Adam's Day

Adam's Day- A Short Story


    Hillary was coming over soon. Adam wasn’t as excited as he felt he should be to have his girl coming over. She would probably give another lecture of sorts about getting clean, what she didn’t realize though was that her lectures were impossible to get through sober. Adam loaded up an oil lamp (that’s what he has to call them when he buys them at the local Grand Forks head shops. If he calls them meth pipes they call the cops) and prepared for her arrival. Holding the lighter a few inches under the bubble to melt down the crystals into a smoke producing liquid, the rush of the first few hits sped his heart rate up, dilated his eyes, dried his mouth, and prepared him for Hillary’s arrival.

    He wanted to make sure that it was nice and clean and tidy before Hillary arrived, if it wasn’t she would threaten to do the cleaning herself; that always made Adam feel guilty and a little bit uncomfortable. The next twenty minutes were spent gathering up all of his clothes that he had left scattered around the apartment, though he decided to leave the couch with a few shirts on it to cover up the rips and burn marks. He contemplated changing his clothes as he had slept in them (socks and all) but he had only worn them since yesterday, so they weren’t that dirty. The bathroom was clean, usually was; that was Adam’s favorite spot to clean when he was high and had nothing better to do to keep his mind from deteriorating until he engaged in a desperate hunt for anything resembling a chunk of crystal. Dishes weren’t done but there weren’t many so he didn’t worry about that either. The mini fridge was nearly empty except for a to-go box full of spaghetti that he had brought home from work yesterday. Just as he was going to shut it he saw that some of the sauce had leaked out of the cardboard and spent the rest of the time cleaning up the red stains before she came.

    She got to Adam’s efficiency apartment earlier than she said she would, like always. When he answered her soft rap at the door she immediately squeezed him firm around his waist and stood on the tops of her toes to give him a kiss. “Hi honey!” she exclaimed, and Adam let her in shutting the door behind her while she chirped on. He could smell the cold still clinging to her jacket underneath the obviously fresh perfume that she probably applied in the car on her way in on her neck. “How are you today? I just had the craziest day at work! Ashley came in late and while she was rushing off of the elevator she got her heel caught in the… door… Adam what the fuck?”

    She had noticed his pipe still sitting on his couch. Adam bit down on his bottom lip hard. He had spaced out in a futile attempt to make his apartment look nice before she came and had forgotten the most important detail of her arrival. Hide. The. Drugs. They were supposed to go in the top drawer of his TV stand; underneath the Batman comics. She was quite aware of his lackadaisical hiding spot but usually ignored it when she was in good spirits. As soon as an argument started she would fling that drawer open and remind him of how their relationship would never be healthy as long as he wasn’t.

    As she began the familiar lecture that began with the incident from last year and ended with her in tears from getting so upset Adam shut the words out and gazed at her. She was a very pretty girl, with high cheekbones and eyes like those Precious Moments figurines. She was always dressed with a modest fashion; never too slutty or covered in makeup but still held an attractiveness to her wardrobe that most girls couldn’t seem to pull off. She genuinely loved him too and didn’t try to hide it. That’s why she would get so upset like this, because she cared way too much.

    He began to focus back in on what she was saying  and Adam heard her voice begin to raise emotionally as she was going off on how unhealthy meth was for you, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Adam shushed her harshly, “Do you want me to get evicted? Keep your voice down. The neighbors probably heard you.”

    Hillary began to tear up on cue and ran to Adam to embrace him. She squeezed hard and pressed her face firmly into his chest as she became desperate, “I don’t want to lose you to this honey. I want you to be healthy. I want us to be healthy. I want us to be happy!”
As she said this guilt ripped through Adam’s chest. He didn’t want to face these emotions or this situation right now. She had just arrived and he already felt the need to run. With shame thick in his throat he mumbled, “I have to go. I told Sal I would hang out with him today.” He gently pulled away from her hug and went to put on his boots and his jacket.

    Hillary sat on the bed heavily and it sounded like another spring popped. Hillary had nearly regained control of herself when she said, “You need a new mattress or at least one of those foam pads to put over it.” Hillary faltered before catching Adam’s eyes and said, “I know what you do with Sal.”
Adam averted her glance and looked down to finish tying his boots and for a second his heart jumped before he said, “No you don’t. You just think you do.”

    "Right. Whatever. Adam, I’m not going to put up with this forever. I’ll wait here for you. When will you be done?”
Now standing at the door, Adam allowed his neck to go limp, aimed the top of his head towards the floor, and shrugged, “I won’t be long, two hours, maybe three. I love you honey.”

“I love you too," she said, correct in her assumption that Adam did not hear it.

    Adam couldn’t get down the flight of stairs fast enough; being on the third floor had its disadvantages. On the way down Adam lit up a cigarette as he rushed past a sign posted up on one of the walls that stated: “THIS IS A NO SMOKING BUILDING”. Adam wasn’t too concerned about it though, there were only five apartments in the complex and only the old man with the cats didn’t smoke. Plus, when he had signed the lease, it had said that they weren’t allowed to have pets so screw that old husk. When he got just outside the apartment complex he slid on a patch of ice but caught himself before falling. “Jesus,” he muttered as he looked around to see if anyone had seen his balancing act. While bundling himself up in his jacket to fight the freezing wind he walked a little more carefully the rest of the way to his car parked on the street. The car started up right away; the engine was still in good shape despite the body being dented and scratched. His dad had given him the car as a reward for being the first of his kids to graduate high school and it was nearly new then but when Adam learned how to drive in a North Dakota winter with a manual transmission he made a few mistakes that showed. It adds character. Or something.

