DECEMBER 25TH 2004
JOEY
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, it was to a room full of mid-morning sunshine and a pillow of blonde hair in my face.
Naked as the day I was born, I had my arm thrown over a blonde who had her equally naked back to me.
Pain, undiluted and toxic, instantly flooded my chest, seeping through every vein and artery in my body until I could feel nothing but misery.
Darkness enveloped me.
Sucking in a pained breath when the familiar pang of hunger clawed at my throat, I tightened my fists, locking my muscles into place,
My hunger wasn’t for food.
It was for heroin.
Disgusted, I thought about how far I had fallen.
How I had let myself become my father.
I was poisoned on the inside just like he was.
I couldn’t get beyond it.
This hereditary weakness handed down to me by the person I hated most in this world would forever eat me alive from the inside out.
Addiction had settled deep inside of me like a leach attaching itself to a blood-filled carcass.
Frozen to the spot, and with my stomach twisted up in knots, I desperately tried to rake through my hazed thoughts, until the familiar scent of her shampoo flooded my senses.
Molloy…
Heaving a huge sigh of relief, I shifted closer to her warm body and pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder.
She sniffled in response.
I froze.
She sniffled again.
Ah fuck.
She choked out a sob.
The last few days’ events came trickling back to me, bit by bit, and my blood ran cold as shame enveloped me in its familiar embrace.
No.
No.
Fuck no…
“Molloy.” My voice was strangled and torn. “Baby, I’m so fucking—“
“You’re not good for me,” she whispered brokenly, clinging to the hand I had wrapped around her. “I get that now.” Her fingers dug into my forearm. “But it doesn’t stop my heart from loving you, or my head from wanting you.”
I could feel her pain.
It was hemorrhaging out of her chest and pouring straight into mine.
She was the only person I’d ever loved that hadn’t been produced from between my mother’s legs. That was a horrible fucking image, but I meant it. I cared very little about anything or anyone besides the children who shared my bloodline, because those poor defenseless bastards shared my misfortune.
But I cared about the girl in my arms.
I cared an awful lot about this girl.
‘You might be the addict in this relationship, but you’re also the habit that I need to kick,” she strangled out, chest heaving, as she turned in my arms to face me. “Because I feel like I’m dying when I’m with you, and I feel like I’m dead when I’m not.”
Her tears were on my shoulder.
I could feel them.
It shook me to my fucking core.
I wanted to make it up to her, show her the better side of me, but I was just so fucking tired.
I was bone weary, on the inside and out.
Her eyes were red and swollen.
There was no morality in this.
No one needed to love me if it meant that it hurt them this deeply.
“Aoife.” What was left of my heart cracked clean open in my chest. “It kills me that I’ve done this to you.“
“And I can’t walk away, because I know that there’s still a little bit of you left in there,” she choked out. Placing her hand over the part of my chest that bore her name, she sniffled another sob and whispered, “Which means that I’m going to keep on loving you, Joey Lynch. So, you might want to start thinking about stopping breaking my heart.”
Curling up against me, she buried her face in my chest and continued to cry.
Her long blonde hair was all around us, her shoulders completely slumped, and I forced myself to take a good hard look at the destruction I’d caused.
This is why you don’t have nice things, my conscience hissed while my lungs constricted to the point that I couldn’t fucking breathe. Because you break them!
Feeling my way through the haze of drugs and feelings, I watched her break down right there in my arms, while I wrestled the evil bastard demon inside of my head – the one that refused to let me do right by this girl.
The harder I fought to take control of this piece of shit person I’d morphed into, the stronger the demon became.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could whisper, as I held her. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
The louder she cried, the tighter my lungs squeezed until she was full on screaming into my chest, and I was full-on dying on the inside.
And only then did I find the strength to do what needed to be done.
Only then did I find the strength to save her.
From me.
