March Heat

by Chase Jackson

  She was so good to me. Sitting by my bed in the hospital, asking all the right questions with the healthcare providers, it was like she was my real girlfriend. But it was only a glimpse into what we could be. And I knew that. I didn’t deserve a girl like her.

  She looked at me with tears filling the bottom of her eyes and turned away to blink them out of existence. She wanted to be tough, even though we both knew she wasn’t.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me again. I saved your life, dammit! Doesn’t that count for something?”

  It did count for something. It counted for everything, but I couldn’t let her waste her life saving mine. I was happy with who I was, and I wasn’t ready to change that. Not even for a girl like her.

  “Berkley, I just can’t do that. I can’t be with someone who can’t accept all of me.”

  “Then what about me being next to you? How I was keeping you safe? Was any of that true?”

  More than she would ever realize.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fine! Have it your way. Have a nice fucking life.”

  She stormed out of the apartment before I could say anything else. But I knew it was for the best because I didn’t deserve a girl like Berkley. It just wasn’t meant to be.

  ***

  Leo returned just about fifteen minutes later. I still was holding the bottle of pills in my hand. He didn’t even know about my addiction, no one had. I was good at keeping secrets. I had been my whole life.

  “Where’s Berkley? I didn’t think she would leave you alone on your first day.”

  “We had a fight,” I said gruffly, trying to play off the questions that were about to be thrown at me.

  “What kind of fight? What did you say to her?”

  “Why the hell is it always my fault?”

  “Because good girls like that? They don’t come around very often. And they know about guys like you.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I know what you do in your spare time. You sleep around, and I’m guessing that’s why she left. Found a pair of panties lying around here or some other God-awful thing. I’ve kept you off the streets, and I thought that I had taught you how to be a proper man. But if you let a girl like that go, then I haven’t taught you a damn thing.”

  No one spoke. He moved to the window and stared out into the afternoon. I’d had enough. I couldn’t stand the deafening silence that was in my head anymore. Leo was right—she was one of those good girls. “I have a problem,” I said in a low voice.

  He spun around for the window and looked at me concerned. “What is it?”

  I held the bottle in my hands like it was my lifeline. Like if he took it from me I just might die right there in that crappy apartment, in a secondhand bed. But if I was going to die, she was the one worth dying for.

  “I’m addicted to Oxy. And I need your help.”

  SEVENTEEN

  BERKLEY

  I ran from the building and got into my car, slamming the door behind me. How could he be so stupid? Throwing his life away like that! I just couldn’t understand. I thought Dillon had grown, that he would stop being so dangerous after this past fight, but instead he just wanted more trouble now than ever. How had I not seen the signs? How could I not tell that the guy I was going crazy over was addicted to pain medication?

  Every thought raced through my mind as I drove, but I didn’t really know where I was going until I had been driving for over an hour. Naomi was blowing up my phone and I finally had calmed down enough to answer. “Hello?”

  “Where the hell are you? I thought you would have been home by now! You said you were just going to do a drop in visit.”

  “Well my drop in turned into a drop out, and now I’m on my way to my parents.” I’d had no idea that’s where my mind had taken me, but I knew from the surrounding area that I was on a small highway that took me towards upstate New York. And to the Cassidy family residence.

  “What happened?”

  I sighed heavily, not really wanting to talk about it. “Dillon is as dangerous as you said he was. And he doesn’t want anything to do with me and my nice girl qualities. We’re over.”

  “Again?”

  “Again. And this time I think it’s for real. He practically threw me out of his apartment Naomi! I can’t even believe it!”

  “I’m so sorry, honey. He’ll notice what he lost, trust me. I know he will. So how long do you think you’re going to stay with your parents? I mean, we don’t have classes all weekend. Though you’re going to miss a crazy toga party tomorrow night.”

  “I think I might just stay for the whole weekend. I need a break from all of the craziness that is school and Dillon right now.”

