Seven Years Wasted

She stood in that old parking lot, arms crossed, leaned against her car. The August air was warm but that didn't change the frigid sorrow that had iced over her heart. The lot was empty aside from her worn down VW Rabbit and his "mom van" that they had always joked about. She turned her head to the left where he was crouched by his van, carefully rolling what had been his only diversion for months. In all of the seven years that they had grown up together, she had never let him see her cry. But the breeze tickled her face until it caught the single tear that had escaped her weary eyes and it sunk deep into the empty place that his betrayal had left in her soul.

A cloud of smoke crawled from his lips and was carried to her by that same stinging breeze as if to taunt her confused misery. As the smoke disappeared with the setting sun, he stepped closer so as to look her in the eye. 

"C'mon. Just take a hit."

Never had she felt more simultaneously opposed and drawn to the sweet taste of distraction but her eyes hardened and she turned away, unable to look at the boy that she thought she knew. 

He stepped around to her other side and, after smothering the joint beneath his foot, tried to catch her downcast gaze.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, recognizing the pain he had caused.

And, in that moment, she realized that the issue wasn't his broken promise, it wasn't the marijuana, it wasn't his addiction to escaping reality. The addiction was all her own. Her unspoken love for him had been her secret, her escape from reality, her drug that had consumed every moment, waking and sleeping, for years. She saw for the first time that the little boy she had grown to love was gone. And, as with any addiction, the moment she no longer had him, she began to fall apart. The love she once had for that innocent, bright-eyed boy, the love that filled her soul and gave her purpose ultimately crushed her.