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  Blue Dream

  By Xavier Neal

  Blue Dream

  By Xavier Neal

  ©Xavier Neal 2015

  Published by Entertwine Publishing

  Cover Photographer: Shauna Kruse

  Cover Model: Ben Amerson

  Cover by Entertwine Publishing

  All rights reserved

  License Note

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without authorization of the Author or Entertwine Publishing. Any distribution without express consent is illegal and punishable in court of law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  Dedicated: To The Universe, You always know what you're doing when it comes to love, even when we think you don't.

  Author Note:

  While this story contains actual facts, the names, places, and events have all become fictionalized. The truth has been woven into the fiction.

  Ryder

  -“You were my first addiction, my sweetest high.”-

  The number of bullshit things I hate never seems to stop growing. Especially in here. Especially now. I hate the way the walls are painted a perfect, pretentious white. I hate the way the air is crisp and clean like linen fresh out of the dryer. I hate the cheerful phrases stained on the walls. They're all bullshit slogans that belong on greeting cards. And of course this flawless painted portrait of where those with too much money and not enough rules end up couldn't be complete without the thing I hate most. Me.

  “Mr. Collins?”

  My eyes shift from the large windows which let the light in. It's supposed to create a peaceful setting one of the therapists had told me. She was a real winner. Tight blouses. Short skirts. Rarely panties. Sleeping with your patients who were reluctant to participate in their sessions, was an intriguing move, I'll admit. Illegal. Highly illegal. But who the fuck cares. Everyone has a job to do and she did hers, and did it well I might add. I could've had my chance to burst the celibacy bubble I've fumbled into. It's not like she didn't fucking offer.

  “Mr. Collins?” The man is completely bald. Faded scruff on his cheeks. He's built like a brick shit house with the voice to match. An old biker maybe. How the fuck he ended up a therapist is a story I would love to hear. “That is you, correct?”

  I nod. My eyes return out the window I'm leaning against. I hate the outside recreational yard. It's overly green even though it's fall. At least I think it's fall. Time ceases to exist in this place. There aren't clocks, but rotations of faces. It's the only way you even know time has shifted besides the changing of sunlight and moonlight. The light that should make it feel less like a prison cell. I hate that too. The lie that rehab is anything less than a prison without bars. I think I would've preferred prison. For some of the shit I've done, it's where I belong.

  The sound of a chair being dragged across the floor grabs my attention again. Dumbfounded with his choice of action, I continue watching. He moves it to face the bare wall beside me, the complete opposite direction of the luxury couch I should sit on. Slowly he takes in a large breath, the movement alone intimidating as fuck. When he expels it, he sits down with the clipboard in his lap.

  Looking at it he states, “You will call me Doc.”

  That wasn't a suggestion.

  He takes out a small packet and places it on top of his clipboard. This is the first time he looks up at me. While his eyes are on me, mine are on the small white box sitting in his lap. Thoughtlessly my tongue wets my lips again and again, imagining that small white rolled up cylinder of nicotine finding it's way to my mouth, to my taste buds, to tickle every nerve ending that can stomach it.

  Doc motions to the wall opposite of him and his chair. “Sit.”

  Like an obedient pup, ready to please the man holding the treat bag, I move my way over to the spot he wants, but I don't sit. Not yet.

  His eyes wander back to the clipboard. “You haven't had one of these in 12 weeks, 3 days, and 16 hours.”

  Impressive. He's read more than just the basics. I highly doubt that shit is on the top page.

  Doc meets my eyes again. He opens the package nonchalantly and pulls out a long white stick. It's not what I'm craving. It's not at all what I fucking want. This is exactly why I didn't sit. I fucking knew better. Every one of these white coat, tie wearing bastards has some new trick up their sleeve to try to help us get 'to the other side'. The whore who slept with her patients wasn't the only unorthodox therapist. I had one try to blind fold me. He tried explaining I would feel safer if I couldn't see him. If I couldn't see someone judging me. That's all these fucking people do. They don't listen. They judge. Then they write down how fucked up you are on a little white or green note pad, give you some run of the mill diagnosis and free you back into the very society that heaved you out for making a mistake. Or several. For not having enough control over your choices.

  “There's five more in this pack just like this one.” He shoves it back inside and pulls out the real deal. The toy in the cereal box. The fucking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. “And one of these.”

  My eyes widen and my tongue starts bothering my lips again.

  “This is what you really want, right Ryder?” He takes my silence as submission. “This is what it's all about.” I wanna look away but can't. The smell of the unlit nicotine, the chemicals of calm as I learned to refer to them as, are hypnotizing me. It's now a siren and I'm the sailor ready to be lead to my death. My sweet, calming death. “Give me six sessions with the other stick feeding that monster inside and on the last one, after it's all complete, I'll give you this one.”

