Beautiful Addictions

233 Pages·2016·0.99 MB·English

by  Vining Season

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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
1. Conjunction
2. Opposition
3. Macula
4. Ejecta
5. Satellite
6. Gravity
7. Eclipse
8. Transit
9. Albedo
10. Perigee
11. Umbra
12. Tides
13. Phases
14. Revolution
15. Occultation
16. Far Side
17. Earthshine
18. Terminator
19. Apogee
20. Magnitude
21. Rille
22. Nadir
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
For Danielle,
my biggest cheerleader, who talks me off ledges and tabletops,
indulges my obsession with tattooed boys, and kills all the bugs.
Everyone is a moon and has a dark side
which he never shows to anybody.
—Mark Twain
1. Conjunction
Two planets in close proximity to each other in the sky.
“Hey, babe, hand me my smokes.”
“I’m not your babe,” Josie replied.
“Fine. Hey, bitch, hand me my smokes.”
She laughed darkly and complied with his request. One-night stands were not
afforded the privileges of pet names. Contrarily, the neatly arranged rails of
white powder on the tray across the room meant he could call her anything he
damn well pleased.
As the stranger lit a cigarette, Josie sat up and stretched her arms over her
head. The air reeked of sweat, sex, and tobacco. The humming fan that had
helped lull her to sleep a few hours ago now got on her last sober nerve.
Spotting her underwear across the room, Josie slid from between the sheets
and retrieved it. She slipped on each article of clothing as she found it,
eventually donning her outfit from the previous night. The young man’s eyes
followed her around, seeming amused by her hunt-and-gather technique.
“You were amazing,” he said.
His voice rasped like he had cotton and sawdust in his throat. The way his
slate blue eyes shined, she could see all his lust. She had no interest in dwelling
there.
Josie ignored him and leaned over the tray, holding the rolled-up dollar bill to
her nose. She closed her eyes and smiled as she inhaled the drug, knowing that
numbing bliss would soon find her. With a final sniff, she stood and let the
chemical absorb into her blood. It was soft feathers across her skin, drifting
down from the sky and landing around her toes. Her body tensed and prickled
with the warmth of a prolonged orgasm. In this high, she had no name, no past,
and no future. All she had was now. And now was amazing.
“Can I get your number? Sam Bradley is playing the Casbah on Wednesday.
My boy could get us in for free.”
His words punched holes in her buzz. Irritated, she slung her bag across her
body and pasted on a smile. The morning light peeked through the vertical
blinds, casting stripes of gold across his body. He smiled and she could feel his
desire for her again. To Josie, he was just a guy—a guy with a warm bed,
pleasurable hands, and a large supply of coke.
“It was fun. Let’s just leave it at that.”
She spun on her heel and headed for the door.
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll see you around,” he shouted.
“Not likely,” she answered, stepping out into the blinding light of another
morning after.
*
Josie sat back in the dark corner of the familiar bar. Graffiti-riddled walls and
empty chairs were her only company. A journal lay open in her lap while her
charcoal-stained fingers clutched the pencil hovering above the page. Hundreds
of words flashed through her mind, yet she did not possess the will to choose one
and write it down. The first word of a sentence, the precipice of an idea, usually
held all the power as far as she was concerned. This is why, most nights, she
kept to sketching—the curved lines and shading smudges were easier to commit
to.
Most bar patrons took no notice of her. They were too busy, focused on their
immediate goals of sex and intoxication. Josie’s intentions were the same as
every other night spent in this establishment. She’d come to see about a boy.
Routine was not something she was accustomed to, though lately she’d been
devoted to him. She always arrived an hour before his shift started and slipped
out when he took his last break. She’d convinced herself that her obsession was
normal.
With glossy eyes, she glanced up from her blank paper, awaiting the arrival of
her muse. She sighed and blew her bangs from her eyes, wishing she’d smoked a
bowl before coming here, something to take off the razor-sharp edge.
Since she was fourteen years old, Josie Banks had existed this way. She
floated on whatever high she could get, reluctant to touch down, afraid reality
might never let her go again. There wasn’t a physical addiction to the drugs. She
never used one long enough to develop a taste for it. The addiction was solely to
the state it provided, a numbing blissful high of indifference. Her savior wasn’t
always drugs or sex with strangers. Sometimes her pencils, along with fresh
paper and a silent room, could deliver the much-needed feeling of ecstasy. The
rough scratch of charcoal or the shake and rattle of paint cans calmed her in a
way that no therapist ever had.
“Hello.”
Josie looked up to find a stranger staring down at her. He seemed to stand at
the edge of her personal space while wearing a brittle smile. She did not respond
but impatiently waited for his next line. It was delivered like a rehearsed speech.
“You’re too pretty to sit alone. Can I join you?”
Her silence answered. The man turned swiftly and retreated to where he came
from. Josie didn’t watch him go. In any other place, at any other time, she would
have entertained the idea. He was tall and handsome and she loved how nervous
she made him. But not here.
Plenty of charmers had told her that she was attractive, but she always
dismissed their words as a systematic technique to get into her pants. If only
they’d known she didn’t need to be seduced. She gave it up freely and often.
Shame did not exist in her bank of emotional labels; it had no place in the life
she led. Fucking was always enjoyable. Even bad sex was still sex. Ever since
she’d lost her virginity, she’d felt empowered by her feminine allure. No man or
woman, no matter how attractive, had ever held her attention for longer than it
had taken to get off.
Until him.
She leaned back in her seat, curling her fingers around the nearly empty glass,
and thought back to their first and only encounter.
*
Clouds stretched across the moon, stealing her natural light. Josie settled herself
on the fire escape, drawing by the glow from her apartment window. Dirt and
dust on the glass cast a freckled pattern over her. Haunting eyes stared up from