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6
Jackson
I’m shakingby the time the door slams in her face.
Shaking trembling, and barely containing myself.
A roaring fire that I extinguished years and years ago ignites inside of my chest, engulfing me in flame. Until I squeeze my eyes shut and grind my jaw painfully tight to extinguish the heat.
I grasp the edges of the door frame in an iron grip, sucking in air through my teeth.
But I’m still staring at the tree line through the peephole in the door long after she disappears. Part of me that's been buried for longer than I've been missing wants to follow her into the woods, stop her, press her to a tree and bury myself inside of her as she squeals for more.
And yet…perhaps underneath that carnal desire, there's asmall, tiny, broken hidden piece of me that just wants to save a stranger in need.
I roll my eyes.
Or not.
I turn, my jaw setting. There hasgotto be fucking booze somewhere in this goddamn house.
I start in the kitchen. Logically, the demon in me has already found whatever I've stashed away. Whatever I've hidden has long since been discovered and consumed. But that doesn't stop me from hunting.
I poke under the sink, in cupboards, behind cereal bowls, behind the toilets. I look in places no stable human should be hiding liquor from themselveswithout admitting they have a problem.
Fine. Fuck it. I have a problem.
And I don’t give a single shit.
The quest for booze becomes a quest to forget the girl who just showed up on my doorstep. It leads me to parts of the house I've barely been in in years. The attic. The guest rooms for guests that have never appeared, or even been invited. Under the couch. Behind the dryer.
Finally, however, success strikes like Ben Franklin’s kite getting hit by lightning.
But it comes with a price.
The bottle of scotch is twenty years old. It's not twenty years old because it'sgoodscotch. It’s twenty years old because it's shitty scotch I left here twenty fucking years ago. Back when I first picked up this house. Back when I left this bottle where I just found it today, in the bass drum of the drum kit in the half-set-up recording studio in the east wing of the mansion.
It’s a gag gift I left for Iggy, for when we were all going to come here and record our next opus.
Before everything changed.
Before we ended up never coming here together as a group.
Before I was the last one here—an aging, fallen idol, living in a monument to what was.
Either way, reaching into the base drum and locking fingers around the glass bottle brings a mix of relief to finally have my poison. But also, the pain that comes with anything linking me to Iggy.
To Will. To Asher.
To anything and everything that was, before it all fell apart.
But at least I have the relief I need.
I stop by the living room on my way back to the kitchen. And the demon in me halts my steps when it spots the mirror on the coffee table.
Who am I to deny him?
Bending over the table, I inhaled the last remnants of my cocaine, making a mental note to text Scott the next time I'm on the mainland to arrange for more.