    Rolling the window down just a crack to blow the smoke of his cigarette out Adam navigated his way to Salvador’s place through the icy roads of Grand Forks. As he drove he thought about Hillary getting upset again. He really did want to quit everything, clean up, and live a simple life but it wasn’t that simple. Sal had said on multiple times that his only goal in life was to “get fucked up and go on adventures”. Adam found it difficult to talk to Sal about cleaning up without sounding like Hillary which would make him a hypocrite for always tuning her out.

    He felt another pang of guilt when he thought about her telling him that she knew what he did with Sal. Sure, she knew that they got high together, she was right about that, but there was so much more. When he was with Sal it really was an adventure. They would go exploring the country roads during a blizzard just for the challenge of it. Spontaneous trips to Fargo or Minneapolis (to pick up drugs, sneak into a club, or just walk the streets and cause havoc without having to worry about running into someone you knew) were never out of the question either. Plus the sex was great. Adam was sure Hillary had no idea about the sex.

    He got to Sal’s trailer and slid to a stop on more ice on the street. He cursed the winter to himself as he ran up to the door and knocked. Sal never rushed to answer the door and the cold was ripping through his coat so he knocked again immediately this time with a lot more urgency. The extra effort did not transmit to Sal who still took about three minutes to finally answer the door and let Adam in from the cold. “Fuckin a,” Adam growled at Sal, “About time. It’s colder than hell out there.”

    Sal smiled at this, and Adam remembered how much he loved that smile. Sal had beautiful tanned skin thanks to his Hispanic mother that made his teeth seem to radiate out from his mouth when he smiled. His hair was black, curly, and long with a bang that always seemed to bounce over his left eye, though today it was a little more unkempt than usual. He was shirtless even though it was winter and his trailer really wasn’t that warm and his torso was toned without being buff and thin without being scrawny. To Adam he had the most perfect body he could think of, judging his own disproportionate features in comparison. “Starting the day off with a paradox are we?” Sal’s grin showed his appreciation for the joke, and though Adam didn't find it quite as funny, he always smiled when Sal did. Sal's teeth were straight but not quite perfect; he was the lucky one who never felt the tightening of teeth in the crevices of your jaw for what is a perpetual eternity in the mind of a preteen. He noticed the flawed teeth, the slightest overlap of the left incisor onto the right, and genuinely smiled, locking eyes with Sal before the rambling of his mind slowed enough for him to respond,

    “Starting the day off? Did you just wake up? It’s three in the afternoon,” Adam took his coat off and threw it into the corner of the living room on top of Sal’s pile of winter wear. He didn’t take off his boots.

    “Morning is in the eye of the beholder! The day has just began for me so this is my morning. On that note, I haven’t smoked yet, care to join me?” Sal began walking to his bedroom without waiting for a response; he knew it wasn’t necessary. Adam followed him into the bedroom and found a seat on a five ga on bucket that held paint once and was flipped upside so to be recycled as a chair. They began the familiar ritual of melting up shards of meth and inhaling the fumes while continuing whatever discussion they had stumbled into. Today it was a matter of whether morning was a static event that occurred whether or not you were aware of it or if it was based on personal perception. They ended up agreeing that time itself was a man-made concept, or at the very least only applicable to the time it takes a rock/massive gas collection to orbit around another rock/massive gas collection. If time was not able to be defined they would allow nihilistic thoughts to rule.

    "If something cannot be consistently and unirversally defined then it cannot be," was the final consensus, until Sal found a logical fallacy and the cycle began again

    Those debates are what drew them together back in high school, each finding in the other someone of intellectual equality that could play a devil’s advocate regardless of personal belief. The friendship turned into something more intimate after the first year but Adam wanted to keep that part of his life quiet as he still struggled to understand who and what he was. Sal was more confident and while he did not broadcast his sexuality he didn’t hide it from anyone except Hillary. Adam was jealous of that and it made him desire Sal even more.

    Adam noticed something on Sal’s arm that made him nauseous. “Is that a fucking track mark?” Adam’s voice nearly cracked with his shock at the sight, “I thought we agreed that we would never shoot this shit!”

Sal didn’t hesitate and rolled his eyes quickly, “That was said a long time ago.”

    “That was three months ago!”

    “Whatever!” Sal stood up obviously frustrated with the subject, “Look it’s not that big of a deal. I’ve done it a couple times now and it’s a lot better of a high.”

    Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s not the point. We made a promise. Together.”

    At this Sal got extremely upset, “Together? What the hell do you mean together? We aren’t together, you have decided to be with that bore of girl.”

    “Yes but we know that there’s something with us.”

