by Sadie Savage
It seemed so impossible to believe that he could be attractive to her. Arrow had spent the past few years feeling like the scourge of the earth, the pathetic man that god and time had left behind in the ruins of his own addiction, to face the demons of his lack of willpower. Was Ari just another one of those demons? A girl so young she could be his child, a girl he wanted more than life itself? Or was she a demon in another way? A succubus sent to lure him back to the dark side and feel the cheap thrills of heroin once again?
Either way, it was too much for him to take. He couldn’t see her. Things were just too up in the air and if that meant that Ari was off limits to him for the rest of their lives then so be it. Ari would remain off limits. And he was just going to have to be all right with that. He would continue his surveillance on Hawk without seeing Ari again. Maybe he would trade jobs with another guy on the team. If he couldn’t resist his temptations then he didn’t deserve to be there. It would only jeopardize the mission.
“So, how did it go today?” Thatcher asked when Arrow stormed into the MC.
“I think I need to trade spots with someone. I know this guy named Mel. He used to be an addict but he went to meetings. I saw him once or twice but we never really spoke until I went into the carry out looking for a job. Hawk’s the one who got him hooked and he’s just as eager as we are to bring him down, so he gave me a job at the carry out he owns. He’s going to help us out however he can, so if you or someone else wants to hang out at the carry out to do surveillance, I’m going to need to go in myself. I have a plan.”
“A plan?” Thatcher asked.
Arrow nodded. It was a plan that had unfolded in his mind’s eye just moments ago. He knew it was foolproof though, and it would get them further than they were already. It was far more believable to have a relapsing heroin addict hanging around getting information than it was that someone new to heroin would want to stick around and hang out with some seasoned junkies. And that’s just the way it was.
“I need you to trust me on this, Thatcher. I need Marcus to know that he can trust me, you know? It’s more important than I could ever tell you.”
“I trust you,” Thatcher said. “But I need to know what you’re planning first. I mean, this is a group effort. We have to work as a team. Remember, it’s abandoning the brotherhood of the MC that got you into this mess. And banding together with it is the only way that you’re ever going to get back out.”
“I know,” Arrow said, wondering if he should tell Thatcher about his tryst with Hawk’s niece.
But it just seemed too private. And what would it even matter if Ari turned out to be completely innocent? As much as he hated himself for indulging with her for his own gratification, he had a feeling that she was a victim. She couldn’t possibly be faking that kindness, could she? If she was, then Hawk was eviler than he ever thought he could be.
“All right, then. I’ll have the boys figure something out. One of them will take over your shift at Mel’s. Hawk hasn’t gone in there at all, has he?”
“No, Mel made it pretty clear that Hawk wasn’t welcome in his store. So he hasn’t come around at all.”
“Good. So he didn’t have a chance to recognize you.”
“Who the hell is leading this thing?” Arrow asked, suddenly aggravated by playing Twenty Questions. “You or me?”
“You, Arrow,” Thatcher said, putting his hands in the air. “Just you.”
“Alright. I know how to work undercover, man. Don’t insult me like that or you’re going to start to piss me off.”
“Sorry, Arrow,” Thatcher said.
But his eyes weren’t fully sorry. He was worried, and he had a reason to be worried. Arrow knew he should try not to take it so damn personally, but he couldn’t help it. He missed trust more than anything in the world. Before his addiction, nobody would have ever dared to question his tactical know-how. Now, it seemed like nothing he did would ever be good enough. Maybe there would come a day when people would stop questioning him and maybe there wouldn’t. All he really knew was that he was going to have to work harder at clearing his name than he had ever worked at anything before in his life.
When Arrow left the MC, he headed back to his apartment, a dark cloud hanging over him. The bike he had traded for hadn’t started that morning, so he had been driving his car around all day. It was humiliating, if he was going to be honest with himself. He felt like less of a man if other men wouldn’t listen to what he had to say and take it seriously. But he had brought this on himself. He would just have to wade through the bullshit until he reached the other side. There was no other choice.
Arrow let himself in, purposely avoiding the corner where the plant was sitting. Ari had given it to him in good faith, but he had done everything he could to fuck it up. Not only had he given in to temptation, but he had made it damn good and clear that he wasn’t going to have anything else to do with her. He even quit his position at Mel’s. It would be nice to have some time to think, but that time meant nothing if he didn’t like the person he was becoming in regards to Ari. He shouldn’t like her so much; it wasn’t right. She was young, too young. It made him more of a creepy old man.
Great, now he was a pervert and an addict. If any of the guys found out about that, they would probably be adding “traitor” to his long list of titles. It was wrong to consort with the enemy, no matter how young, or beautiful, or compatible. It was just plain wrong. And he was being the king of fucking up lately. It was better that he had left and cut off contact cold-turkey.
But now he had to wonder…if he could give in to his temptation when it came to sleeping with that girl, would he be able to resist the temptation of the drug that had gotten him into this mess in the first place? He would never be able to be sure now. He had thought that he was strong enough to stay away from Ari. But he hadn’t been. Maybe he wouldn’t be strong enough to stay away from heroin either.
