Felix
When I leave Jenna’s house, I don’t go looking for a dealer or cruise by any of my old hangouts. I don’t let myself add up how much heroin I could afford with what’s in my bank account. Instead I call Gabby, and an hour later I’m crying on her couch—or my couch, I suppose, because I’ve just given her more than the thing is probably worth plus paid her back for the storage of my cello.
I owe her, and this may be my last chance to do so while I still have a job.
Gabby sits on the floor next to the couch with her hand on my shoulder. “God, Felix. I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head. “It’s my own fault. I messed it up. I always knew I wasn’t good enough for her and so I lied to her and it’s all my fault.”
Gabby shakes her head. “You love her, Felix. You made a mistake, but you did it for a good reason.”
My eyes are streaming and my nose is full of snot and I sound like I have the cold from hell, and I hate myself for it. “No. I did this. I did all of this. It’s about time karma came back around and bit me in the ass for all the horrible things I’ve done.”
Gabby squeezes my shoulder. “This isn’t because of Katy.”
I sob. She’s right, of course. This isn’t because of Katy because Jenna doesn’t even know about Katy. I would have told her, but she didn’t want to know, probably because she can already tell what a terrible person I am and doesn’t want to have to hear it.
“Karma isn’t a thing,” she says. “I know too many bad people who have everything, and too many good people with shitty lives to believe that.”
She’s right. It isn’t karma, just the direct results of my own actions. “I should never have done this,” I say. “I should never have taken that job. All I did was hurt her.”
Gabby sighs and rests her head on my arm. I kind of hate her for sympathizing, because I don’t feel like I deserve it, but at the same time, I crave it.
“I want to believe in something,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s God or what, but I want there to be forgiveness for me, and healing for Jenna, and a second chance for Katy. But it’s just wishful thinking. If there is a God, I’m damn well going to hell.”
Now Gabby has tears in her eyes, and I hate myself for doing that to her, too.
“I wish I could take it back,” I say. “All the pain I’ve caused. All the people I’ve hurt. God, Gabby, you’re the best sister ever, and all the rest of us do is make you feel like shit.”
“That’s not true. You’re a good brother. You went through a bad patch, but remember back in high school? You always stuck up for me.” She pauses. “Even when I was mad at you for hitting on my friends.”
I manage to give her a flicker of a smile. “You were mad because it worked.”
“I was,” Gabby says. “You know I’m going to be here for you, right?”
“I know. But not all the time. You have to tell me if it’s too much, and I can lean on someone else.”
Gabby nods. “Okay. Not all the time. But every time you really need me.”
“I know,” I say. And it’s true, because she always has been, even when I didn’t like the way she went about it.
Especially then.
“Don’t do that to me again,” Gabby says. “I mean it. Don’t go back on the drugs.”
“I won’t,” I say, and even though my heart has turned into this howling pit and I feel like both the couch and I are falling through an endless void, I mean it.
“Do you want to use?”
I do, but that desire is buried beneath the part of me that wants to fight through this, that wants above all to survive.
“A little,” I say. “But most of me knows there’s nothing in the world so bad that doing heroin can’t make it worse.”
Gabby squeezes my arm, and she just sits with me while I cry my eyes out.
And even if she can’t take the pain away, it helps.
Jenna doesn’t text me until the next morning. Can we talk? it says.
Yes, please, I answer.
Can I come to you?
My gut twists. I wonder if she wants that because she doesn’t want to have to kick me out of her house twice. Of course, I answer. I’m at Gabby’s. I give her the address.
I have the place to myself this morning, because Gabby had a shift at the hospital, and Will went off to a coffee shop to write. I’m not sure if he did that because I’m hanging out in his space, but he didn’t seem resentful, which I appreciate, though I make a note to ask Gabby if I ought to go back to Dad’s tonight.
Dad doesn’t know a thing about Jenna, and I’m not sure I can explain now how such a short relationship can have meant so much.
