Page 136 of Made in Love and Blood

“A what?”

“A fucking bag in the goddamn bag! You’ll know what I’m talking about!”

He put his head to Nico’s chest, listening there.

“Come on, kid, we are running out of time here,” he snarled.

Another two breaths went into Nico. Frankie found the bag.

The only thing in Nico’s backpack that weren’t his or hers was a plastic Ziplock bag with the Neon Rage logo stamped on it.

“Keep cutting this fucking shit with Fentanyl all the fucking time,” the man raged under his breath after snatching the bag from Frankie. He found whatever it was he needed, something that looked like a nasal spray. He continued to bitch about the supply on his streets and things she didn’t understand as he opened the package and put the contents under Nico’s nose. He looked at Frankie, saying, “This is not going to be nice, okay? Sorry, but if you wanna play with drugs, this is what can happen. Either go in another room or just keep quiet for the next couple of minutes.”

“What?”

He didn’t give her the option to choose. He released whatever was in the spray.

At the same time, he pulled a silver phone from his pocket. By the time he finished dialing, Nico’s eyes had opened. His lips paled to a soft pink, and he gasped hard.

“Yeah,” the man said into the phone, “Joey boy, I need a drip girl in Suite 202 at Sybaris in the next twenty minutes. Tell her it pays well.” A second passed and he muttered, “Thanks.”

He hung up. The phone fell to the nightstand.

Right before Nico rolled to his side and vomited so much it made Frankie turn away. She couldn’t escape the sound though, or how he continued to heave and gag between struggling words.

“What t-the fu-fuck,” he mumbled. “What the fuck, man.”

“That’s what you get when you don’t party safe, kid. And I know damn well you know how to party safe,” the man replied, the sound of his hand hitting Nico’s back making Frankie shudder each time it landed. “How come your little friend here didn’t know you had a pack with Narcan in it for this?”

“Why—” Nico vomited more, eventually managing to ask, “Why does your rave club have bad drugs?”

He promptly started vomiting again.

“Come on, better out than in your lungs. Had that happened, you’d have been dead for sure. Wouldn’t that have been a fucking sight for your little girlfriend to wake up to, huh?”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Neon’s always been safe,” Nico argued through another gag.

“Nothing’s safe here anymore. You’d know that if you came around any, but you haven’t shown your face in my city in a while, Little Nicky.”

“Fuck off!”

The man turned to Frankie, but she refused to look at him, then, saying, “See that, that’s the Narcan. Sometimes they wake up fighting, puking, or they can wake up mean. He doesn’t mean that when he says it.”

“No, I do, Carmine.” Nico coughed himself into a fit, but that didn’t stop him from bitching more when he finished. “I mean all of it, you prick.”

“Mmhmm, you’re gonna need a new room.”

Nico gagged again, but it sounded like more vomit found its way out of his body. Frankie wished when she closed her eyes and covered her ears, it helped. Except closing her eyes meant seeing the night and morning come back in flashes and black and white blips.

They’d had sex.

Right where he almost died. High and laughing together. It only stung a little, for a short while, and she remembered the small bloodstain left behind when it was done. Proof.

It would still be there. Like he was still on her, now, messy between her thighs.