Before I Let You Go(71)

“Please let me help,” he says, and then he punctuates his sentences with kisses all over my face. “Please let me support you. Please let me carry you. Please let me care for you.”

“I’ll try. I’ll try harder.”

He presses his forehead against mine and draws in a slow breath.

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

“Okay.” Then he adds in a whisper, “So we’re okay?”

“We’re okay.”

“Good,” Sam says softly. “Then that’s all that matters.”





30


ANNIE


Luke,

Everything is darker from here. My story up until now has had shades of light, but we’ve reached the part where it starts to spiral.

It was such an ordinary night. I had finished the first draft of my manuscript and was working through refining it. I actually had the first few chapters ready to send off to my editor friend. I’d been procrastinating about sending them for weeks, though, and the longer I prolonged it the more nervous I became about how it would be received. I was so worried about the email that I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a walk.

Then I called my dealer and I bought a bag.

I didn’t see the police officer—I only realized he’d been watching the deal when he crash-tackled me as I turned to walk away. I was arrested for possession of a controlled substance. The judge granted bail, but there was no one in Chicago I could call to get me out except for my boss and colleagues—and there was no way I could call them. I sat in the cell for half the night before I finally found the courage to call Lexie.

I told her some bullshit story about how it was all a mix-up and I was scared work would find out and I’d lose my job. She called my boss first thing the next morning and told him I was really sick, and she got on a plane. She was in Chicago by lunchtime to post bail.

In the cab on the way back to my apartment, she was silent—staring out the window, her expression completely blank. I kept glancing at her, waiting for her to say something. When we got to my apartment, I made us both coffees, and we sat at my little dining room table.

“The cop told me that you were buying heroin, Annie,” she whispered. “You said on the phone it was a mix-up. Can you explain that to me?”

“I was buying weed,” I lied, and I said it so convincingly that even I nearly believed it. “I use it occasionally to de-stress when I’m busy at work. I think the dealer panicked when he saw the cop and he passed me the wrong bag. Such bad luck.”

Lexie thought about this for a while, and then she nodded.

“And . . . the weed . . . are you using much?”

“Hardly ever, Lex, I promise you,” I said. “Every now and again—but obviously after last night, that’ll stop.”

Lexie went home that same day—she couldn’t miss any more work. She made me promise to tell her my court date, but I didn’t—instead, I called her after it was over and I pretended I’d forgotten she wanted to be there.

I was actually lucky that time. I had been buying from the same dealer for years and trusted him, so I’d accepted the paper bag he’d offered me without checking the ziplock bag inside. The cop had seen me give a hundred dollars to the dealer, which would have been quite a lot of weed, but the paper bag contained only a few grams of powder. The prosecution argued that if I really did just ask for weed, I must have known I wasn’t getting what I asked for purely by the weight of the bag, but the judge felt they’d failed to prove my guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

“You and I both know what really went on that night, Ms. Vidler,” he said to me as he delivered his verdict. “But the prosecution has failed to prove their case sufficiently, so I have no choice but to find you not guilty. Take this as a free pass from the universe and sort your life out, because there won’t be a second one.”

My lawyer told me afterward that if the cop had seen me check the bag, it would have meant a felony and likely jail time—up to four years. That scared the shit out of me, and I stayed stone-cold sober for weeks.

But I missed the rush and I missed the high. I don’t think I was physically addicted yet—there was no withdrawal; instead, I missed it like I missed Lexie . . . like I missed Mom . . . like I missed Dad. For better or worse, heroin was part of my family now.

I was more careful when I bought it the next time—I found a new dealer, covered my tracks better, got a bit smarter about hiding it. But then I felt smart, and superior—and more confident that I’d been caught once and I knew how to stop it from happening again.

And I still hadn’t sent the chapters, but now I was starting to worry that I’d taken too long. So instead of sitting up worrying about whether the editor was going to like what I’d written, I sat up and worried that I’d missed my one shot to make it.

I started using a little more regularly—every week, instead of every second week—then every few days, and then it snowballed. The more I used it, the less sick I felt after, but the harder it was to hit the rush—so I was using more and more. Soon, I was bumping the minute I walked in the door from work, and then the day came when I couldn’t get myself out the door without a hit, and then I was sneaking my kit into my bag so I could bump at lunchtime just to get through the day.