Page 47 of Steadfast
“What were you afraid of?” I asked immediately.
But Jude just shook his head.
I’d already pressed my luck tonight, so I let it go. “And how about now? I know you’re going to that meeting in the church basement.”
“Mmm,” he said, kissing my shoulder. “In a week they’ll give me a six-month tag. It’s a plastic keychain. Pretty anticlimactic, really.”
“Six months is nothing to sneeze at.”
“Thanks.” He sounded weary. “Feels like six years, though.”
“Why?”
He lifted my hair and kissed my neck. “You don’t want to hear this crap.”
I pushed up on an elbow, giving up a kiss from Jude for the first time that I could remember. “Actually, I do.”
Jude licked his lips. “My body won’t let me forget the shit I used to put in it.”
“So you have cravings?” I knew the right terminology. You can’t work in a social work office without learning these things.
“Every damn day.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Nagging. Like a twitch. Or an irritating tag in the back of your sweater. And youknowjust a little hit would make it go away. Some days I can’t remember why it’s so important not to. That’s why I sit in that church basement. It’s not for the shitty coffee. It’s so they can remind me why I stopped.”
I curled up beside him again. “Did you ever try Suboxone? People say it’s a game-changer.”
Jude poked me in the hip. “What do you know from Suboxone?”
“I work in the hospital—the social work office.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Sounds like a depressing job.”
“It’s not. Well, it can be. But mostly it’s great. The people who come in there are in crisis, and we get to sort ’em out. I never go home at night wondering why I bother.”
“That makes one of us.”
I rubbed his back. “I could find you someone who writes prescriptions for Suboxone.”
He was really quiet for a second, which probably meant that I’d overstepped. “I don’t want it,” he said eventually. “I don’t want to treat a drug addiction with another drug.”
“That’s fair,” I said quickly. I sure hadn’t come here to get all up in Jude’s business.
“It’s not just the principle of the thing,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to have to think about dosing myself. Like—is it time to take my pill? What if I took it early just this once? I don’t want to tangle myself up like that.”
I ran a hand up and down the ridges of his perfect chest. “That makes sense. I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”
He laughed. “Not hardly. But it’s not all bad. I just had some really good… chocolate cake.”
I pinched him again, and he rolled onto my body for a kiss.
And we were both smiling.
