Hurts So Good Read online

  “Yeah?” They looked at each other, and a sick feeling formed in the pit of his stomach. The swaying of the thick tree branches in his front yard threatened to give out at any moment from the violent winds.

  “Your parents were Aleksander and Mila?”

  His throat closed. They had phrased that in past tense. He shook his head but answered. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, but they were involved in a motor vehicle accident off of Interstate Seventy-six. The road conditions from the inclement weather caused your father, who was driving, to lose control and hydroplane.” Mack saw the officer’s mouth moving, but he had since lost his hearing. All that he now heard was the thundering of his heart in his ears, and the suffocating feeling of his throat closing in. “Son, are you still with us?” The other officer with graying hair and thick sideburns leaned closer and knitted his brows in worry.

  “Mack. Oh, God.” Through his frantic pulse he heard Jane and the sorrow-filled emotion that laced her voice. She touched his arm, but he shook her off. He couldn’t be touched right now. The cops had to be wrong, because his parents couldn’t be gone. The room spun, or maybe it was his mind that had checked out? Either way he couldn’t stand any longer, and so he let gravity take him to the ground as his knees buckled. He didn’t feel the pain of hitting the tiled entryway, and didn’t comprehend anything aside from hearing the police officer’s words playing over and over in his head.

  His parents dead from a car accident.His parents dead from a car accident. His parents dead from a car accident.

  The cops were in the house now, coming closer with their hands out in a nonthreatening way, as if they wanted to comfort him. Jane stood to the side, her tears fat and heavy and falling down her cheeks as strongly as the rain fell from the sky. He looked between them, felt bile rise in his throat as grisly images slammed into his head on a continuous reel. The pain was too much, so consuming that he couldn’t contain it any longer. For the first time in his life, Mack cried, and he didn’t care how hard the sobs tore from him, or who saw him break.

  ****

  It had been nearly four weeks since his parents had been gone, and only three hours since he had started drinking for the day. It wasn’t even two in the afternoon. Nothing mattered anymore, and he found himself slowly sinking further into his own personal hell, but he liked it, liked the pain it caused because it was what he needed to forget about everything else. He sat in the living room of his house, looking around at the family portraits that lined the wall all around him. He brought the bottle of Jack to his mouth, took a long fucking swig, and set it back on his thigh. It was nearly gone, and the burn of the whiskey had long since left him. Now the only thing that was in its place was a blissful numbness. He had shut everyone out, forced himself into solitude, but right now he wasn’t good company for anyone. He hadn’t answered his phone, and the ones that had come over to check up on him had a firsthand experience of his downfall. He pushed them away slowly until they just didn’t come by anymore, and that was fine by him.

  There was a soft knock on the door, but instead of getting up he brought the bottle to his mouth and finished it off. He was drunker than hell, but he wasn’t nearly done. Getting another bottle of liquor would have required him to get up, and right now he didn’t think he couldn’t stand upright. So, instead he reached in his pocket, took out the joint, and picked up the lighter from the coffee table. There was another knock on the door, and then he heard it open and close.

  “Mack?” Jane’s soft voice came through the fog that was his brain. Fuck, she was the last person he wanted to see right now. She had been the most adamant in sticking by him and trying to pull him out of this black hole he was slowly sinking into. He loved her, but he just couldn’t bring himself to get better right now, not even when she pleaded with him to do just that.

  He put the joint between his lips and lit the end with the lighter. The tip glowed a vibrant red as he inhaled deeply, and then he held the sweet smoke in his lungs. Jane called out again, and then she was moving around the couch and standing in front of him. She knitted her brows, and a look of worry crossed her face.

  “Not now, Jane,” Mack said as he exhaled. Smoke billowed around him, and she waved her hand in front of her.

  “So now you’ve resorted to getting high as well as staying drunk all day long?” He didn’t respond, just inhaled again, held the smoke in, and slowly blew it out. “Mack, I know you’re hurting.” His anger that had been buried with booze and weed rose up violently, and he ground his teeth.

