This is expanded from a creative writing exercise I did at work. Posted unedited.
My favorite memory of my time with Stevie was dropping acid and listening to Crystal Castles in his boxy little Scion. His car became a spaceship and we blasted through the cosmos, giggling like fiends, parked behind the dilapidated house in the woods our friends were squatting in.
Another time, a decade prior to being psychonauts at the squat house, I brought over a bunch of bars to hang out with him at Chet's neat and spartan singlewide trailer. We had just graduated high school a few months prior.
I was living with some tweakers who moved out from Alabama. One of them paid me their rent in bars. Because I sucked at selling drugs (and managing money), I just gave away what I didn't snort.
Anyway, I pounded a few Coors and took a bar, and I promptly blacked out in the floor of the bathroom. Mercifully, I had locked and blocked the door with my body so I could vomit uncontrollably in private. I came to early in the morning, chilled to the bone because I had been lying on top of an air vent.
I cleaned myself and my mess, slipped out, and drove home to the one bedroom apartment I shared with the 3 tweakers and a random local runaway. After that, Stevie and I lost contact for about 10 years. This was before everyone had cell phones and internet and social media.
Further back, in high school, I used to come hang out at the McDonald's he worked at. How he kept that job is beyond me. He was always giving away food and making dead baby jokes over the drive‑thru speakers. I remember thinking he was so cool and was amazed that so many people liked him even though he was such an edgy prick.
Even further back, my school bus route was temporarily changed and I got to ride through his neighborhood. He lived in a nice subdivision, and trailer trash me thought that's why he was such an asshole to me — his family was rich. With my longer perspective, now I understand they were just middle class.
He was always such a prick to me that when he'd invite me to hang out, it felt like winning the lottery. I'm of the opinion now that teenage me was a fucking idiot with self‑esteem problems.
After we reconnected in our late 20s, things would periodically feel like they were getting serious, then he'd pull back. Once, he looked me in the eye, kind of exasperated, and said "I'm going to end up in jail if I keep drinking with you". At the time it felt so much like something out of a Bukowski novel. I was wild and a drunk and it felt like a compliment.
After I was kidnapped, he pulled away permanently, citing that he didn't know what to say to me after that. A few years later, he tearfully apologized for 'abandoning' me, as he put it.
The most confusing thing about our relationship was that he had been seeing someone else for years while we were 'together'. How did he manage that?
He always texted back. I saw him most weekends. How did he keep both us women secret? I only found out because his then‑girlfriend tagged him in their 3rd anniversary post. It was some mundane low‑effort post, like "wow I can't believe it's been three years, babe!"
I wasn't even upset. I got sick to my stomach, but also felt unburdened because maybe my kidnapping was just the perfect out for him, and it wasn't that I was "too much to handle" or whatever line he fed me that absolved him of responsibility.
I commented on the post "WOW THREE YEARS!? CONGRATS" and he promptly blocked me. I knew then that he knew I knew.
The last time I talked to him, he called me drunk from the hospital while his now‑wife was in labor. He asked if I wanted to fuck, then went on a tirade about a girl who had bullied us both in high school. By the end of the tirade, he was sobbing about how scared he was to be a father.
I sat on the phone with him while he dumped out all of his insecurities, fears, and regrets. I'd long since moved on from the hurt and confusion of our situation, but hearing him blubber and grovel for forgiveness took all the magic and mystery out of our entire shared history.
Now that I think about it, tripping at a squat house in the middle of the woods was really my only good memory of Stevie. The rest of them were too clouded by Bombay Sapphire and the hurt and confusion of finding out I'd been his side piece for years.
Stevie wasn't some untouchably cool guy that was doing me a favor by spending time with me, as he had often made me feel. He was just a dude who needed to get his shit together.