want him to see it, so I walked over to the sink and washed the juice off my hands. I couldn’t look at him when I answered, “Yes. Every day.”
“I gave Billy his first bag. I’m the reason he started using.”
I looked at him as he stirred the oatmeal with his finger. He wasn’t going to eat it. Neither was I. I couldn’t imagine putting anything in my stomach at this point.
This was his guilt, the part of our pasts that ate at him, and from what I could see, it was just as deep as the part that gnawed at me. I couldn’t let him take the blame.
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” He pushed his tray away and moved over to the wall next to me, leaning back against it, as he glared down at me. “He wanted to try it. He wanted to know what all the hype was about. He wanted just a taste…and I fucking gave it to him.”
“He would have tasted it whether you’d given it to him or not.”
He didn’t seem convinced.
“It was all over The Heart. His mom and Paulie used. He could have gotten it from either of them. Stop blaming yourself, Garin.”
“I deserve the blame. It’s mine.” He slammed his fist against the wall. “Aside from you, I was the only person in his life who truly gave a shit, who wasn’t whacked out of their mind on drugs, who was supposed to keep him safe.” He punched the wall again, but it wasn’t out of anger. This time, his face was filled with sadness. “I didn’t keep him safe. I led him straight down the path that the rest of his family took.”
“Stop. Garin—”
“For years, I begged him to go to rehab. I offered to pay for it. I offered to get him a job once he was clean and buy him a house and make sure he never wanted for anything ever again. He wouldn’t go.” He rubbed his hands against his thighs, like the friction would take away his pain. “I couldn’t fix him, Kyle. It’s all I wanted. It’s all I ever wanted.”
The room went silent, but the lack of noise didn’t hide the emotion that pulsed inside here. It was in Garin’s eyes. It was in me.
“Once Paulie died, there wasn’t anything we could have done for him,” I said. “If he hadn’t already been using, he probably would have started then. That pain…it was too much.”
I remembered all the times Anthony had found me on the floor of my closet. There weren’t any windows in there; there wasn’t any light. It was just my tears, my shaking body, four walls, darkness, and guilt. Anthony would pull me off the floor and tell me to stop crying and demand that I get my shit together. It had taken me months before I had found my breath again.
“I wish it hadn’t changed everything between us.”
We’d talked about this before, but it felt different now. More personal. Much more intimate.
“Me, too,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around my stomach to dull the ache.
It wasn’t from hunger but from all the regret I felt. I wished more than anything that things hadn’t changed between the guys and me. My whole life would have been different. I wouldn’t have been in this cell. I wouldn’t have been living in Florida. Maybe I wouldn’t have even had my shop.
“Then, why did we let it?” he asked.
There was no we. It was all me.
If I gave him an answer, I would be confessing every bit of truth I’d been hiding. It would be the biggest relief. It would probably eliminate all of my anxiety. I wouldn’t have a hard time finding my breath ever again.
But I couldn’t do it.
“Some things are so destructive that they’re impossible to recover from. I think losing Paulie showed us the scary reality of what could happen to any of us and…” Lies. All lies.
We knew how dangerous The Heart was; we knew the possibilities. We’d seen them. Daily. Paulie’s death should have driven me toward the guys; it shouldn’t have caused me to run from them.
“And it was just too much,” I said.
“So, we shouldn’t get close to anyone because we don’t know when we’ll suddenly lose them?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know what else to do, what else to say. The lies were building layer by layer.
His hand touched my shoulder. I imagined him kissing me, caressing me even more. But what I really deserved was for