  “You don’t fucking know how I feel, Jane.” He lowered his voice and forced himself to stay calm. This was his girl, his Janie, even if he was a motherfucker right now and keeping her at a distance. He just couldn’t deal with anyone right now. Right now he was not in a good place, and he was feeling really dangerous. He didn’t want to say something that he would regret, but if she stayed here any longer he knew that was where things would be headed. “Jane, please just go.” This was an ongoing conversation with her, because she was relentless in trying to reach him. He looked away and felt the effects of the weed moving through him, numbing him even further until nothing mattered.

  “Mack, please, just talk to me. That’s all I want.” She sat on the edge of the coffee table, and their knees touched. “It has been nearly a month since they passed away, and every day I see you falling further into this ugliness. You won’t talk to anyone, won’t let anyone in or help you. I worry about you constantly until I feel sick with it.” She reached out, but he snatched his hand back. “It is going to eat you alive until there is nothing left.” Mack forced himself to stay on the couch, even though he didn’t want to be around her right now, and certainly not with how fucked up he was. “You’ve isolated yourself and pushed everyone away, me included. I love you so much, and I just want to help you through this.” She reached out and placed her hand on his thigh. “There is nothing I can say that can take your pain away, but all I can do is be there for you and help you get through this.” She stared into his eyes, and he felt this ugly wall he built around himself shake. “I know this isn’t really you. For the past year I have known you as a caring and gentle guy, the one I love more than anything else, and the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. You thought of others, didn’t let anything drag you down, and were so damn protective.” She curled her fingers into his thigh, and he watched as tears formed in her bright blue eyes. “I’m looking at a stranger right now, one that is drunk all day, and who I now see is resorting to drugs to get through his pain.” She started rubbing her hand up and down his thigh, and her fucking sympathy was his undoing. He inhaled from the joint again, and after he blew the smoke out he stood.

  “Jane, I don’t want to fucking talk. That’s why I’ve been keeping my distance because right now I am not good company.” His voice was slurred from the alcohol, and he was pretty fucking high on top of that. He ran a hand over his jaw, felt the three day old stubble, and knew he looked as shitty as he felt. He placed a hand in his front pocket, felt the tiny bag of oblivion, and curled his fingers around it. He had bought it just yesterday, but had yet to actually use it. There had been something holding him back.

  “God, Mack. I just want to slap you for how you’re acting. There are so many people that love you, but you are blind to that.” She stood, and her voice was rising slightly. “Your parents wouldn’t want to see you like this, and you know it.” He bit his tongue at her remark, because whatever would have come out of his mouth would have been vile and ugly in every sense of the word. “When was the last time you ate?” She took a step toward him, but he held up his hand to stop her. “You’re losing yourself, and making sure no one can get close enough to you to help.”

  “It hasn’t even been a fucking month, Jane. Four damn weeks since my mom and dad died.” Her eyes widened at the harsh, rage-filled tone of his voice.

  “I’m sorry.” She said those words on a whisper. “I am not saying these things to hur
t you further. I loved your mom and dad, and just want to be there for you.” He was shaking his head before she could finish speaking.

  He was going to be sick, but it wasn’t because of all the booze he had consumed. Her words weren’t lost on him, but he just didn’t want to hear them. “Right now I just want to be alone.” Tears welled in her eyes, and he felt like a bastard, but he knew he was going to get worse before he got better, and the sad part was he didn’t give a fuck. All he wanted was solitude and numbness. He wanted to process all of this without anyone else. He would only bring her down if he allowed her to stay, and he couldn’t do that to her. “I just want to be alone.”