  I've made it 12 weeks without one of those, not that it was a choice. No. Every time I wanted to buy one or finally got my hands on one, one of the busy body know everything nurses swooped in like the Batman of Drug Abuse and sold my ass out. I miss the way those babies taste. How they hum on your tongue when you light them. The simple way they dance like ballerinas in The Nutcracker in your blood stream. It seems so wrong he can just dangle the temptation out there. It feels like false promises of the Messiah, I used to worship, returning.

  My hands find themselves in my hair, pulling it tight. It's become my mechanism for dealing with stress without the drugs. It's the way I did before drugs entered the scene. Before my life took the fucked up left turn into the shit storm tsunami that never seemed to lose steam. I slide down against the wall until my ass is on the ground, my legs are parted, and my eyes are staring back into the black, soulless ones that have come to conquer me.

  “Good,” Doc states. I watch the cigarette disappear back into its sanctuary and cringe when the impostor comes out. “Take this.”

  Reluctantly, I do. Putting it between my lips, I swallow the immediate response to gag at the chalky flavor.

  “According to your file, you've had a helluva good time. Alcohol. Cocaine. Ecstasy. Acid. Tranquilizers. Enough prescription pills to make a pharmacist blush.”

  “Awe, are we gonna walk down memory lane together, Doc?” I tease, my attention on the disgusting candy between my teeth.

  “We are.”

  Of course we are. It's his fucking job. The typical questions will begin now. Except this time I might answer them. I might not. Depends on how by the book they are. How many I can stomach before I decide completing my time here isn't any more important than it's ever been. Only real difference between now and then is this tatted biker in front of me. He had to have been one once. There's a scorpion tattoo on his neck that could only belong to one kind of lifestyle. I'd know. I ran drugs for
them for a bit.

  “Your father, Derek,” he starts. I swear my eyes roll all on their own. “He pays for this correct?”

  “That's what he's good at,” I point out, smirking vindictively. “Paying for problems to go away. An abortion here. A fucked up son there. Money makes anyone's problems go away.”

  Doc's face remains expressionless. “Did you always hate him this much?”

  I don't answer. I'm not even sure I know the answer. Removing the candy cigarette from my lips as if it were the real thing, I pretend to blow smoke rings. The motions are all so realistic, I swear I can see the O’s floating in the air.

  “Your first drug. What was it?”

  His question cocks a smirk on my face and I place the candy back in my mouth. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

  “Impress me.”

  For a moment I wonder if I should. It's been so long, I've began to wonder if I'm wrong. If maybe this didn't all start there, at that point. It's been ten fucking years. Every time I think back to why and how I ended up here, really ended up here, the answer is always the same. Part of me doesn't want to let it go. Part of me won't. Or can't.

  “Ryder, I am not in the habit of repeating myself. That makes for a weak individual. I am not weak.”

  Nodding that I understand, I remove the candy and blow out the imaginary rings once more. I respect him. Maybe because he scares the shit out of me. Then again maybe it's because he looks like he wants to hear the story I actually want to tell. Something about him says he wants to hear more than what's written on the page. How he needs to see what sits in the space in between. Truth is, I need someone to look there. I'm beginning to wonder if it's the only place Ryder Collins ever truly existed.

  “Blue Dream.”

  “Marijuana.”

  I scoff, “That's not just marijuana.”

  “It's a hybrid strain. Often said to have a blueberry taste to it. 400 an ounce depending on the dealer and the authenticity of it all. To those who can afford it, asking for 450 to 500 isn't unheard of.”

  Facts and figures like that only come from those who sell it. Those weren't Google search numbers. Those were dealer numbers. It was something ZD MC prided themselves in. I swallow the new taste of bitterness. There's something oddly disgusting yet soothing about talking to someone you know has done more fucked up shit in their life than you have. As twisted as it is, it's nice not to be in a room with someone who has a Brady Bunch Bachelor's degree, whose biggest shame isn't which of Hollywood’s whores he's bedded. It's almost like being around my own kind. Not because I was an MC member, but because I'm not squeaky clean. Fuck that. I'm not any better than the bird shit he accidentally stepped in on the way in. With the other therapists, it felt like shit to know that, but with Doc, it seems like it's alright.

  “The high you get from quality items like that is remarkable-”

  “Exactly.” I remove the stick. “That's what being with her was like. Like having Blue Dream running through your system, all day every day. Pumping through your blood like it had replaced it. She was my first high. That one you never stop chasing.”

  For the first time since he sat down, I see his face move. His eyebrows fall. “Who?”

  “Her name was Presley Morrison.”

