Chapter 34

The first time I took heroin, I was high high high on a cloud of furry blankets wrapped in a warm towel of love and I couldn't stop smiling. Fluff and clouds and pink and gold and warm and soft and safe and happy.

Floating and flying and drifting along, arms stretched out wide while a soft breeze took me from fuzzy bunny to fuzzy bunny. They loved me and hopped on me and I felt like giggling and so happy happy happy.

Filled with light and sun and love and it was going to burst out of my heart it was so big and bright and glowing.

I had felt myself drifting over the greenest grass and sank down on the silkiest earth and someone wrapped me in their arms and squeezed and I was at peace. So at peace.

Love love love.

I felt that way now, as Bella lay under me, like a goddess. Her body naked and open for me, holding and caressing and giving.

She sang to me in a way that was foreign to me. Me, who only had shallow words to write. Words about a skewed past or getting drunk or nothing of personal consequence at all.

But now, words were coming to me like a dream induced by a cotton soaked heroin spoon as I looked at her. A new one. The second in a month. Lyrics I had never felt or had the nerve to let out, and they weren't baby baby baby. They were suddenly bella bella bella.

In my head and in my throat. Words and phrases. Happy ones. Bright ones.

She was the perfect lyric as I took her against the mirrored cabinets. The most beautiful music laying naked in front of me on the worn kitchen table. A soaring harmony on her back between the cramped bunks they all suffered in while I lounged in a room fit for the God I thought I was.

She was perfection as I towered over her naked body, newly inked with what I knew had to be a nod to me, somehow. Cause how could it not be?

Her first tattoo, in my presence, was me.

I touched it lightly. A dragon.

Is that what she thought or is that what people said to her, in their hushed whispers and behind closed doors?

I couldn't argue it.

Right now, I didn't give a fuck. I devoured her. Ate her and licked her and fucked her. Took everything and then took more until we were both spent, riding a wave of bliss while our bodies still wrapped around each other.

I watched her as she napped that afternoon. Her eyes moving back and forth rapidly in what I hoped was a good dream. Hopefully about me. Hopefully not about me. When she finally woke, she looked so happy and bright as she looked at me, stroked my face, kissed me sweet.

Sweet was foreign and not something I got close to.

When she got into the shower, I pressed her tits to the wall and fingered her from behind as she came all over my hand. Sucked her dry on the bed after that.

Dirty and hard. That's what I was. I stared back at myself, full of self-loathing as she danced around the bus, humming to herself.

She wanted to go out, get off the bus for a while. Put clothes on, she joked. Maybe it was to take a break from the intensity we'd created in our little bubble. The intensity that burned between us, threatened to hold us and suck us into its black hole until we couldn't get out. I felt it, as much as I tried not to. I wanted to keep her there with me, away from everyone and just get lost in all she was.

There was a carnival.

The kind that girl scouts and catholic schools sold tickets to in front of the grocery store. Buy a ten pack of ride tickets, it'll save you money.

The Tilt-A-Whirl, the Polar Express, we rode them all and played stupid shooting games as the lights blnked and the canned music played hair band shit while the smell of sickly-sweet funnel cakes lay heavy in the air.

I won her a monkey on the balloon race and she held that thing like it was the best present ever.

Desperate to hold something that might love her back.

The lights framed her face as she looked at me, so happy as we drank our plastic-cup beer and walked around like a high school couple.

We rode the bumper cars. Her in front of me in a red car while I dodged and swayed as she barreled towards me with a determined look on her face. I laughed and swung my car around as a pimply-faced boy hit her right in the side.

Her frustrated face was too much and I slowed down, waited until she got close, let her bump me. She laughed and laughed and I undid my buckle and stood, crossing to her car despite the rules and the carny yelling at me.

Jumped right in and slid next to her.

Squeezed into the tight space of the tiny car where she was so close she was pressed right up against me, and I looked at her with the green and blue flashing lights. Took her face in my hands and kissed her as she lost control of the car.

Kissed and kissed until her body forgot she was supposed to be driving, her hands leaving the wheel as she slowed down and came to a stop right in the middle of the lane. We were soaring above the stupid racetrack, lost in each other, because we didn't care.

She didn't care.

I didn't care.

Bells and lights and warning whistles and yelling people didn't matter. We were oblivious.

We went back to the bus and fucked all night long.

High high high on sex, completely wrapped in each other. Desperate and hungry and grabbing like we couldn't get enough. Sex and bodies and smells and tastes and warm and hot and bliss and ecstasy.

And love love love.

Bella was the same as heroin.