  She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes, and it was clear her anger was stronger than her frustration. “If you think I am going to stand by and watch you ruin your life with alcohol and drugs—”

  “It isn’t your fucking life to ruin, Jane, and it wasn’t your fucking parents that died. You can’t possibly know what I’m going through.” He stabbed his finger at her. “You still have your parents.” He was screaming now, and although the room was spinning he stayed upright. “Right now I am no good for anyone, least of all you.” He closed his eyes and exhaled. When he opened them again it was to see her crying. “Just please. Leave, baby.” For a moment she stared at him. “Jane, just fucking leave. Can’t you see that I don’t want you in my life right now?” He roared out the words, already regretting them, but knowing until he could get his thoughts and emotions under control, all he was to Jane was a toxic mess. Her tears flowed harder and faster.

  “You don’t mean that.” She shook her head, and her blonde hair, which hung loosely around her shoulders, swayed back and forth.

  “Yeah, Jane, I really do mean it. I am not ready to get better. I like being numb, like that I can get that from the alcohol and weed. I don’t need you or anyone else telling me when I should move past this. Only I can decide that, and right now all I want to decide is if I want whiskey or vodka, and how many joints I want to smoke for the day. Now, please just get the fuck out of my life, because, baby, all I’ll do is take you to hell right along with me.” He felt so many hard emotions inside of himself, ones that were crippling, even through the fog of the mind-altering substances he was on.

  “I love you, and I’m not willing to give up on you, even if you want to continue to push me away.” She choked out those words, but in her face he could see her hesitance to leave.

  So, to make his point clear, and to make sure that Jane knew that bringing her closer would only ruin her right along with him, Mack said the most painful words he had ever uttered to someone he loved. “Jane, I’ve already given up on us. I just need you to leave, because loving you is not something I am capable of right now.” Her eyes widened. “Don’t come here again.” A shocked sound left her, and she wiped angrily at her tears. He turned away, not able to look into her face any longer, but also wanting to make his point clear. Shit, he needed something hard to drink and something potent to take, because his pain was coming back with a vengeance. What he really wanted to do was pull her into his arms and let all of his anguish out in the form of salty wetness. He heard her cry harder, and that clenched at his damn heart, but she didn’t say anything in response. The sound of her soft footsteps retreating had him squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his hands. The front door opening pierced the fog of agony in his brain, and for several seconds he knew she was just standing there, contemplating what she should do, but finally the sound of the door closing allowed him to wallow in his own misery.

  Mack took out the small baggie in his front packet and held it up. The white powder that was enclosed within the small square, transparent pack called to him, promised him the power to forget his past, his present, and his fucking future. It also was like a siren’s call to the ecstasy of falling off a cliff and never having to worry again. Before his parents died he had never touched drugs, had never even contemplated using them, but now all he could think about was letting himself fall into a chemically induced coma. After he grabbed a plate from the kitchen, a razorblade from the utility drawer, and moved back into the living room, he cut a nice long white line of cocaine along the glass. He stared at it for several long minutes, knowing that this would be the beginning of the end, but needing his pain to go. He felt dirty as he rolled a one dollar bill into a tight cylinder, but all of that faded into numbing euphoria when he lowered his upper body toward the coke, closed off one of his nostrils with his finger, and inhaled the thin white line deeply through his other nostril. The cocaine caused a pleasurable burn in his nose, traveled down the back of his throat, and seeped into his bloodstream.

  Yeah, this was the beginning of the end.

  Chapter Two

  Ten years later

  Jane sat at the stoplight light at the busiest intersection in Absinthe. She was finally moving back to her hometown, and although she had visited her parents a few times during the last decade, they had mostly been the ones to visit her in Colton, knowing that coming back here was just too damn painful. It didn’t matter that it had been so many years since she had seen Mack. She still loved him, still saw him as the eighteen-year-old that had lost his parents and was falling into his own personal hell. After she watched Mack spiral out of control, watched him deteriorate right before her eyes and continuously push her away, Jane just couldn’t do it anymore. Reaching out and trying to get him to go to a rehab facility hadn’t helped. Intervening with others that cared for him didn’t help. In fact, all it seemed to do was drive him further into his own self-loathing. It was so damn painful to watch him suffer, but she had done everything she could think of to try to help him, and nothing had worked. So, she had packed her belongings and gone to Colton U to start her life. It was near crippling to leave him, because she felt like she was just giving up on the man she loved, but it was a hard, nasty road he was on, and until he wanted to get better it just wasn’t going to happen.

