It had been years since Lincoln smoked a joint to fall asleep, and he was fucked up after only three hits. He was getting lost in the lazy motion of the ceiling fan when he realized he had company. Sara stood framed in the open doorway, moonlight illuminating her white pajamas and shock of red hair. She looked like a ghost, a spook from a movie he remembered from childhood. He hadn't seen her for hours, not since they'd gotten back to the house from scattering Michael's ashes. He'd just holed up in his room and left her alone with her grief. What a dick.
She didn't speak, just padded her bare feet across the room and lifted the covers, climbing into his bed. He carefully shifted to give her room, working on not upsetting the ashtray sitting on his chest as she took the joint out of his hand. She blew lightly on the cherry until it flared red then closed her eyes and took a hit. For a brief moment Lincoln wondered what Michael would have to say about two addicts getting high. Sara coughed quietly. She was looking at him, eyebrows raised, while she inhaled.
They passed the joint back and forth in silence until there was almost nothing left. Lincoln crushed it out with his thumb, set the ashtray on his nightstand, and put his hands behind his head. He'd smoked too much and wouldn't get to sleep for hours, but he didn't really want to anyway. He stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the floating, and realized just how much he'd missed the feeling. Sara rolled over and rested her head on his shoulder, her hair tickling his upper arm.
"I kept some of his ashes," she confessed softly, "and put them in a tin he bought at the mercado."
Her whole body trembled with the words, and Lincoln brought his arms down to hold her and stroke her hair because there wasn't anything to say to make it better. He didn't have fancy words or platitudes, just the consuming certainty that he'd squandered the last years of his brother's life. If Sara said it made her feel better to hang on to the dust that remained of Michael, he wasn't going to call her bluff. They were already stumbling with no hero to guide them, and they both knew exactly where this path led.
Four months later Lincoln sat on the bathroom counter, heels banging against the cabinet below while Sara sat on the toilet seat and tied off. He knew it was twisted to like to watch, but there it was. Sticking a needle in his arm was the one line he'd never crossed, and he was mesmerized by her clinical precision.
Sara was methodical as well as ambidextrous: she alternated veins, alternated arms, and he had yet to catch sight of a single track mark. She didn't waste time smacking her forearm like the lousy junkies he'd known in the past, and he'd never seen her miss the mark. Twice, maybe, she'd doubted herself and pulled back on the plunger, sucking the tiny red bloom up into the morphine before sending it on home.
Lincoln hopped down from his perch and took the syringe from her outstretched hand, giving her the gauze he had waiting. Sara applied pressure while he put everything back in her little brown bag and zipped it up. He waited until she slumped back against the toilet tank, breathing slow and deep, before kneeling in front of her knees. She smiled down at him, lifting her hips as he slipped his thumbs into the waistband of her panties and slid them down and off, tossing them through the open doorway. She scooted forward to give him better access and chuckled dreamily as he nibbled on her inner thigh.
He loved to go down on her when she was high because she came like a freight train and made him feel like a god for about three minutes. Afterwards he'd smoke enough shit to forget that he'd tasted a woman who wasn't supposed to be his.