Waste My Time by Kelsey Clayton

Tye pulls upto Casa-Bronsyn Donovan, and my brows furrow as I see Easton's car still in the driveway. At the party yesterday, we planned on going to breakfast before I came back to his house for wedding planning with Amelia. He was supposed to pick me up at nine, but that came and went.

Then ten.

Then eleven.

He's not answering my texts and calls, and when Amelia hit the ignore button on me, dread coursed through me. I finally decided enough was enough and asked Tye to bring me over here.

As soon as I open the door, you can hear shouting coming from inside. Tye's brows furrow as she looks at me and then back at the house.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Carter's waiting for you. Go. I'll text you with an update.”

“All right, love you.”

“Love you too.”

She pulls away, and I take a deep breath before walking up the steps. The second I open the door, the scene in front of me is what can only be described as a shitshow. Easton, Zayn, and Knox are standing in the living room looking helpless and maybe a little annoyed as Amelia yells at them.

“Meelz,” Zayn tries. “Just calm down.”

As he goes to touch her arm, she yanks it away. “No, fuck you! You promised no more secrets.”

“What's going on?” I question, and all attention turns to me.

Easton's eyes widen, but before he can say anything, Amelia answers for him. “They're hiding something. All fucking three of them.”

“We're not,” Easton tries, but he's always been a shit liar.

She spins back around and puts one hand on her hip. “Bullshit. Knox doesn't fly across the country in the middle of the night for no fucking reason!”

I put my bag down on the ground and walk closer to my best friend, putting a careful hand on her back. “Babes, why don't we relax for a minute, okay?”

“They're hiding something,” she repeats. “They were whispering to each other, and when I came downstairs, they clammed up. And Easton grabbed something off the table and won't tell me what the hell it is.”

Looking over at my ex, I notice his hands are behind his back. His gaze locks with mine and he looks scared. Terrified even. I take a couple steps toward him until he has to look down at me.

“What's behind your back, Eas?”

He shakes his head. “Don't. Please.”

I grab his arm and carefully pull it in front of him, seeing a small box in his hand.

Home Drug Test.

My stomach drops as I read the label. I thought my biggest fear was labor, but I was wrong. So fucking wrong. My biggest fear is this, and right now, I feel like I might throw up. Knox throws his head back and exhales while Zayn plops down onto the chair. Easton, however, stays completely still.

“Y-you're on drugs again?” I croak.

“No,” he answers immediately. “I swear to you, I'm not.”

“Then why is Knox here, and why are they making you take a drug test?”

He drops his head. “Because someone gave me coke, but I didn't use it!”

The whole story wreaks of an excuse. “Someone just gave you coke, unwarranted and unprovoked?”

“Yes.”

“And you took it?”

“From them, yes, but I didn't use it.”

I turn to Zayn, trusting him more than I trust most people. “Do you believe him?”

His shoulders sag. “I'm not sure, but I'm not playing around with it either. He didn't tell me himself. I had to hear it through Alec.”

Wait, what?”Alec? What does Alec have to do with this?”

Zayn looks at Easton, a silent conversation taking place between the two. I spin around to face the father of my child.

“Tell me,” I demand. “Not him. You. What does Alec have to do with this?”

His words come out in an inaudible mumble at first, like he's trying to avoid answering me at all.

“What?”

He looks anywhere but back at me and takes a deep breath. “He's the one that gave it to me.”

If seeing the drug test wasn't a blow to the chest, hearing that definitely is. “N-no. He didn't.”

The Alec I've known for years. The one who spent the last couple months being by my side as I tried to make sense of all this. The Alec that I trusted. He wouldn't. He couldn't have.

“Ken,” Zayn gets my attention. “He admitted it straight to my face, and offered me some too. Said his friend gets the best shit around here.”

My heart breaks as I realize they're not lying. He did this. He actually did it. I stare at the floor as my mind runs through every conversation I've ever had with Alec. All the things we've talked about. The way he's acted. Things he's done.

“Well, it doesn't matter how he got it,” Knox says to Zayn. “We have to find out if he used it or not.”

“I told you, I didn't!” Easton snaps exasperatedly.

“And how are we supposed to believe you?” Knox growls. “Don't act like it's absurd for us to think you relapsed. Especially with all you've got going on.”

At the mention of the baby, I cradle my stomach, and a particular conversation with Alec comes to mind. My breath hitches, and I shake my head.

“Alec doesn't do drugs,” I murmur.

“Fuck Alec,” Knox says to me. “He can overdose for all I care, and if he's who you're worried about, you can leave.”

“Don't fucking talk to her that way,” Easton snaps.

I spin around to Amelia, finding her with her arms wrapped around herself as she tries to contain her fear for her brother. She looks back at me, and a tear slips out and rolls down my cheek.

“Alec doesn't do drugs.”

Thankfully, she gets what I mean. We both turn to Zayn, and I watch as everything starts to fall into place for him. When it hits him, he closes his eyes and his fist clenches.

“I'm going to kill that piece of shit,” he growls.

Knox watches Zayn intently. “I'll help if you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Z runs his hands over his face and then looks at Knox and Easton. “He doesn't do coke. Which means the only reason he had it on him that day—”

“Was to give it to Easton,” Knox finishes for him.

I turn to Easton, feeling myself start to crumble. “I'm so sorry. We were talking one night, and I mentioned one thing I was afraid of was that the responsibility of a baby would make you relapse. It never occurred to me that he would do something like this, I swear.”

He shakes his head and takes a step toward me, putting his hands on my cheeks. “This is not your fault. Do you hear me? None of this is your fault.”