  “Well tell your parents I said hello. I like being their favorite.”

  I laughed in spite of my bad mood, “I will. Talk to you later.”

  “Bye.”

  I drove for another forty five minutes in complete silence. I didn’t even turn on the radio for fear of what mushy love song I would find that would just bring the tears back into my eyes.

  I didn’t want to cry over Dillon Jackson.

  I wasn’t going to be that girl.

  I wasn’t going to let him make me feel that way.

  As I pulled into our circular driveway, my mother was in the garden pulling some weeds. She turned around and shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked in my direction. My mother looked almost just like me, just about thirty years older. And she was also a lot more poised and graceful than I ever was. Her hair flowed around her shoulders in perfect curls at the ends, and she had a beautiful set of pearls around her neck. She was straight out of a magazine with her gardening gloves, straw hat and high waisted capris with a buttoned up blouse. Sometimes she made me feel beautiful just looking at her. This was exactly the type of break I needed.

  As I shut off my car she walked over to me a huge smile on her face. “Darling, I wasn’t expecting you! To what do I owe the pleasure?” She extended her arms and I immediately got out of the car and ran into them.

  “Mom, I screwed up.”

  She ran her gloved hand over my hair and shushed me. “Now that can’t be true. Come in. Let’s have a cup of tea and talk about it.”

  We walked together into the grand foyer of the beautiful white home that I had loved growing up in as a child. The driveway itself was longer than most of the streets in the small city where BU was. I had always lived like this, and I didn’t really know any different until I met Dillon. We always hung out with other affluent kids, mostly other politicians’ children. I’d grown up going to birthday parties with ponies and nannies. But my parents had always stayed involved with me and my brother, and that made me feel special.

  We went to the living room where my father was sitting next to the window reading a book in his chair. It didn’t bother me anymore to see him in a wheelchair; it was just another part of life. I walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He was beaming, obviously also surprised to see me.

  “Hi, baby! How are you?” He looked up at my mother who had a pleasant yet serious face. He could tell immediately that I was there for a reason. “What’s the matter? We weren’t expecting you. Is everything okay?”

  I shook my head as the tears started streaming on my face. I kept it together in the car, but suddenly I felt like that had been enough. “I told you I started dating a guy. But he wasn’t what I thought.”

  My father’s eyebrows came together. “Did he hurt you?”

  I put my hands up in protest, “Nothing like that, it’s just… he’s a fighter. That’s his profession, an MMA fighter. And he’s one of the best in the city. But a couple weeks ago he got into this underground fight and he got beat really bad. I was there when they took him to the hospital and everything. I thought now that he was out and starting to feel better that he would, I don’t know, make better choices? But instead I find out that he’s doing drugs! Oxycodone. And he thinks that it’
s nothing! I just don’t know what to do. I care about him, I’ve no idea why, but I do. But he just keeps pushing me away.”

  My mother rubbed my back as the tears kept coming. “Honey, you just have to help him through this.”

  Of course that’s what my mother would say—she stood by my father through his accident and the ordeal that followed. Years of surgery and rehabilitation. Suddenly I felt so small standing next to her. I couldn’t even get through one argument with Dillon without allowing him to end our relationship. I gave him all the power, and that was my fault. “I just don’t think that I can! He doesn’t want me to. He just wants to be alone and keep going as he is. There is just a part of me that thought he wanted to be better. That we could make each other better.”

  My father continued to sit in silence, which was unlike him. He usually was the one to come to for sage advice, but this time he seemed to lack any real thoughts about the situation. I couldn’t help but be disappointed.

  My mother crossed her arms. I thought it was meant to be a dainty gesture; however, when she looked at my father I saw steely glare in her eyes. “You have to tell her.”

  He ran his hands through his salt and pepper hair before spinning his wheelchair around to face me. “You should sit down. Your mother’s right, I should tell you.”