Maybe he was just kidding himself and his brothers at the MC. Maybe he was no better now than he ever was before. Sure, he was less strung out, but that didn’t mean that he was a better person. He was still the same, weak on the inside. A man who couldn’t keep it in his pants, even when life as he knew it depended on it. He was just a big fucking loser, and everybody knew it. Everybody who counted thought he was a chump. Except for Ari.
Arrow growled furiously to himself. He couldn’t let her get in his head. No matter what happened, he shouldn’t let himself near her. Whether it was a trap or not, she was a young girl who couldn’t possibly know what she wanted. He refused to be the one to take advantage of her, and he refused to be taken advantage of. Even if she did sincerely care for him, it meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. He would always be a pathetic addict, someone nobody trusted or wanted around for too long. And if Ari was truly the woman he thought she was, then she probably wouldn’t want anything to do with him either, especially if she knew the truth.
The whole thing felt dirty. he’d been in the carry-out deceiving her since day one. She thought he was just some guy who came in for a job, but in truth, he had been there to keep tabs on her family. He was an addict. He was a Python. And he wasn’t even sure he knew how to love anymore. Not after all that he had been through with first his wife dying and then with Marcia, who had led him over the edge of his self-restraint and right into the pit he would probably die trying to get himself out of.
Arrow’s eyes lingered on the succulent in the window and he sighed. Maybe Ari was right. Maybe he really was lonely. But there was nothing that anybody would ever be able to do about that. Not even a little plant.
He was just going to have to deal with that, whether he liked it or not. He was a man on his own, and that’s just the way it was going to be.
***
“Arrow; long time no see, man.”
Arrow cringed at the sound of Jimmy’s voice; he was one of the men who had been responsible for fueling his addiction. With Jimmy around, it almost felt normal for him to be in such a low plac
e. He was the kind of man who had hit rock bottom and had made a nice comfortable little home therefore himself. Looking at Jimmy always made Arrow feel more fortunate, most as if he wasn’t the one who had a real problem. Jimmy had. And that made him feel good, as if he still had some hope for redemption.
“How’s it going Jim?” Arrow asked.
He didn’t really want to know. In fact, he could probably already guess. Things were going shitty; they were always going shitty. He always needed money, he always needed to score, and he was always on the prowl for somebody to take advantage of or manipulate so that he can get what he needed for his next fix. And if he suspected at all that Arrow was already clean and that the meetings had worked, then he would probably view the man as an enemy or somebody who simply needed to see the light as to why it was pointless to try and stay clean.
“Oh, you know, the same old bullshit,” Jimmy said, scowling up at the sky and shaking his head melodramatically. “You got a cigarette or something I could have?”
Jimmy’s eyes lit up when Arrow pulled a full pack of cigarettes out from his back pocket and tossed them to him.
“Hey, you know where I can get some brown?” Arrow asked, hating himself now more than he ever had before when he was asking the same question.
It was really a change to see what it was like from the outside. He felt as if he was walking down an old school or something from his childhood, far away from what was relevant to this place now, but still part of who he was and who he had turned out to be.
“Course I do,” Jimmy said. “You know that I have most of these chunks around here around my little finger. I haven’t had to pay for anything in over a month. Some people feel like I owe them, but overall everybody knows that they owe me if you know what I mean.”
Arrow nodded and Jimmy began walking, talking on the wild. He tended to be the kind of man who wouldn’t shut up if his life depended on it, and Arrow had to not along as if he was able to pay attention to the rapid words spilling out from Jimmy’s mouth. They had been friends once. Or at least as close to friends is that they could’ve been. They had sought out the same thing at the same time and it had brought them closer together. It was their addiction that had driven them forward and had kept them together, and now it was starting to feel like old times.
Arrow would have to be careful.
“So, you know my old lady left me, don’t you?” Jimmy said, hesitating in front of the fence.
The fence was chained shut with a combination lock on it. Jimmy continued talking as he worked on spinning in the right combination of numbers and letters, but it was difficult for him. He was probably already high.
“No, I didn’t hear about Marcy. Sorry to hear that. What happened?” Arrow asked.
“All you know, the bitch decided to go and get clean and then told me that I’m some kind of bad influence or something. Can you believe full of shit she is? Like I’m the one who forced her into doing this stuff in the first place?”
“I guess some people just want someone else to blame,” Arrow said, doing his best not to look Jimmy in the eye.
The fact of the matter was that Arrow had always thought that Jimmy was a bad influence in a way. He was a big pusher, always pressuring other people into getting high without even getting any reward for it. He wasn’t doing it for Hawk, but he was doing it because he didn’t like to feel like he was alone in his addiction. He would’ve done anything to avoid getting high by himself if he could help it.
“That’s exactly right,” Jimmy said pointing at Arrow as if he had hit on some profound truth.
“Everybody wants to blame somebody else for their problems. Nobody wants to take responsibility and to the fact that sometimes we don’t make great choices. It’s always easier to blame somebody else, especially if you don’t want to see them anymore. It’s just the cowardly excuse to push me out of her life.”