All the right words are coming from his mouth, but it doesn't stop me from blaming myself. I was the one who told Alec about Easton's former drug addiction. I basically gave him a Trojan horse. If Easton is lying, if he relapsed, that's just as much my fault as it is anyone else's.

“I'm going to take this, and then this will all be put to rest,” he tells me. “Okay?”

I nod and he presses a kiss to the top of my head before going to the bathroom with Knox in tow. Amelia goes over to Zayn and sits on his lap. He wraps his arms around her and breathes in the scent of her hair. She looks up at me.

“He's right, you know,” she says. “You didn't cause this.”

I wish I could believe that.

Walking over to the couch, I sit down and let myself get lost in my thoughts. This whole time, I was being so selfish. I should've told Alec that there was no future between us the second he mentioned the possibility of one. He saw Easton as competition he needed to sabotage because of me. Because I didn't have the balls to tell him no. That I'm not interested. That I don't want him.

A few minutes later, Easton and Knox come back out with a cup full of piss. Easton puts it down on the coffee table while Knox pulls on a pair of gloves. He carefully opens the cup and dips a card with multiple strips inside of it. After twenty seconds, he takes it out and places it on a piece of cardboard ripped off a pizza box.

Seconds pass like hours as we wait the five minutes for the results to show. No one says a word. Easton scrolls through his phone like it's just another day, his other hand resting on my leg. He runs his thumb back and forth in a soothing motion. Finally, the timer goes off, and Knox bends forward to read the results.

“Oh, thank fuck,” he says in relief, falling back onto the couch. “It's negative.”

The feeling that floods through me is so much more. It's reassuring. It's a weight lifted off my chest. It's everything. Not only did he not relapse, but he had the ability to and he resisted. He had the drugs in his hand, and he overpowered the part of him that craved them.

He fought his demons and he won.

“I told you it would be,” Easton says, unfazed.

Zayn looks like he's finally able to breathe again. “Can you really blame us for questioning it?”

E opens his mouth to say something, but then clamps it shut again and shakes his head.

“Hey.” Z gets his attention again. “I'm proud of you.”

Knox reaches over and pats his shoulder. “You're stronger than we give you credit for.”

“I thought about it,” he confesses. “Taking them.”

“What stopped you?” Amelia asks.

He looks over at me and puts his hand on my belly. “My family.”

I'm shocked into silence as he gives me the same smile that made me fall for him in the first place. It's a patient one, like he could spend all the time in the world just looking at me. The one that shows his vulnerable side just enough to draw me in, but not enough to make him seem less manly. And if I wasn't so busy blaming myself for all of this, I might have kissed him.

Tilting his head to the side, his brows furrow. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I lie with a small grin to make it believable. “The baby is just making me uncomfortable, and super tired. Stress and pregnancy don't mix well.”

He runs his knuckle down my cheek. “Why don't you go take a nap in my room? We'll order lunch, and I'll wake you up when it gets here.”

I think it over for a second, but then a yawn pushes its way out. “Okay, yeah. A nap sounds good.”

Getting up from the couch, I slip by Zayn and Amelia and head up the stairs. As I do, I can hear them still talking about exactly the topic I'd like to avoid now.

“If you didn't do the coke, what did you do with it?” Z asks.

“I flushed it, baggie and all.”

I get to the top of the stairs and slip into Easton's room. Every inch of it smells like him, like his cologne, and it relaxes me in a way nothing else can. I climb into his bed and inhale the scent of his pillow.

It's fine.

Everything is fine.

I WAKE TO THE feeling of someone shaking me lightly. The bed sinks beside me, and I open my eyes to find Easton smiling softly down at me. He pushes my hair out of my face and tucks it behind my ear.

“Hey,” he practically whispers. “There's pizza downstairs. You hungry?”

I hum. “Not really. I'd kind of rather just sleep.”

“Okay.” He puts a hand on my head to check my temp. “You feel okay, right?”

“Yeah,” I assure him.

“All right. I'll be downstairs if you need anything.” Bending down to my belly, he speaks lowly. “Love you, little man.”

It's a simple gesture, one he probably didn't even do for my benefit, but it makes me melt all the same. He walks out of the room and closes the door behind him, leaving me alone to go back to sleep.

I toss and turn in the bed. Heartburn plagues my chest and makes it difficult to get comfortable again. When it finally becomes too much, at a point where I feel like I may very well throw up, I remember that Easton usually keeps Tums in his nightstand.

The whole thing is a mess as I open it and look inside. It's as if everything he doesn't know what to do with gets tossed in here. There are pens, condoms, an old wallet. I push things to the side and finally spot them. As I lift the bottle up, however, my heart sinks.

A tiny baggie filled with white powder sits at the bottom of the drawer, hidden beneath a pile of junk. It doesn't take an expert in drugs to know what it is, nor what it's doing here.

I flushed it, baggie and all.

My chest tightens as I realize he lied, and in an instant, I'm rushing to the bathroom and heaving the contents of my stomach into it. When I'm done, time feels like it's stopped, and everything stands still.

Why does he still have it?

Why did he lie?

And most importantly, what else is he lying about?

I pace back and forth across the room, trying to hold myself together. Part of me wants to go downstairs and demand the truth, but what good would that do? We all believed him when he said he got rid of it.

No.

We need someone who can get through to him.

Someone who doesn't love him enough to let him get away with murder.

I grab my phone from the nightstand and call Tye. My hand shakes as I hold the device to my ear, and when she finally answers, I say the words I never thought would come out of my mouth.

“I need you to send me Tessa's phone number.”