  I shook my head in confusion, “Tell me what? I thought that you two would be upset. I just told you that my brand-new boyfriend does drugs! And you want to have a sit down?” This wasn’t like my parents at all. What was so important that they had to tell me? When they didn’t speak I slowly sat down on the sofa and waited.

  Finally my father sighed, “You should know about what happened to me after the accident. After all of those surgeries and finding out that I wouldn’t be governor anymore, I became addicted to my pain pills.” He hung his head in shame and my mother came over and put her hand on his shoulder. He reached out with his left hand and squeezed hers tightly. I could tell that admitting this to me was killing him. Here I was complaining about my boyfriend and his drug problem when it turned out that my father had one. My brave, strong, and extremely stoic father had a drug problem. Dillon was much more volatile and dangerous than he was, so maybe I had jumped to conclusions too fast.

  “How long did this go on?”

  My father kept his head down and my mother answered instead. “Almost two years. We were at the point where we were going to have to try rehab when your father agreed to go cold turkey. We told you and your brother that he got an infection when really he was going through withdrawal symptoms.”

  “But how did you get them? I mean, was your doctor just writing you a prescription?” That didn’t seem right. My father had hardly any pain after his last surgery. What doctor in their right mind would continue to prescribe him super addictive pain medication?

  This time my father spoke, “When you’re a powerful man, drugs aren’t hard to come by. And honestly, for someone like Dillon, he was probably spacing them out. Only feeling like he needed to use them before a fight. Or maybe he was getting them on the street. But then he was in even more dangerous territory, because they could be fake, or he could be getting them from someone who could really hurt him. Either way you don’t want to mess with someone who’s on pain killers. Addicts are dangerous.”

  “You’re not dangerous!” I protested. I stood up and walked over to my father, kneeling down in front of him. “Even now I don’t think you’re dangerous. And I really appreciate your honesty. I’m glad that you told me. It gives me a whole new perspective about what Dillon is going through. I know what it was like for you to lose the governor’s position, and that’s how Dillon feels about fighting. It’s his passion; his whole life is built around it. If he felt like he couldn’t fight anymore, he would do anything to make sure that he could.”

  “I thought that I would do anything, but then I realized I had what was most important to me. My family and my life. If that bullet had hit me any higher”—he paused, sucking in a deep breath—“I wouldn’t be here. I am lucky that it was a bad shot, paralyzed or not. I’m just lucky to be alive. And Dillon should feel the same way. We read the article about the fighter getting beat almost to death. I had no idea it was him, of course, but he barely made it out of there.”

  I tried to chase away the tears that I felt stinging at the corners of my eyes. But they were right. In that moment in the ring I had thought I lost him. Part of me felt like I had willed him to live, and he had been so lucky. “But he pushed me away. He told me he was no good for me, that he couldn’t be with someone like me.”

  My mother had a sad smile on her face. “Honey, he did that to protect you. Your father asked for a separation at least three times while he was involved with drugs. He wanted to keep me safe, it had nothing to do with him. Dillon just doesn’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “But he doesn’t control what I do. I do.” I slowly stood up, giving my father peck on the cheek as I did so. I have to go back and see him.”

  “We know. But you can eat dinner with us and stay the night, give him some time to think about it. Maybe he’ll come to you,” my mother said optimistically.

  “Maybe.” I chewed on my lower lip as I thought about Dillon walking into my grandiose home. He would feel so out of place here. It would prove his point of us not being right for each other. I would have to get to him first. It was the only way.

  I stayed the rest of the weekend with my parents, just waiting for Dillon to call. But he didn’t. On Sunday afternoon I drove back to campus and did homework for the rest of the evening to prepare for my classes the next week. I then pulled out my résumé and looked up some internships online. Anything that would get me a job after college, even if it didn’t pay very much. I applied to a couple and was just filling in one of the final references when my phone rang. I grabbed it, praying it was Dillon, but it was a number I didn’t recognize. I answered it anyway.

