I pointed at the opposite wall. “Over there in about a thousand pieces.”
“Oh. Okay.” She was unfazed and ran again for her purse, while something peculiar, something different, began to nag at my mind.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I began, as she came back with a compact in hand, “did you get that shit from your bag?”
“What? This?” She held up the coke, dangling it from her fingertips, and I nodded. “Yeah, I brought some to my parents' house.”
“You, what?” I asked, raising my voice.
Andy was surprised by my tone and stammered, “I-I-I brought it to my—”
“I heard you.” I stood up, thrusting my hands into my hair and beginning to pace. “Oh, fuckin' God ...”
This wasn't supposed to happen. We always did this shit here, in the apartment, where I could oversee things and maintain some semblance of control. But the control I thought I’d had was nothing but an illusion, just something I'd told myself to make it seem like I was handling it. But I now realized, it was just another lie that I'd been holding onto. The only one that I had actually believed.
“You weren't supposed to do that,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Goddammit, you weren't supposed to do that ...”
What had I really thought would happen? Did I really think I could introduce her to this shit and expect we'd always be on the same page? I had always been very disciplined in my drug usage, even in my youth, but why had I ever been stupid enough to expect she would be the same way? Why hadn't I known better?
“Vinnie,” Andy said, rushing over to take my hands in hers, “it's okay, just relax.”
“I can't fuckin' relax!” My anger was explosive and I pulled my hands from her grasp. “Jesus Christ, Andy! What if someone saw you?”
She lowered her gaze and worried her bottom lip. “Nobody saw me, but ...”
“But?”
“My dad did walk in but I don't think he saw—”
“Jesus fuckin' Christ! This is why we only do this shit here! This is why we don't ever take it out! Goddammit!” I was pacing, gripping my hair in a white-knuckled grasp and thinking of every possible worst-case scenario.
“I don't understand what the big deal is. I—”
“And that,” I pointed at her, “is the problem. Do you understand how many people I've known who've ended up in prison over this shit?”
She shook her head, keeping her rapidly blinking gaze on the floor. “I don't—”
“A lot, Andy. I've known a lot of people who've had the cops called on them. What if your old man had called the cops on you? What if, right now, you were sittin' in a precinct somewhere while the police raided this apartment? Huh? And that's the least of the problems that could've happened. Do you even realize that?”
She didn't, and that was an issue. Maybe the biggest one of all.
“Fuck ...” I turned away from her quiet, blank stare, to face the couch and pile of coke. Then, I asked, “Why are you here?”
“What? Because I live here—”
“No,” I spun on my heel to face her, “why are you here, with me?”
Her jaw flapped several times before she responded. “I-I love—”
“I know, you love me. But why? Why did you let this get that far? Why didn't you turn around when you found out about this shit and run far away?”
She began to cry. I didn't take pride in her tears, but I did feel relief. They meant she still had a conscience, that she could still feel.
“I don't know,” she admitted. “I just ... I didn't want to leave you, and I wanted to see—”
“Wanted to see what?”
“I-If it really does help you escape. Baby, why ... why are you asking me—”
I stared off toward the wall and asked myself more than her, “What the hell could've been so bad you needed to escape?”
Suddenly, none of it made any sense, none of her, none of us. What the hell was I even doing with her? I could still remember the initial spark and what I had found so appealing. It had been the anomaly of her innocent confidence and her brazen reluctance. She had been intriguing to me and I'd gone for it, not realistically thinking that this good, sweet woman would want anything to do with a low-life like me.
But that had all changed somewhere along the way. She had changed. And it had been me to change her, I knew that, but was there