  Her tongue rolls against the underside of my shaft. The second it strokes the curve of my crown, I start coming. Fuck, I love everything about coming with her. The way her mouth hugs my cock like it's thanking it for giving in. The way her dark brown hair falls around her face, hiding her from the rest of the world. Fuck, even the pleased moan that never fails to leak out of her when I'm coming. All of it makes me come harder. There's never any light coming with Presley. When she sucks an orgasm out, it's always like she's sucking my soul out of me and into her. It's like she's always trying to rewrite herself with love for me. I love every minute of it. How could I not? I love her.

  Slowly she removes her mouth, leaving her signature kiss on the top of my sensitive dick. Her 'I love you' kiss. She worships my body. I worship hers. Church is constantly in session.

  There's a little giggle as she wipes the corner of her lips. “You taste like strawberries.”

  “I told you I was your nutritional part of the day.”

  Presley's giggle gets louder and I smile wider, completely forgetting the fact my limp dick is just chillin' on the outside of my jeans. I love listening to her laugh. Watching her smile. I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this girl and I still felt like every moment together could be our last, which makes it my duty to make sure I absorb every bit of her.

  “Um...your dick's still out,” she reminds me as her head hits the back of the seat.

  “Oh I see. Just take what you need and go,” I playfully remark.

  She laughs again and I swear everything in the world is perfect. At least in mine.“Shut up.”

  I slip my dick back inside, button my jeans, and pull my shirt back down.

  “Ry,” her gentle voice whispers indicating exactly what it always does when we're finished fooling around. When I look back up into her dark brown eyes, I hate what I see. I hate the sad softness to them. I always try to avoid being the reason they get this color. I want to always be the reason they light up. “You're sure it doesn't bother you?”

  A sigh comes out of me. This reassuring shit is getting old. But she needs it. I always want to give her what she needs. “I'm sure.”

  “But-”

  “Pres, if I wanted to be fucking, I would let you know.” Her perfect lips close. “I respect you. I love you enough to wait until you're completely ready. I've already waited a year. I'll wait another. Or four. Or seven. Fuck it, ten. I'll wait ten years if I have to.”

  She gives me a sweet look laced with sarcasm. “Ten years? You'd wait ten years to sleep with me?”

  “Make love to you,” I correct sounding like a pussy. “There's a difference or so my brother's girlfriend's Cosmo says.” The moment her laughter starts again, I add, “I'll wait forever for you Presley Morrison.”

  “But you didn't.” Doc's dead expression mixes with my guilt, which causes me to shut my eyes. “Because you're sitting here. Refusing to finish your time. Refusing to complete these sessions.” There's a very brief pause. “Why?”

  On a quiet mumble I ask, “Why what?”

  “Why didn't you wait for her?”

  “I tried...”

  “Obviously not hard enough.”

  Unsure I heard him correctly, I lift my head and my eyes. “Excuse me?”

  “You're sitting here, on the floor of a rehab center. Had you done everything the way you're implying you were going to, you wouldn't fucking be here.” I blink baffled by his bluntness. “You started at that moment in time. Maybe you did it to try to shock me, but not likely. You started there for a reason. What happened after you took her home? After the blow job.”

  There's a familiar aching in my bones. The pain of realization I've dealt with year after year in between highs has long moved past settling in just my chest. No. It's made a fucking home in my entire body. It's damn near hollowed me out. The weight of what happened after that fractured even the simplest structures in my spirit. He's fucking right. I picked that moment because it was the last blissful, honest one we had together. It was the last time I believed in miracles, the last time I believed in anything greater than the power of my next fix.

  “My life began to fall apart.”

  “Come here son,” my obviously intoxicated father calls me to the end of the neighbor's driveway.

  All I want is to go upstairs and go to bed. I hate when I can't curl up next to Presley after we fool around. Sleeping next to her is almost as fucking amazing as getting off with her.

  He sternly repeats, “Come here.”

  I don't wanna 'come here'. I don't wanna hear the shit he has to say. It's always about how just the right of money can make miracles happen. How money is the foundation of life. All conversations center around that with me. Why? B
ecause I'm the accident child. I'm not the one who was meant to hold his legacy. I'm not the youthful version of him like my older brother, or the thinned perfection that was once my mother that is now my sister. No. I'm the surprise that stopped a divorce. The surprise that melded a broken marriage back together. At least until I walk off the stage with my diploma.

  Bracing myself for the latest load of crap he's about to spew, I slowly approach. “Dad, I really should get to bed…” My eyes glance back at the house. It would be so easy to just turn around and go inside. “I've got school in the morning.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he brushes off. “Get over here. We wanna talk to you.”

  I growl under my breath, shove my hands in my jeans and arrive where I was summoned. “What's up, Dad?

  “Don't be a dick,” he grunts, beer coated on each word like he's been marinating them for hours. Wouldn't be surprised if he had. For a man who likes the finer things, he loves his beer more than liquor. “Say hi to Mikey.”