A/N: Don't own it, don't sue me

VERSE III
COME AROUND

"I'm dressed all in blue
and I'm remembering you
and the dress you wore
when you broke my heart"
-- "Come Around" – Rhett Miller

She slipped quietly out of my life for awhile after that...I got home that morning, shuffling sheepishly into the small living room/kitchen, and placed the two crumpled grocery bags, one filled Marlboros, milk, and bread, the other with a couple bottles each of Milwaukee's Best, Absolut Vodka, Bailey's Irish Cream, and Marlot (just the basics obviously), on the table in reconciliation. Mark just glared at me briefly, then went on, all out, about responsibility, what it means to share an apartment, to share responsibilities, even suggesting giving me a curfew. I bet he was about to put a fucking tracker on me, when, suddenly, from his bedroom, came a very feminine, very seductive voice cooing, "Marky!" I cocked an eyebrow at Mark. He grinned, and turned bright red, even the lenses in his glasses were blushing.

And so things were forgiven between us, and time moved on. Mark fell head over heals for this girl (who's name I later learned was Maureen), and I continued doing shows. Always without April. I realized early on that, in my daze of the morning, I'd forgotten to get her phone number, and so I never called her. Well she never called me either. So...

In mid-October though, it all changed. The Rentboys had just played another gig at the Hole. Steve, the drummer, was having his typical after show chill at his flat. He always did that. I went sometimes, but it was always the same, sexdrugsrocknroll and all that, and there was only so much of that I could stand in a night. That night, however, I was feeling pretty lonely. Collins had gone up to do some interview at Brown, and Maureen had taken Mark hostage to some unknown place for the weekend. So I went to Steve's.

It was just like it always was, the big room of his flat opaque with smoke, smelling of booze, and filled with glazed eye rockers and groupies. Steve saw me come in, and waved me over to where he and a few others were sprawled out, taking the joint out of his mouth to call "Rog you made it!"

After a few hits and a couple beers, I was feeling comfortably numb. I just sat against Steve's couch, rather enjoying my blank-minded high, and just taking in everything around me. Steve and some girl were necking it next to me. Well Steve was smoking another joint as the girl chewed on his neck ravenously. Some burnout had brought some coke, and I saw a coven of people taking turns snorting up the white line, closing their eyes briefly, then opening them, star-laced and millions of miles away, turning from lost children to kings and queens of the universe before my eyes. Some stoner was laying with his head on his guitar, saying ever so often, "I can feel it, the music." I wondered later if he realized he wasn't even playing a damn thing.

But some where in the corner of my smoke-packed mind came the tugging feeling that someone was watching me Using every ounce of strength I had left (getting stoned is exhausting), I looked around. Whether it was the smoke floating in the air, or just the smoke in my eyes, I must have looked over this one spot of the room about a dozen times. Seems fitting I shouldn't see it, since it was about 2 feet in front of me. However, this last time I looked over it, my eyes stopped. There was a couple sitting in one of those plush La-Z-Boy recliners. More specifically he was sitting in it and she was sitting on his lap. He was obviously baked, stupidly nibbling on her earlobe while she packed a glass bowl expertly. His hands were up her shirt, stretching the thin cotton to twice its normal size. The funny thing was, she seemed perfectly straight. Her hands moved fluidly, not sloppy or even slow, like you would expect. Plus, looking at her face, I saw that she was staring back at me, and her dark brown eyes were perfectly normal.

Brown eyed girl...it was only then that it hit me. Though she seemed different somehow from the last I'd seen her—not sure how; thinner perhaps, or maybe just tired—but it was still her. Same straggly bleached blond hair, just a little longer, still falling in her eyes despite the ponytail holder in back. Same curves, visible even beneath the faded teeshirt and groping hands. It was April.

"Hey," she said, her voice sounding slightly shy, but still angelic, at least to me. She handed the bowl to the guy, but I knew she was addressing me.

"Hey," I replied, well aware of how raspy and ugly my voice sounded compared to hers. Then, nodding to the baker beneath her, "Who's he?"

"Um, his name is Stan," she said looking uncomfortable. "He…kind of lives with me."

That surprised me, than angered me. "So you obviously only go anti-drugs to your one-night stands."

"Roger—"

"No it's okay," the drugs were talking now, giving me a newfound confidence and unexpected fluidity of speech. "I'm sure the resin just covered up my phone number on your hand. Happens all the time."

As if he had ironically needed another hit to realize what was happening around him, Stan chose that moment to break in. "This man bothering you doll?"

"No, don't bother," I answered for her. "I was just leaving."

No longer feeling stoned still, I got up, cold look on my face, not letting the wounded look on April's face register in my brain. I didn't know what the purpose had been in getting up, I just couldn't stand being in the same room as April and that stoner. Especially since, no matter how I tried to ignore it, her eyes just looked so…sad…I went into the next room, and just stood there, blankly. Someone handed me a joint. I took a puff, unconscious really of what I was doing. In my mind a slurred male voice registered.

"Hey man, want some?"

Looking to where the voice had come from, I saw a group of people sprawled out around a table. On the table was a mirror. On the mirror were lines of coke.

Coming over to the table and kneeling down, I took the straw he had given me (really just a rolled up dollar bill), held it to a line, and snorted.

My eyes closed involuntarily, but when they opened, it was as if it'd opened a lid on one of those prankster cans of nuts, when all the snakes spring out. A fountain of emotions gushed its way through me, up my spine, finally cascading through the top of my head. It was as if the whole evening, my whole life even, up to that moment, had never existed. My mind exploded, all thoughts of April evaporated. And I thought, "This is it."

I moved aside to let the other cokeheads get their lines, and moved up to an unoccupied bong instead. There was a baggie of weed laying beside it, and I just packed and packed, taking hit after hit. I was getting higher and higher, I kept on taking more hits, packing more bowls because I honestly couldn't remember having had one 2 minutes earlier. I had a few more lines of coke, bowl after bowl of weed, more more more, let April live with that fucker, higher higher higher, till I was so stoned I couldn't even lift my arms to pack another.

Blackout.

END VERSE III.