  Of course her parents had kept her updated on his condition, and as much as she wanted to rush back to him, embrace him and never let him go, she had to think about herself and what her future held. But even knowing all of that, she had still tried to reach him, but she had never talked to him again, and soon gave up on the hope that someday they could reconcile. He had disconnected his phone, becoming some kind of recluse that only came out at night. Everyone they had gone to high school with had moved on with their lives, but Mack had stayed in Absinthe and in his past.

  The light changed to green, and she made her way down the busy main street of the town she had grown up in. After graduating with a Bachelor’s in business at Colton U, she had gone back for her Master’s degree. After graduate school she had worked at a law firm for four years, and when they opened up a smaller, more personal branch in Absinthe, and she got the offer to manage it, as painful as it was to come back, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. She drove by the bakery where she had used to get warm, freshly made croissants on Saturday mornings with her mom, passed the movie theater where she had seen more than a dozen films with Mack, and even saw Bonnie’s, the retro diner that Mack had taken her to the same night she had given him her virginity. God, even ten years later there was still that ache in the center of her chest, one that squeezed so tight she felt like she couldn’t breathe. It didn’t feel like all these years had passed, and her feelings for Mack certainly hadn’t dimmed. Although they had been buried deep inside of her, there were there, threatening to rush forward at the smallest provocation. A car horn blared from the lane beside her, and she quickly turned the wheel, not even realizing she had veered out of her lane. God, she needed to get her shit together. The last thing she’d heard about Mack was that he had gotten clean, had his life on track, and was involved with some kind of training facility. He had sold his parents’ house, moved to the outskirts of town, but still kept to himself. She didn’t ask her parents about him anymore, and they no longer offered up information. As hard as it had been to move on, that was what she h
ad done, no matter how much she still cared for the Russian she had given her virginity to.

  She turned onto her parents’ street and pulled up to the curb right in front of her folks’ house and cut the engine. The small moving van that contained ten years of her life pulled to a stop behind her Honda Accord. The sound of the diesel engine shutting off suddenly made everything so still. Jane didn’t move for a few seconds, and heard the sound of the truck door shutting. Looking in her review mirror she saw Graison walk toward her car. Jane grabbed her purse and climbed out of the driver’s side at the same time he reached her.

  “Hey, honey, you doing okay?” He pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I saw you swerve into the next lane.” He pulled her back enough to look in her face and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “I’m okay, just tired I guess.” The trip was only an hour from Colton, but ever since she had taken the promotion from her company and was moving back to Absinthe, all she could think about was Mack and everything she had left behind. This was different from the few times she had come back to visit her parents, because she had always known that she would be leaving. But there was no leaving now. She would be living here permanently, and running into Mack would be inevitable. At first she felt childish for keeping away, but she would never get the images of how he had looked all those times: half-conscious, hardly able to stand, let alone speak. Then she had heard that he was on the mend, and a small part of her relaxed. He had never tried to contact her, never reached out, and so she had gone on with her life, putting Mack and everything that had happened during her life with him behind her. She couldn’t have a future if she hung onto the past.

  “Well, I’m sure you can lie down for a bit before dinner.” Graison kissed her softly and took a step back. She had been dating him for the last two years. He was sweet, kind, and most importantly, safe. He didn’t have a hard bone in his body, not a mean streak or a temper, and he was always so … cautious. She cared about him, loved him even, but for a while now she had felt detached from him and their relationship, and instead of feeling like his lover and companion, she felt like his friend. She may love him, but she wasn’t in love with him, not anymore, and Jane needed to address that sooner rather than later.