Page 45 of Best Friend Burden

“Nah, you just fell into lust every time you see a pair of legs with a head attached to them.”

“Like there’s anything wrong with that?” he said. “You’re just jealous. You’ve got all those tattoos and the rock star image, but you’re too old to even go clubbing.”

“I’m only two years older than you!” I said to him.

“Age isn’t about a number,” he said. “It’s a state of mind. What’s the saying? You’re only as old as the woman you feel?”

“You’re lecturing me about age while quoting a saying that got its start during the Great Depression?”

He smiled. “Just trying to come up with a reference you’d be familiar with, grandpa.”

I rolled my eyes. “Look, we all grow up some time, and I’m glad that you’ve found Natasha. She seems like she’s really good for you.”

“She is,” he said. “Hey, what about you and Melody? What's going on there? Must be a little more than just smashin' fronts because you two have been inseparable for months.”

I considered ignoring the bait so I could focus back on him, but he'd just try to shift the conversation again. Maybe he was right? Maybe it was one of those things that you could jinx if you talked about it.

“She's doing well,” I said. “Her truck just opened up today. I'm sure I'll hear all about it when I get home.”

“That's not what I meant,” he said.

And I knew that's not what he meant. But I didn't know how to put into words what Melody and I had. We were something more than friends with benefits, I guess, though we hadn't had a conversation about labels or exclusivity. Not that it mattered. I wasn't about to see anyone else, and she was pretty busy with the food truck. I couldn't imagine she had the energy, mental or otherwise, to be wined and dined by a slew of eligible Los Angeles bachelors.

From what I could tell, she appreciated the simplicity of what we had and the lack of complications.

“We're old friends,” I said. “I'm helping her out while she gets settled in.”

“I see the way you two look at each other,” he said. “It's been a while, but I've seen that look on your face before.”

I ignored him. He was trying to be encouraging, but it was just upsetting me. And I had to believe part of it was that I felt something similar to what Jackson had said earlier: I wasn't good enough for her. How could she possibly care about me when I was such a professional failure? Or the fact that I am just one drink away from being a complete basket case? I was probably just a warm body who offered her a place to stay during a time when what she wanted from life was something that came with no strings attached and minimal complications.

On some level, I understood that this wasn't the case. Someone like Melody could find a guy to shack up with without a problem. But she chose me, a friend from high school that she randomly happened to run into one day. Right around the area Jackson and I were sitting in now, finishing up our meals. But I didn’t want to jinx it, because we were so much more than that, what was happening with us was true serendipity. So to avoid the potential jinx, I cut the visit short.

“We should probably start getting back,” I told him. I had no idea if it had been a full hour or not, but I was about done with being out there and wanted to go home, relax and be alone with Melody.

After we parted ways, my mind was doing cruel things to me, insisting that I wasn't good enough for Melody. That I was a failure who didn't have an original musical thought in his head.

I put my hand in my pocket and pressed it against my phone comfortingly. All it would take was one text message to my dealer, and those thoughts would go away. I forced the idea out of my head, but I feared it would come back in again and again and, sooner or later, I wouldn't be able to resist it.

“Stop it,” I said aloud. “We're not going there. We're going home where everything is in order.”

Putting it into actual words somehow made it feel like more of a commitment, and I didn't take the exit that would have led to his place. Instead, I kept driving until I got to my apartment complex.

I parked the car and took the stairs up. As I walked down the hallway, I heard muffled bass through the walls — music, played too loudly. Somebody was having a party.

Wonderful, I thought.

But I'd just put in earplugs and ignore it as I fell into my bed and, if I couldn't sleep, at least lay there with my eyes closed until it was time to wake up again.

As I walked towards my unit, the music got louder. Almost in denial, I began to convince myself that it must be a neighbor throwing the party, but by the time I got to my door, I knew that the sounds were coming from within my apartment.

Of course it's Melody, I thought. It was her opening day. Of course she'd want to celebrate.

I opened the door and was instantly hit with the familiar smell of alcohol. There was a party going on my apartment and it was a party just like the New Years Eve I lost Wendy, and that triggered a kind of fear in me that I didn’t know how to handle. It wrapped a feeling of temptation that I couldn’t let escape, and feeling of pain I never wanted to relive. This is not what I wanted to come home to. This was not something I could handle, not in my safe space. This wasn’t a bar or a restaurant. This was my home, and my home was the one place I couldn’t just leave.

I knew I would be in trouble if I didn’t take care of this immediately. My head was spinning, I felt like I was in the twilight zone, and after nearly a year and a half of complete sobriety, this was the first time where I felt like everything was completely out of control.

CHAPTER19

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