  “Is this Berkley?”

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  “It’s Leo. Dillon’s manager. He asked that I call you.”

  My heart leapt up in my chest. “He did? Is he okay?”

  “He’s going to be. He told me about his problem.” I could tell the words were difficult for him to get out because he kept pausing at awkward points. “He’s in rehab. And he’s going to be there for a couple weeks. He wanted you to know.”

  So he was getting help. Did this mean that there is a chance for us? “Did he say anything else about me?”

  “No honey, I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again.” And with that he hung up. Dillon was in some type of rehabilitation facility and I was sitting here updating my résumé. Maybe we were both moving in the right direction, even though they were different ones.

  I didn’t hear from Dillon at all while he was in rehab. I went to class and made phone interviews, just did my own thing. There were a couple good parties in there, too. I would miss those after college. But I checked my phone obsessively and got nothing. It had been almost three weeks when I finally heard from him. And it wasn’t in the way I was expecting.

  “Someone’s here for you, Berkley!” I heard one of my sisters yell up the stairs. We pretty much had an open door policy for friends on campus, so it had to be someone that they didn’t know, or family.

  I walked out of my bedroom and down the flight of stairs to see Dillon, still bruised, standing in the door holding a dozen roses. “What are you doing here?”

  He stepped across the threshold and pushed the flowers in my face. “I’m really sorry if this isn’t okay. But part of my therapy is to make amends with the people I hurt. And that sounds like some bullshit, which it totally is. But I have to do it. And I hurt you Berkley. And somehow by hurting you I hurt myself. So here are some flowers, and I’m sorry. I will never bother you again.”

  He turned to leave when I reached out to him. “You’re not bothering me. Why don’t you come upstairs?” Away from all of my sisters’ prying eyes. “I want to hear about every
thing. Please come upstairs and tell me.”

  Naomi stood in the kitchen where I could see her, and she simply nodded at me. An unspoken rule about having boys over: your roommate stays out.

  We walked into my bedroom, and I perched myself on the edge of my bed holding the flowers up to my nose. They smelled amazing. “These are really beautiful. They actually told you to buy these in rehab?”

  He shrugged, looking around my room. He was almost pacing but slower, like being here made him anxious. “They didn’t say anything about flowers, but you seem like the type of girl who likes flowers.”

  “Well you are right about that. So how was it?”

  He turned around and looked at me, his piercing blue eyes boring right through me. “It kind of sucked. Withdrawal isn’t really fun, especially when you’re already in pain from getting the shit kicked out of you. But after the symptoms ended, I was okay. But then last week we had to talk about our feelings, and then I wasn’t okay again. But I haven’t used, not once since you left.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “Because I couldn’t have you. I can’t have both. Leo helped me see that. But even after therapy, I’m still an addict. I’m still no good for you.”

  I wasn’t going to let him pull this again. I was taking control of the situation, regardless of what he wanted.

  I set down the flowers on the bedside table. He hardly noticed, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “I want to be with you!” I said in a rushed whisper, willing him to grasp how much I missed him.

  “But I—” he stammered, appearing totally baffled as to what to do with me. I was in control, and he didn’t know how to handle it.

  “You what? You got clean. Why?”

  He looked at his hands, picking an old scab. “For you.”

  My heart pounded in my chest. “For me?”

  “Yeah. I mean, they say I’m going to have to work really hard, but I found a therapist and I…”

  I wrapped my arms around him and landed a kiss on his soft lips. He fell back onto the bed, and I didn’t let him go. He tasted sweet and alluring. He kissed me softly at first and then his kisses became more fevered, as if he needed my mouth on his. His tongue slipped into my mouth and I claimed it. I sucked him slowly, tasting him. His ran his hands up my body to my breast, and he kneaded it softly. He began pulling off my t-shirt, tossing it aside. We paused and I felt myself fall into his blue eyes. I was always falling into them.