“She sounds like a major bitch,” Arrow said, hoping that his true emotions wouldn’t be apparent by his tone of voice.
He wasn’t sure how good of an actor he truly was, but he knew that Jimmy trusted him, even if nobody else in his own MC could trust him.
“You don’t even know the half of it,” Jimmy said. Even when she was still cool, she wasn’t all that great. His knowledge and taking the break apart or anything, I just wish that she would own up to her own hand in getting herself addicted.
“Well, you know there’s really a problem if she claims that she got clean on her own and addicted because of another person. We all have choices to make but nobody could get clean alone,” Arrow said. “I tried and it doesn’t work.”
“You tried to quit?” Jimmy asked, raising a brow at Arrow.
The miniscule amount of respect that Jimmy had for Arrow was waning from the discovery and Arrow grinned.
“Who hasn’t, right?” Arrow asked. “What I’m trying to say is that I couldn’t. And almost nobody can do it alone. So if she says she did then she’s even more full of shit.”
Arrow was bursting to tell Jimmy about how he had managed to get himself clean once and for all, how he had been able to do it with the help of his friends and the MC. But Jimmy didn’t have the MC. And he didn’t have any friends left anymore. He had hit rock bottom, a lot like Arrow had, and he had already used and abused everybody in his life. They had all given him a chance after chance to redeem himself, but again and again, Jimmy had only taken advantage of their kindness.
“Sure, whatever man,” Jimmy said, finally getting the combination right.
The chain dropped to the ground and Jimmy pushed the gate open. He led Arrow inside and locked the chain back up the way he had found it.
Soon, they were walking down a dark back alley way, until they came to a door. Jimmy not three times, and then a growth voice on the other side asked for a password. Arrow raised a brow. It all seemed childish to him, but who was he to judge? It wasn’t like he had done all of the brightest shit in his time either.
“Monopoly,” Jimmy said.
“All right,” the voice on the other end of the door said. “Make sure that he behaves.”
The door opened widely and Jimmy walked inside. It was a dark room, dingy a lot like the other places where Arrow had gone to get his hands on. The whole thing left him feeling dirty. As if you were doing something to intentionally mark his image. What would Ari think of him if she knew where he was and how easily he had gotten there?
No, Arrow reminded himself. The real question was whether or not Ari would ever be willing to forgive him if she found out that Hawk had been beaten, killed, or imprisoned because of Arrow. And because of how complicated his relationship with her was, it was better that they had parted ways. It had to be, because he had made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t make himself suffer for no reason. And he was all done breaking promises.
“Shit! It’s Arrow!”
“Hey Pinky,” Arrow said.
Pinky got up and slapped his hand in Arrow’s. Arrow recoiled inwardly. Pinky’s hands were filthy. He had probably been in this warehouse for days just getting high. But he tried not to let his true feelings reach the surface and smiled.
“Where you been, man?” Pinky asked, returning to the little cushion against the wall where he had been leaning when they’d come inside. “I haven’t seen you in a ridiculously long time, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I thought I’d try to get out of the life for a bit you know. See what I could do to get clean for a bit and get a job. I was tired of not being able to get smokes, you know?”
“Right, right,” Pinky said nodding. “But they always come back.”
“Yeah,” Arrow said, his chest tight.
He hoped that wasn’t true. He knew he was stronger than this now, but if he had slipped so low so easily, wouldn’t it be just as easy to slip right back?
“Well, it’s good to see you, man. Jamie would be psyched if he were here.”
“Jamie,” Arrow said fondly.
Jamie had b
een about the most decent of the heroin addicts that he could stand. Jamie wanted to get clean and do what he could to go back to school. He wanted to help kids stay off drugs so they didn’t end up like him.
“Where is Jamie anyway?”
“Oh, man, Jamie OD’d like three weeks ago; had a little funeral and everything. I thought you knew.”
“No, man, I’m sorry to hear that. Real sorry.”
“Yeah, Jamie was cool,” Pinky said, growing quiet for a moment as he reflected. “But anyway, come sit down. I just bought some stuff. We can share it for old time’s sake. For Jamie!”
“Right,” Arrow said, sitting down on the floor beside Pinky.
“All right,” Pinky said, digging around in his pockets. “You like the really strong stuff right?”
Arrow nodded. The whole thing felt like a nightmare. But this was the only way to get the proof he needed of Hawk’s encroachment.
“I hear supply has been low of that lately,” Arrow said.
He was shooting from the hip, but if his boys were right and they were expecting a new shipment in, then that would mean that the good shit on the streets was waning.
“Yeah, sorry but the stuff I have right now is junk. But it’ll do,” Pinky said. “Fuck, where is it?!”
“You already took it all, you moron!” someone shouted from across the room.
Jimmy cackled and Pinky frowned.
“Shit. That’s right. I’ve been here a while I guess.” He offered an apologetic smile to Arrow and shrugged. “I don’t keep track of the time. It’s always dark in here so who knows how many days it’s been.”