Page 39 of The Marriage

As he headed out of his parents’ house, he texted Marky to meet him at Poe’s.

It was code that Marky would recognize.

Everything was just too much, and Roman swore he was starting to fall apart at the seams. There was only one thing he could do to get himself under some semblance of control, even if it would leave him numb.

He just needed to feel alive.

If only for a second.

Even though he was the one who’d admitted Karine into a facility, it was as though she had been the one who left him for dead. He didn’t even think she knew it.

How could she?

EIGHT

Marky was late, and by the time he got to Poe’s—well, the deed was done. Roman was already sniffing hard, and rubbing his nose with the back of his hand.

“What the fuck did you do, man?” Marky asked, rushing to where Roman stood at the mouth of the alley beside the dive bar known only as Poe’s to the men who liked to frequent the place.

His friend didn’t bother to lean against the wall like he was. With a cigarette burning to dust between his fingers, he couldn’t actually remember whether or not he’d taken a drag off it before it was practically gone.

“Nothing. I didn’t do anything to help her,” Roman replied.

That wasn’t what Marky asked, but it was the only thing on Roman’s mind. The entire reason why he was standing there sniffing what coke remained in his nose straight up to his fucking brain. Too bad he’d never been able to take enough to end it all.

Somehow, he’d never found a threshold.

“Fuck that. And I want to know what you’re doing here, Roman. This is the last place in the city you should be—what are you doing?”

Roman threw the spent cigarette butt to the ground, and grabbed his friend by the shoulders. “That’s what everyone seems to think. Including my parents. They think I abandoned her. I married her, for fuck’s sake.”

“Roman, look at me,” Marky snapped, shoving out of his friend’s hold.

“I am looking at you, man. I’m telling you exactly what’s going on. I married a girl, and then abandoned her. I should be shot in the fucking face.”

At that point, despite the somber tone of his voice, Roman broke into a loud cackling laugh when he made a gun with his fingers, pointed it at his head, and pretended to pull the trigger.

Unsurprisingly, Marky didn’t find it funny. His suspicious gaze swept the street to see if anyone was watching them. No one was.

Roman pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket and lit another smoke. The ache in his chest said he didn’t need another one, but fuck it.

He was already dead.

One more wouldn’t hurt.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, I heard you,” Marky said, shaking his head. “I’m not going to stand here and give you a fucking speech right now, but you don’t need me to, either. You know what you’re here for, and I can see it all over your face. Your eyes get black like coal when you’re high on coke, Rome, do you even realize that?”

Roman blinked, licking his lips and smirking a bit. “Do they?”

The coke made his mirth insatiable. Things that weren’t at all funny became one long joke to him. He couldn’t stop the urge to see everything as good. Because it was better when he was like this.

Even if nothing was good at all.

His relationship with Karine, his life, all of it was falling apart and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Marky groaned as he put his back to the wall, standing beside Roman. “You’ve been clean for months, man. You were so fucking close.”

The sky was the brightest of blues.