When Jenna arrives, she’s put on heavy eye makeup, but it doesn’t hide that she’s been crying.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” I want to put my arms around her, but instead I let her in to the apartment. She takes my couch, and I sit in a chair across from her.
Jenna takes a deep breath, and I brace for her to tell me it’s over. “I talked to Leo,” she says. “About everything. I hope that’s okay. I didn’t know who else I could tell.”
I nod. I’m glad she found someone to talk to, at least.
“Leo says that you screwed up, but you’re not like Mason, because if you were, you would have just told me the chip was from forever ago, and that would have been it.”
“Everything I told you was true.”
“I know,” Jenna says. “But you left a lot of things out.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.” I want to ask for another chance, but I get the sense Jenna’s already composed what she wants to say, and I doubt anything I say now can sway her. My chest aches, and my ears pound, and I want at once for time to stop right here and to get it over with.
“I want to hear the rest of it,” Jenna says. “You said there was more.”
That surprises me, and I feel a tiny flicker of hope I immediately want to smother. “There’s not really more news. Just the details.”
Jenna nods. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know, but Leo says I need to hear it, or I’m going to break up with you and then never know the full reason why.”
The force of those words stuns me, and I pause. “So it’s over.”
Tears fill her eyes. “Will you please tell me?”
“Yeah. Of course.” And even though this conversation now feels like it’s post-mortem, I find I still want her to know. I love her, and I want her to know who I am, even if it means she doesn’t love me anymore.
“I was miserable at Juilliard,” I say. “I told you that before.”
Jenna nods.
“I was lost. It was like I’d been on this road forever, and I finally got where I was going, and it wasn’t at all where I wanted to be. Everything sucked. School wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be, and I didn’t have to work as hard as I thought I would, and I dated a bunch of girls, but I’m not all that into casual sex, and that sucked, too.”
Jenna is curled up on the couch with her legs underneath her, listening.
“And then one time,” I say, “I went to this party. I’d never done drugs before—I didn’t even drink much. But I was so unhappy and someone handed me a pipe and I didn’t even know what it was, but I thought, what the hell?”
I rub my forehead. “I didn’t find out until later that it was heroin, and when I did, I didn’t care. It was like I was lifted out of the pit I was in and suddenly floating through the life I’d always wanted, but didn’t know how to have. At first it was cheap and good but pretty soon I started needing more, and then I switched to needles and after that I had to be high all the time.”
I keep going, telling her about how I stopped caring about everything else, how I stopped trying at school, but still covered for a full six months in New York before I got arrested and stayed in jail overnight and then sold out everyone I’d ever done drugs with because I was a rich boy afraid of prison. I tell her about getting kicked out of school and telling my parents and going to rehab once, and then twice, and staying clean for six weeks before I relapsed again.
“After that, I was gone for more than a year,” I say. “I’d burned all my bridges. My family wouldn’t help me anymore. I ended up working at a convenience store for drug money and living in a house where all the cereal had weevils and one of the guys who crashed there liked to piss in the houseplants—which were fake.”
I take a deep breath. “And then my dealer ODed, and the house got raided, and I was out of drugs and a place to stay, so I started buying Fentanyl, and did that for a couple weeks, until I got scared. And when I ran out of druggie friends’ couches to crash on, I found a new heroin dealer and started picking up girls to do drugs with just to have a bed to sleep in at night.”
Jenna’s eyes are closed now, and she’s curling in on herself, and I want to stop, but I can’t. She needs to know. She deserves to know.
Even if I already know she won’t be able to forgive me for this last part. I tell her about Katy, how I picked her up and bought drugs, and we went home to her place. I tell her about waking up next to her dead body, how I called 911 and gave them the wrong name and then had to explain that to the cops. “The worst part is that I shot her up. I put that heroin in her arm, and I’ve thought a thousand times about whether I did it wrong. I don’t think I did, but I can’t be sure, because all I was thinking about was getting high.”
Jenna’s crying now. Tears stream down her cheeks.
“I Googled her later,” I say. “I found her obituary.” I take a deep breath. “She had a sister.”
