My Heart Races for You

~~Caleb’s POV~~

“HAVE YOU BEEN FUCKING USING AGAIN?!”

“WHAT THE FUCK?! NO!”

My eyes shot open to the screaming that occurred behind my closed door, leading to the living room. I rolled over to the small corner desk that my phone rested on and read the time. It was only 5:41 in the morning. I groaned and got out of my bed. The screaming continued. It was hardly muffled due to how loud my obnoxious roommates were being.

I opened my door, rubbing my eye with my fist. Manny was chasing Josh around the living room, circling the couch.

“What are we? Fucking five years old? What the fuck is going on?” I complained. I really hated being woken up by anything that wasn’t my alarm set by myself.

“Nothing! Manny is being an ass,” Josh shouted unnecessarily, keeping his attention focused on keeping distance from Manny.

Manny didn’t respond to Josh’s remark and paced over to the table placed in front of the couch. He picked up a plastic sandwich bag and threw it at me. Inside it was 5 pills. Molly, to be exact. My head shot back up to Josh who looked as though he went to the bathroom in his pants. I flared my nostrils, furrowed my eyebrows, and took a deep breath. “Are you fucking serious?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t answer in a way that would piss me off even more.

Josh bolted for the door but Manny, being faster, blocked the door. Josh then backed into the middle of the living room area; equal distance from Manny and I. Manny began walking towards Josh. Josh’s attention was drawn away from me for a second. I took advantage of it and tackled him, knocking the couch over backwards in the process. We exchanged some blows until I got his arms trapped behind his back and pressing his face into the floor. He kicked and squirmed for a couple seconds until he realized he wouldn’t be able to escape.

“Why the fuck are you using again!?” I demanded, gripping his two wrists with my large hand tighter.

“What’s the big deal? It’s just taking some stress off my shoulders,” He muttered, flinching at the moment I applied more pressure to his head to the floor.

“From doing what? Sitting on your ass all day and doing nothing?” Manny questioned while turning the couch back over.

I realized that Josh was becoming relaxed. I released my grip from his wrists and eased my other hand off of his head. We both rose to our feet and gave each other a mean look for a couple seconds. We all went and sat down on our set of couches. Manny threw the bag of pills on the table.

“Dude, honestly what the fuck?” Manny began complaining.

Josh has a history with drugs. He began experimenting with them as soon as he entered college. He got really hooked on molly, cocaine, and used steroids to try to bulk up. He admitted to once trying heroin but didn’t like how strong it was, which was a miracle because it becomes really difficult to stop being addicted to for certain people.

During his junior year in college he realized that his addiction was leading him to spending all of his money and skipping a majority of his classes to satisfy his ‘needs.’ He attended rehab for almost a year to recover from it and had to attend meetings for six months after. This is why Manny and I thought it would be a really good idea for him to stay with us. That and the fact that we’ve all been close friends our entire lives. It made life fun so far.

“Guys I’m really sorry. I just snapped,” Josh confessed while stuffing his face into his hands in shame.

“Well what happened? When did you start doing this shit again?” Manny picked up the bag to examine closer.

“Well two weeks ago, I went for one of my walks that usually help whenever I feel that I might start thinking too much about using again. I got about two blocks away when this guy started offering me some weed and a price tag along with it. I never liked weed, so I easily said no. Then he told me to stop being a little bitch, so I told him about how I used to do much harder stuff. He then pulled out a bag with some molly in it. Told me I could have the seven pills for two hundred,” Josh shook his head, staring at the ground.

“And you got the money from…?” Manny paused waiting for an answer.

“I took a hundred from that stack you keep in your sock drawer,”

“You fucker!”

Manny jumped to attack Josh but I reacted quickly enough to hold him back. “Relax! We’re gonna work this out!” I shouted throwing him back down onto his seat.

I closed my eyes for a moment, took a slow and deep breath, and sat back down.

“The guy you got this from wasn’t affiliated with N-12 were they?”

“No. Definitely not. At least I don’t think so,”

Josh’s uncertainty was making me feel uneasy. By the look Manny was giving me, he was feeling the same way. Manny cursed and walked off into his room.

N-12 was a relatively small group running the streets and moving drugs in the Las Vegas area. N-12 was short for ‘The Notorious 12.” There were twelve main members of the gang, who pretty much ran the entire thing. They made sure their higher ups in Mexico got their large sums of money. It was apart of the Mexican drug cartel. Their group was set to take Vegas as their territory. Judging from the reputation Las Vegas has, it was probably one of the most profitable.

Josh got tangled up with the group during our time living in Nevada. He started hanging out in the city by himself, mainly looking for women. One of the people who ran N-12 happened to come across Josh in a casino, and that was the end of that. Josh came to a point where he couldn’t pay them the money he owed, which was a whopping $5,000.

One thing led to another. Manny and I opted in to help him get out of business with them. A high-speed chase occurred, crazy amounts of gunfire, and I ended up killing one of the 12. But that’s a story for another time. We quickly got out of Nevada and came here to Los Angeles. Running into them again or any part of that chain would cause some serious problems for us. We can’t keep moving around.

Manny came back in, grabbed the pills, and walked back out. A couple moments of silence filled the room but were broken by the sound of our toilet flushing.