit? She went straight to the point, making assumptions nobody asked her to make.
Part of me was mad that she had said anything at all, but another part was mad about how right she was. A couple of the other guys in Remus knew about the dope, but they never told me anything. She had been nosy and annoying, but she wasn't wrong — and I didn't know whether I was sort of pleased about that or not.
When you have something people want, they get close to you, but not because they want to be your friends. They're leeches who want to suck you dry or enablers who don’t care whether you run yourself into the ground because it’s not their problem. Nobody had ever called me on my bullshit like that, and even if I wish she hadn't, it was sort of nice that she gave enough of a fuck to say something.
I was shelling out thousands of dollars a night to stay here, and their only job was to give me whatever I wanted. She didn't have to care that I was an addict. She didn't just care; she sounded almost sad that I was doing that to myself.
I got into the elevator and waited to go up to my suite. She was walking through the lobby back to the desk as the doors were closing. She was running a hand through her hair and looked mad.
Apologize to her, I thought suddenly.
No, you told her to fuck off; why would you go back over there to talk to her again?
The doors closed and stopped me before I did anything stupid. I got to my room and left my plate on the table, not really that hungry a
nymore. I felt restless. I wanted to do something because I knew what happened when I got like this. It would start. It'd start bubbling up until it was too much and I'd use again.
Television wouldn't work. I didn't want to go on the internet. I paced around, suddenly remembering the piano. Yeah. That would do it. It would keep my hands busy. I sat at the piano and touched the keys, waiting to hear something. The stuff I had composed for Remus wasn’t even half of the work I had accumulated since I had started writing music. I had more music than I knew what to do with. When it came out of me, I had to put it somewhere.
Sometime must have passed before I stopped, realizing something. My hands weren't shaking. I wasn't sweating. I felt fine.
I had been fine all day, but right then, I was calm. Sitting there at the piano, I felt like everything was okay. I had been so heated after what had happened with Abby; that was the sort of thing that would have sent me right off the edge, using again, but I hadn't.
This weird urge came over me to say something to her. To tell her that I had found something. One of those things she said she wanted to show me that would make me want to stop using. I got to the phone and dialed the number for the front desk.
"Good afternoon. Thank you for calling Four Seasons Lanai, you're speaking to Abby. How may I help you?" she asked me.
I slammed the phone back into the receiver. What the hell was I doing? She didn’t care; hadn’t I told her to fuck off and leave me alone? Fuck, make up your mind, I thought. Either you’re doing this shit alone, or you’re taking her up on her offer. I remembered her face after I had left her, like she was hurt. There was no way her offer still stood. Nobody was that nice.
Chapter Ten
Abby
"So if you're in school online, do you sit in on classes over Skype or something?"
"No, I get the material, sources, and outline, and I can just study at my own pace," I said.
Makani was laying on her stomach on a towel beside me on the beach outside my house. The sun was warm, and the beach hadn't kicked up to full activity yet. Her bikini was white, which looked fantastic against her dark skin. Lying out in the sun was super touristy, but it was fun. The beach was amazing; why should they get to have all the fun?
There were beaches in Texas, but I’d seen a lot more desert than beach when I'd lived there. Makani had gotten here a couple hours ago, and we still hadn't gone on that run we had said we'd go on. It was about ten, and we'd accepted that it wasn't going to happen anymore.
We had a day off. We didn't have many, but the ones we did have, we tended to spend together even though we worked together.
"So does it take longer for you to graduate than someone who goes to class every day?" she asked. I adjusted my sunglasses on my face, turning my head to look at her.
"It can, but it depends on the way I spend my time. I could draw it out if I wanted, but I don't need to."