    “No we don’t. I don’t find it very becoming of a relationship to spend most of my days alone while the man I want around me is off spouting fake ‘I love you’s’ to some simple minded, whiney, unoriginal little… cunt!”

    Adam stood up himself at that and the two stood face to face both shooting a vile glare at the other. The tension of the moment was accelerated as the meth began to ravage through the barriers it encountered in the lungs and Adam's brain began to buzz and hum.

    "Don’t you talk about her like that. She’s a sweetheart. She's never done you wrong.” Adam found himself defending Hillary without thinking about it and shoved Sal hard in the chest. Sal tripped over another one of the paint buckets and fell onto his back before quickly jumping back up.

    The embarrassment on Sal’s face quickly turned into a cliché: fiery -Latino hatred and he reared back and threw a haymaker into Adam’s right eye. Adam felt the blow crack his nose and he fell down himself cracking his head on the corner of a table on the way down. Sal had tears running down his face and he gave Adam two quick kicks into the ribs while screaming, “Get out! Get the fuck out! Get out right now!”

    “Stop kicking me and I will!” so Sal relented and Adam got up with blood running over his lips from his nose and swelling already beginning over his eye. He spit some blood on Sal’s floor as he stumbled to the front door, head throbbing and slightly spinning. He went outside, forgetting his coat, but when he heard the door slam behind him he knew there was no going back to get it and drove home shivering in his t-shirt. As the image of the fight replayed through his head he became disgusted with Sal and his junkie justifications and made a personal vow not to see him again.

    When he got back to the apartment complex he made sure to avoid the ice on his way back in and each step he took up the stairs made his head pound that much more. He ripped the no smoking sign off the wall and threw it on the ground. He knocked at his apartment door twice and before he could knock a third time Hillary swung the door open and shrieked at the sight of Adam’s face. “Oh my god what the hell happened to you?”

    Adam walked past her and sat down on the bed feeling where the newest popped spring was. Rubbing the bump on his head from where he hit it on the table he mumbled, “I’m not going to be hanging out with Sal anymore.”

    Hillary seemed to miraculously appear with a warm wet rag to wipe the blood off of his face. “Did he do this? Oh wow honey this is going to swell like crazy. I can’t say I’m upset that you aren’t going to be seeing him anymore but I know you guys have been friends for a long time now.” She clicked her tongue, shook her head in a motherly fashion, and gave him a kiss on the side of his face that wasn’t swelling. They sat there like that for a while, Hillary rubbing his eye very gently and Adam feeling ashamed. There was a sense of relief that went through him now. No more hiding from Hillary and now he could clean up. For the first time in a long time he truly saw how beautiful she was, inside and out. She was being so affectionate right now. She really is a sweetheart and he really did love her, in a secure, comfortable kind of way. She was good for him and he decided to try and be good for her in return.

    Hillary took a deep sigh before finally breaking the silence, “I smashed your pipe and flushed all the drugs I could find.” She sounded apologetic about it.

    “Good. Thank you.” Adam got up and reached into the back corner of one of the cabinets across from the bed and pulled out a small zip lock bag with a few grams of meth in it. He shook it at her and smiled and she smiled back. He went to the bathroom and tried to drop it into the toilet but his eye was now fully swollen shut and his depth perception was off. He got it in the second time and watched it as it flushed away. He stepped back out to see Hillary still acting sheepishly. “You ok?” He asked softly.

    “You are asking me if I’m ok while you stand there with half of your face swollen shut. How did I get stuck with such a sweetheart?” She smiled and gave him a very careful kiss on his swollen eye, “There it should be better now.”

    Adam smiled softly back at her, “Oh it definitely is, I can feel the healing powers of your kiss taking effect already.”

    Hillary looked down at her shoes and said, “I think you should go to rehab for a bit, to help you with the withdrawals and maybe get back on your anti-depressant. Just to be safe.”

    Adam nodded, sat back onto the bed and sighed. “Yeah. Ok”

    Hillary stayed the night at Adam’s apartment and the rest of the day was spent discussing where he would go and for how long. When night fell they lay together and engaged in a form of angry/makeup sex that left Adam wanting. The meth was still running amok in his system; Adam didn’t sleep.

    The next day Sal called Adam, presumably to engage in the routine apologetic ritual that addicts did when they regret what they did and wanted to blame their actions on the drugs. Hillary stared at his phone when it rang and her Precious Moments eyes turned into horror when Adam picked up the phone. He stared at the screen for a long time thinking about the conversation that would probably ensue. He closed his eyes and waited for the call to finally go to voicemail. After the last note of the generic ring tone had finished Adam went into his contact list and erased Sal from it before blocking his number all together. Hillary smiled, gave Adam a soft kiss on the forehead, and whispered, “Thank you.” Adam looked back up sheepishly smiling and lightly nodding. “I know that wasn’t easy,”

    Hillary gave a glance to the phone as the voicemail alert popped up. Adam dialed the voicemail app and the machine began to say “You have one unheard message. First message, sent today, at 8:47 A.M. Central Time from 218-79…” Adam quickly hit the four key on his phone to save the message and hung up.

    He looked up at Hillary with a smile he hoped she believed and said, “There. Gone for good.”