Jenna’s eyes open, and her breath shudders, and I know she’s thinking about Rachel. And I hate myself for the things I’ve done, for the person I am.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wish I could change it, but I can’t. And I know you can’t love someone like me, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything from the very beginning, so you never would have thought that you could.”
Jenna shakes her head. “I do love you.”
My breath shakes. “Still?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Always.”
And for a split second, I hope she’s going to say we can work it out. That this isn’t as bad as she expected, that I can earn her trust back and she can forgive me.
“But I can’t handle all this,” she says. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hypocritical. God knows I’ve done a lot of stupid things. I’ve made just as many mistakes, just as bad mistakes, but—” She winces, and I find myself wanting to comfort her, even though it’s me who’s getting my heart broken.
I can tell that hers is shattering just as hard.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I understand.”
Jenna shakes her head violently. “I don’t think you do. It’s just—all that stuff I did, the guys I was with. Rachel and the car accident and—I hated myself so much, and I still hate myself— “ Her breath catches, and she takes a moment to recover, and I’m struck with the horrible realization that her dark past has weighed on her heavier and wounded her more deeply than I ever knew.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say. “What happened to Rachel.”
She takes a deep breath and steadies herself. “Maybe. But I made a promise I would take care of Ty now. That I would be there for him, and be his mom, and I can’t let anything be more important than that. I’m sorry, but I just can’t take the risk.”
She looks at me, and we’re both crying again, and I wish there was anything I could say or do to fix what I’ve broken.
“I’m not going back on drugs,” I say.
“I wish I could know that for sure.”
We both sit there for a moment, staring at Gabby’s rug, and I realize that’s it. It’s over. I’m now Jenna Rollins’s ex, and as far as anyone is ever going to know, this never happened at all.
I don’t have that picture of us together, and now I never will.
“I’ll help you find a new cellist,” I say. “I know a lot of musicians in the area, and I’ll help you find someone good. There’s a lot of people who would jump at the chance.”
Jenna watches me for a moment, and then she shakes her head. “I want you to stay in the band.”
I stare at her. “What?”
“Will you? I’ll be leaving after the tour, anyway.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s your band. I’m not going to—”
“It’s not because of you. I’ve been unhappy for a long time. Being with you made me realize how much, and I’m leaving no matter what you decide.”
I hold my breath. I can’t imagine seeing her, listening to her sing to Alec songs she once said would always be about me. I can’t imagine going back to being near her and not allowed to touch her, this time because she doesn’t trust me to.
But I also can’t imagine never seeing her again. That feels like the worst thing of all. “Okay. I’ll stay.”
“Thank you,” Jenna says.
I know I should leave it there, but I can’t help myself. “You’re going to find someone better than me. And that guy is going to be the luckiest person on Earth.”
Jenna’s face crumples. “No,” she says. “I don’t believe in that story anymore.”
I gape at her, and I feel like my chair is tipping, and I’m falling into an abyss. “What?”
She stares down at her hands, which I can see are shaking. “I don’t believe in the story anymore. I can’t.”
I didn’t think I could possibly feel any worse, that there existed a pain beyond what I’m already drowning in, but . . . “No, please, no. I know I screwed up, but please. Don’t let me take the story from you. You’re going to find someone who’s going to love you like I do, and I’m going to read about it and I’m going to cry, but I’m going to be so happy for you. You deserve that. You can’t let me take it away.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, standing up to go. And even though she’s right here in front of me I can’t help but think that I’ve killed her, too. We’re both crying, choking on our own tears, but as she moves toward the door, somehow she manages to say, “Ty still wants you to help him. Something about a surprise for me.”
I blink at her. “Does he know?”
She nods. “Not the details, but . . . yeah. He knows.”
“And he still wants to see me? You’d still let him?”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s ever going to forgive me for this. But you can help him with his project if you want.”
And now I’m crying for the way I’ve broken his heart, but at least there’s one last thing I can do for them.
I can set the kid straight about who’s really to blame.