Ecstasy

Zara

“You going to the beach party next weekend?” Jax exhales a cloud of smoke on his front porch, the full moon directly in front of us, seeming to hover over Shadow Lakes’ subdivision. I hear the thud of music from a few houses over, just a typical Friday night in Falls Creek.

Jax passes the joint to me and I inhale, closing my eyes at the tang of the sweet smoke in my mouth. I hold it, letting it heat up my lungs, and then exhale through my nose before I pass it back to Jax.

As the smoke dissipates in the air, I shrug. Who knows if Alex will want me to go? All summer, he talked my ear off about this little a

We got di

Wednesday night, I went home after I gave Eli head, and we saw Alex’s Jeep pulling into their subdivision. I had to duck down in the seat.

I don’t know how I’d go to a beach party with both of them. It’s all I could do last night eating with Alex not to think about Eli’s fingers inside of me.

“You going?” I ask Jax, trying to clear my head.

“Nah,” he answers me after he snubs out the joint in the glass ashtray at his side. “I wasn’t invited. Besides, I don’t really like the beach.”

I turn to stare at him, shocked. “Really?”

He rubs his neck and laughs. “Yeah, really. Sharks and shit? No, thanks.”

I rub my hands down my jeans, looking back up at the moon. “You know we all gotta die someday, right?” I ask him, kind of absentmindedly. As a teenager, it was something that drew me to philosophy, specifically Stoicism. The early Stoics did their best to accept whatever came their way and soldiered on despite their circumstances. Or at least, they tried. Death was one of those big things that was inevitable, and they made their peace with it, living while they could.

I’m not really sure how that shit will serve me when I graduate with a degree in fucking philosophy, but even if I end up in Jax’s basement, I guess I’ll be able to say I really lived life. Or, at least that’s what I’ll tell myself when I pass out in bed alone every night.

“I know, but I don’t wa

“You wouldn’t be Jonah,” I point out, still staring up at the moon. “Jonah was in a whale.”

Jax cackles in amusement, slapping his knee. He must be high as hell because it really wasn’t that fu

“Something like that.” I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket but ignore it. Kylie has gone home again, so it isn’t her. Even if it was, I don’t fucking trust her anymore so I’m not fucking texting her.

Could be Mom reminding me, for the millionth time, about the engagement party this Sunday, like I could fucking forget. It isn’t every day your mom gets engaged for the fourth time.

“Why’d you start selling drugs?” I ask Jax quietly, riding my high by staring at the moon as if looking at it long enough will shoot me right up onto its cheesy surface. I stifle my own laugh, because that wasn’t very fu

I don’t know why I asked Jax that, but it just kind of came out. Happens when you’re high, I guess.

I can practically feel him shrug beside me. “I’m dyslexic. School was shit. I didn’t really like the idea of working in an office, like Dad. Mom stayed at home and she tried to help me out but…” He pauses and I turn to look at him, see him looking down at his knees, his palms pressed together. “She didn’t have a lot of patience. I think she wanted to be a housewife.” He snorts, shaking his head but not looking up. “Not a stay-at-home mom.”

For some reason, that makes me sad, thinking Jax didn’t feel wanted. But I don’t say anything or move to touch him. I don’t really know if he’d want any comfort anyway. He’s probably mostly over it.

Like I’m mostly over the fact my dad doesn’t really give a damn about me.

“So, I started smoking pot in middle school. Then a buddy of mine’s dad started growing it and in high school we started…” He smiles, looking up at me. “We started distributing it for him,” he tells me with that same smile on his face, his blue eyes bloodshot. He shrugs. “I dropped out of school in my junior year. I’d made enough money to buy this house a few years later.” He looks really proud of that and it is something to be proud of, but even so, I still feel sad.

He lets out a breath and looks away from me, staring at the sky like I was. I wonder if he wants to go to the moon too.

“You ever wa

Jax sighs. “This is heavy, Za.”

I laugh a little, run my hands through my hair. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t know. Must be the full moon.”

He nudges me with his shoulder, and I look over at him. “Don’t be sorry,” he tells me earnestly. “I don’t think either one of us imagined being this when we grew up.”

I look down at my hands. My bitten nails, chipped polish that I never fixed. At least Jax is making a living at this. I’m just fucking everything up, left and right.

“Anyway,” he continues, before I can feel too down on myself, “I guess when I was a kid, I saw movies with men in suits, like bankers and shit. Saw those law shows on TV my mom always watched. I mean,” he snorts, “I never wanted to be a lawyer. But I thought I’d grow up and wear a suit every day to work too. But then I realized most of those suits spent all day in an office and that didn’t really sit right with me.” He sighs. “When I fell into dealing, it just…well, to be honest, it just fit.” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Just wish it was legal, ya know?”

I laugh a little, ru

He doesn’t laugh at that and my palms feel sweaty. “What do you want to do, Zara?” he asks me quietly. The way he phrases it, like I still have a chance, like I might be something, it makes my throat tight, pressure building behind my eyes.

I cough, pressing my fist to my mouth and staring up at the moon again, trying not to get too emotional over this shit. “I uh, well, you know I like philosophy, and—don’t laugh, I know it’s a useless degree—but I kind of thought it would be cool, if I ever…” my voice cracks and I take a deep breath.

Jax claps his hand over my shoulder in a friendly gesture, kneading my muscles.

I close my eyes, a little overwhelmed. “If I ever get over this, you know, if I don’t drive my life completely into the ground, I’d help other people. Like not a therapist, because I hate therapists.” I laugh a little and Jax’s fingers dig in a little deeper. Not to hurt me, but to comfort me. I think about the therapist I went to when I was five. They let me play with blocks and assured me that my parents’ divorce wasn’t my fault.

A lot of good that did for the empty hole in my chest that my father had left.

“But I don’t know. If I could be a speaker, or just a support system to someone. Using the whole Stoic bullshit about handling your own emotions. About getting over your own mental blocks that tell you that you just can’t quit.”