Nicholas looked around the room as he took off his coat and carefully folded it before letting it rest on the couch among three other coats, all extremely expensive.
Most of the young professionals from Pittsburgh he knew had come to Colin's birthday party. Lines of white powder had been prepared earlier and were just waiting to end up a rich nose. Colin only had the best stuff around. Almost pure and extremely expensive. Nick was a regular customer and he knew how much money he had left into his dealer's pockets: an associate at one of the most exclusive corporate law firm in Pittsburgh, some months he still had to watch over his expenses! Most of the people in the room had done the same, some even more so.
He knew that Paul Sabers spent most of his revenues on drugs. Once he had told him he had fired his maid because he could not afford to pay for her services any longer. And yet he was a top notch criminal lawyer who had founded his own firm right after passing the bar, using the money his granddad had left him bypassing the rightful heir, Paul's father, who had chosen to become a church pastor. Rumor had it Paul never slept, worked eighteen hours each day and partied six. And rumor had it he survived on coffee and the white powder.
Arabella Janssen was the daughter of a very affluent family and virtually had no expenditure limits. Everyone in her family had a medical degree and worked in the field. She herself had been in medical school for the past ten years. Older than Nick, she was still living at her parent's mansion in Squirrel Hill, with a weekly allowance of more than 2000 bucks, so she was in no hurry to graduate and live independently. She would follow one or two courses each semester, and, between parties, she did some studying. It was obvious she was hooked and she did not want her education interfere with her drug use. He wondered how her parents had not found out about it yet. Her nose bled very frequently and their family, parents, siblings, distant relatives, were all doctors or nurses.
There also was a dentist, Arnold Gardner, who did coke before visiting his patients. At a party, one night, Nick had hurt one of his teeth biting on the seed of an olive, and Arnold had offered Nicholas a free treatment, but Nick would keep his toothache rather than opening his mouth to such a dentist, even though Dr Garner was one of the most acclaimed dental doctors in town.
The huge loft was filled to the brim with lawyers, doctors, dentists, CEOs. All were long-term customers of the birthday boy. All had a long term cocaine use history that did not affect their professional life. Rather, for most of them, it helped them keep focused on their job and kept them going.
And then there was Colin. Nicholas believed he was the richest of them all, ripping them off. An eight ball could even cost over 200$, but it was granted to be as pure as snow and not to cause unwanted side effects. You could snort it over lunch break and then get back to work without any problem. Besides cocaine he sold less noble stuff. Nick himself had tried some pot during lunch breaks every now and then, but, after realizing his father had perceived a strange smell each time he had smoked the weed, he had decided not to. Risking being caught by the man he loved, despised, feared and admired the most would have been too much to bear.
Nick realized he despised all of the guests, but not Colin. Colin just did his job. He was just making a living. After all, they were not doing drugs because of him. They did drugs because they wanted to. His customers, however, based their life on the white powder. They would not live without it. Nick could bet they would have sold their mothers if they had to in order to continuing using. They were all hooked.
He himself was not. He did not tell himself a lie. He really was not. He used it regularly on week-ends, but on week-ends when he had been away, with people who did not have the habit, he had not missed it. He just found out that cocaine helped him loose some of his defenses, the defenses he was so much dependent on and yet afraid of at the same time. Without cocaine, he just did not know how to have fun, how to be around people. Cocaine took some of his shields off and, under the influence, he even laughed and allowed himself to reveal his gentle side he was so ashamed of regularly. He thought about a new associate at his dad's firm, Amanda. After the first month Nick had had a meeting with her and they had discussed about what she had learnt and how she felt about the work. At the end Nicholas had told her to ask anything, and she had blurted: 'Why don't you ever smile?'. Nicholas had done what he did best when facing personal matters: he had walked away without answering. He had run away.
Nicholas was well aware that he was always scared. Hiding this fear, and the anger that accompanied it, was another thing the thirty year old was very good at. People perceived him as an arrogant asshole, a bastard, a fierce fighter. Hiding the fact that he actually wasn't, that he actually was a very hurt person, was cause of a lot of stress and he often could not sleep properly. Nicholas knew he was scared of people. He did not have any real friends because he could not let them know who the real Nick was. He did not even had a proper relationship with his father, who was also his boss, because he could not let his father know how angry he was with him, and yet how much he desired to be loved unconditionally and how much he needed to be appreciated for what he did at the firm. He devoted his entire life to the firm, and he felt his dad did not acknowledge that, that he wanted more.
That night, he realized the others used cocaine to have fun. To keep themselves having fun and going. He also realized he used cocaine to medicate himself. And this discovery freaked him out. Almost catching his breath, he gave Colin his birthday gift and headed towards a line, which he snorted. The slight discomfort he felt as the drug passed through his nostrils made him feel less guilty for using, as it was some form of punishment that washed his conscience, and then, quickly, came the relief. Nicholas felt his worries and pain lift as the light morning fog lifted from the ground in worm spring days. And he was able to be just like everyone else in the room. A young professional having fun after a long day work on a Friday night.