You Don't Really Have to Breathe

I was already in the truck, hands folded in my lap pouring my eyes into the dashboard. I could feel the hit coming and it wouldn’t take long now to soften up, especially since I’d been off it for a while now. Almost automatically my mind and body responded to his presence. The twinge of want made itself quite clear in my throat. I wasn’t about to start the conversation. His jaw tightened and he pushed the truck up to sixty.
“ Everything okay?” He didn’t sound concerned, but that could also be my bad judgment I seem to have with people. The cars heater was on max and it fit perfectly with the temperature of my body, I was almost there.
“ I’m Fine. What brought this on? I mean I really am grateful.” Fucking relax! A couple minutes later he must have noticed the change in me cause he peered over almost too eagerly seeming to wince anxiously. I had rolled my head back, my eyes going with it and my mouth hung agape. My breathing had slowed like the dying of a person, yes, perfect. It didn’t even bother me that he kept looking. I was almost too pleased.
“ How much?” He spat at me with anger. His tone confused me but not as much as the question. What had he asked anyway? My head was off on the rolls of the ocean.
“ Excuse me, Connor?” The words lolled on my tongue with a sense of purpose, but not even I at this point could figure out any kind of purpose in anything. I was beyond the point of humanity.
“ I know you have shit. Look at you. You fuckin sit like that all day in school and I just know you have it,” the anger pressed on and it made my craving for him so much stronger. Human emotions couldn’t be dealt at this level of ecstasy; the feelings with heroin were something completely different. Excelled to the point of pain, but the pain was ecstasy. I laughed a pure ring of angel laughter and settled right into my heaven. He seemed to want to pull me out of it because he pressed on. “ How much of it did you take anyway? And when? I mean you were gone for about two minutes.” Suspicion now pressed forward off his lips and I could see it, feel it, floating in the air around us. It tasted of my mother’s personality. Always suspicious.
“ In the hallway, I was hasty in my escape you see, you make me nervous.” My brain meshed the words together into an inconceivable heap that hopefully he couldn’t follow either. His laughter bounced of the truck sides and hit me full on in the ears. It hurt.
“ Yea, I’m the scary one. Do you realize you aren’t the easiest person to confront.” Not a question, cause he went on once again. “ You make me anxious, I want the heroin Nola.”
“ That’ll be ten for a dime please. Am I really so easy to spot?” The frown on my face made him laugh again. This wasn’t working, my plan had crashed and burned long ago.
“ No problem. Will you be my usual, please? And I wouldn’t say easy, it’s more like I know what to look for I guess…” he drifted off, or maybe my ears had cut him off because I was somewhere else all of a sudden. The insides of my stomach churned and cranked my head into gear. Am I dying? Oh no, I took bad shit, didn’t I? Questions, questions, questions!
“ Please pull over.” Work mouth, work. He saw my face; all pressed up into hard lines and eased the truck over to the side of the road. I broke out into a run, if you could really call it that in the state I was in and kneeled by the brush that was twenty feet from the road. The moist ground pushed itself up at me and the smell of rotting fall leaves that were now baking in spring sun did unruly things to my gut. I heaved but nothing came, lunch wasn’t an option for me, or breakfast, or any other meal. I fell limp on the ground and looked up at the sky, was it always so blue? And for one second, I could hear heaven. It was falling down on me in little sprinkles of rainbow droplets. They splattered on my skin with an almost inaudible tinkling noise and made my skin feel silky smooth. I had no intentions of moving, besides, my body wasn’t even connected to me anymore. My name came calling after me over and over but my mouth was all tied up in lovely strings. They felt soothing compared to the words that came rushing in down on my face. Then, my heaven enveloped me into darkness. I said goodbye to everything I wouldn’t miss.
“Nola?!”
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I guess my consciousness was in a hurry because too soon I came around from my stupor. The light was ten times brighter than it should have been and I couldn’t recognize the place I was in. I was dead right? My heaven was a small wood paneled room with a twin-sized bed and different scattered posters all over the wall. Well, this sucked. In heaven I always thought I would get a bigger fluffier bed. Then it dawned on me, I’m in hell.
“ You fucking scared the shit out of me. I swear to god, you better not have brain damage or something crazy, cause I can’t handle getting in anymore trouble right now.” Ugh, shut up I thought… I want time to think. Think about why I was able to be around such an amazing person in hell. I slowly raised myself from…the couch? As much as I was out of it, I was well aware of the fact that something dreadfully wrong had gone down and my body couldn’t handle much.
“ What…happened? Connor? Where am I?!” Too quickly I realized I was in his room. The high was gone and the fried nerves were exposed again.
“ My house. You blacked out, for about, well twenty minutes. I’m sorry I didn’t bring you somewhere…” he was sorry, but I wasn’t. He had brought me somewhere and though I may be nervous his room was an exception I was willing to take.
“ No, I’m sorry. I’ll leave; you shouldn’t have had to do this. Connor, this doesn’t happen I’m sorry.” The words were sincere but I was already kicking myself out. Why the fuck am I so brainless? Then the back of my thoughts reminded me that he more than likely didn’t even want me around. It hurt, but I would take it like I had to everything else. I stood and tried to get to the door, but his hands clasped around my arms and held me still. This felt even better than my heaven. I was able to take in his face, strong and well formed. The hard lines of his jaw and cheekbones pulled together to make his face soft and inviting. I was too shy to look into his eyes.
“ Yea, I dunno. You still seem kind of out of it. I can drive you later,” he eyed me carefully trying to determine if he could get rid of me yet. “ Do you need anything?” You, I need you. I need you like heroin.
“ No, no, no, I’m fine, really. And I can walk home, you’ve done too much,” I pressed, hoping I could make my escape as quickly as possible as much as it would kill me. I would walk home too, even though it was about five miles from here. Good sobering up time,
“ Shut up,” but it was a nice shut up. “ I’m driving you, I don’t want to be responsible if you get hit by a car or anything.” He laughed a hard laugh, it sounded fake. So he did want me gone? He hated me having to be in his room. He went to get his keys and I put a ten bag in his book on the desk, to thank him, of course. He didn’t know how blissful his presence made me, despite all the coma.