Addictions

by Jamie Lin

We first met when I was looking for a radio to accompany me on my self-discovery walks. He showed me the only one available and I asked if it was any good. My other radios had the habit of breaking down after a couple of weeks. "I don't know." he said, "but it’s half off."

"I'll take it," I said, praying that it would be worth almost an hour of labor on my part. Minimum wage sucked.

His hand shook slightly as he handed me the change and I wondered if he found me attractive. I caught his eyes lingering on my face. I guess I looked good when I was in one of my very determined, must-get-what-I want moods.

I took my change and the much-wanted radio and walked out, thinking about him. On the walk, I thought about moments like that, not significant but capable of making me feel at peace.

I returned the next day and he looked adorably worried. "Something wrong with the radio?" he asked.

"Oh no. I uhm...am looking for a movie."

His eyebrow shot up. "Need help? I know exactly where each movie is."

"Well...it's uhm..." I gave him a random title of a movie I saw recently.

While I paid the three bucks for a movie I’d already seen and hated, I caught him looking at me again. I stuffed the change slowly into my pocket and asked him how often he worked here.

He told me his schedule and just then, someone else came into the store. It was a girl between his age and mine. They shared a kiss over the glass counter and I looked away, blushing. "Thanks," I murmured on my way out.

Even so, we started bumping into each other all over town. We debated at the supermarket over his favorite; Pepsi and my favorite; Coke. We swam laps around each other at the pool.

Two weeks later, we started hanging out at his apartment, talking, sharing music, food and movies. His girlfriend was gone for the month of August and I had him all to myself. We became inseparable friends, sometimes spending nights down by the river till dawn, just being together. I gave up smoking for his company, sacrificing one addiction for another.

He played a song on his guitar and it was so beautiful, I almost cried.

August flew by and his girlfriend came back tanned and confused from Bahama's sun. She broke up with him for one of her exes; the one who cheated on her twice.

Hope ran through me like electricity even as I knew our hour glass was almost empty.

On the first day of September, we met in our favorite place, a crumbling, stone stair landing covered by trees a few feet from the dirt path in the woods. He was going back to college half a country away to study music. The stream nearby where water from a mysterious source glided and splashed over rocks continued to play the music of our relationship.

"But that's okay," he said after a five minute talk about his ex-girlfriend.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Because I'm crazy about this other girl. Have been for a while. Which is probably unfair to Jane and I tried to ignore it. Well, Jane is gone now. That girl, she's different. Remember that song I played for you?"

"Yes."

"It's for her."

"Oh..." I waited for him to tell me he meant me. I wanted him to tell me he cared as much as I cared. I wanted him to tell me that this summer meant as much to him as it meant to me. I wanted him to tell me it wasn’t pathetic of me to run all the way home after work hoping that he left a message, or was waiting on my porch.

In every relationship, there were moments. This happened to be a significant fork in the road type of moment. Time froze, my heart stopped beating and the world stilled. Everything I ever felt for him swelled and hung in the air in dedicate balance. My lips parted and I wanted to tell him. I didn't want to wonder or wait anymore. I wanted to know. I wanted him to know. I was just about to ask when he stood up. And as if by magic or perhaps, habit, the words were jammed back down my throat and I let out a cough.

"I should go," he said, already walking away.

The balance broke then and everything I ever thought could come true between us crashed down on me in a heart-shattering instant. I felt such devastation that a yearning for my old addiction came back to me.

I left the woods to survey the streets around me like a vulture circling the desert for a piece of meat. I had no money with me and home was too far away. I would have asked perfect strangers but just when I needed them the most, they were nowhere to be found. There were crushed butts everywhere, around a tree within a fence, under the benches by the bus stop. I looked to see if someone had dropped an unlit one or perhaps a pack that someone thought was empty. I should have known that most people were protective over their cigarettes, probably guarded them with their life.

I wanted to say I completely ignored him from that cold summer afternoon on, but I couldn‘t and didn‘t. Addictions are not cured by going cold turkey. They last a lifetime, always there beneath your skin, in your marrows, ready to jump out anytime and demand your desire.

But at least every night, instead of waiting for him, I gave in to my other addiction. It gave me the distraction and strength to think about something else for a few blessed minutes. Granted, I was killing myself. But weren't we all killing ourselves and each other slowly, for one addiction or another?

Jamie Lin grew up in a colorful gray place people refer to as Brooklyn. Most of her works are not from her own experiences but a dramatic stretch of an emotion she felt or witnessed. Jamie has an ezine here.