Seb’s Summer by K.C. Wells
Chapter Twenty-Three
Marcus stepped into the house’s cool, quiet interior. Ashley had taken the kids out for the day, as it was Alex’s birthday. He was grateful: the last thing he needed right then was noise.
What a clusterfuck. Yet he didn’t think he could have handled it any other way.
“Marcus?” Mom came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “I thought we’d seen the last of you until tomorrow.”
“Change of plan.” He dropped his keys onto the hall table and headed for the living room. Dad sat in the big armchair, an open book in his lap. When he glanced up and saw Marcus, he frowned.
“What are you doing here?”
Marcus arched his eyebrows. “I was staying here, last time I looked.” He was being obtuse, and he knew it, but he didn’t want to talk about Seb. He went over to the liquor cabinet, removed Dad’s bottle of Wild Turkey and a glass, then closed it. Dad cleared his throat, and Marcus realized that for someone who didn’t want to talk, grabbing a bottle of whiskey was like putting a sign over his head that read, ‘Give me the third degree because something is wrong.’
I should’ve waited till he wasn’t around. Hindsight was a hell of a thing.
“Bit early for that, isn’t it?” Dad commented dryly.
“No, not really.” He didn’t wait around for a response, but went out into the yard through the French doors. By the time he reached the safe haven of the summerhouse, he was shaking again. His fingers fumbled as he took off the cap.
“Son, what’s happened?” Mom stood in the doorway, her brow furrowed.
Marcus poured himself a glass. “I can’t answer that.” When her frown deepened, he sighed. “What can I tell you? The jury’s still out? Wait and see?” He sank into the recliner, the glass in his hand.
“You’re not making any sense.” She cocked her head to one side. “Did you and Seb have a fight? And don’t tell me you’re just friends, because I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”
He swirled the amber liquid, inhaling its pleasant fumes. “It wasn’t a fight, exactly. We…” His throat seized. I can’t do this.
“Do you need to go talk to him?”
Marcus took a sip for lubrication. “Nope. Ball’s in his court now.”
She walked over to where he sat, and tried to pry the glass gently from his hand, but he held on to it. “Sweetheart, that’s never a good idea, especially when it isn’t even one o’clock in the afternoon yet. Why don’t I take the bottle, and put it back where it came from?”
He snorted. “You’re using your teacher voice on me. That’s not fair.”
“I don’t care if it’s fair or not, as long as it works.” She went over to the table and picked up the bottle. “I’m making a birthday cake for Alex. Why don’t you come help me?”
“And lick the spoon, like I did when I was a kid?” Marcus sighed. “It might have cured all my ills back then, but trust me, it won’t help this time.”
“How do you know until you try it?”
God, he loved her so much. “I just do.”
“Then what will help?”
He’d thought about that on the drive back from Seb’s. “Maybe turn the clock back a couple of years?”
“Then you wouldn’t have met him,” she said simply.
“Yes, I would.” He believed that. “I’d be here for the summer, so would he…” And with none of the baggage that was messing up any chance they had of being happy, being together.
I don’t know that. He might actually do what I suggested and look for himself.
Yeah, right.
Mom cleared her throat. “Okay, I’m calling bullshit.”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
She gave him a frank gaze. “No, I don’t think I will. Who’s to say you’d have met him? If you’re that good at fortune-telling, you’d have made your millions on the stock market by now, and retired before you were thirty.” Her expression softened. “In case no one has ever told you, playing the what-if game is a losing proposition. You’re sure speaking to him won’t help?”
No, I’m not sure. It’s just an assumption. Marcus gazed into the whiskey he no longer wanted to drink. “I have to let him work through this on his own. I’ve said all I can. It really is up to him now.”
“It might help me understand better if I had some idea of what happened.”
He shook his head. “You don’t need to know.” Marcus’s stomach was in knots. He didn’t want to think about Seb, because that only created more knots. He held out the glass. “Here. I don’t want it.”
She took it from him. “Then please, come into the house and talk to me while I make this cake.” She glanced at the interior of the summerhouse. “And you don’t have to sleep here anymore, not now most of them have left. I don’t like the idea of you being out here, with only your thoughts for company.”
“Mom, don’t worry about me.”
She gave him a sad smile. “That’s like asking rain not to fall, or the wind not to blow. Moms worry. And it doesn’t matter how old their children are.”
He got up from his chair. “Then let’s go see if licking the spoon really does help. Just as long as it’s chocolate.”
Mom chuckled. “As if I’d make any other kind.”
He followed her out of the summerhouse and along the path to the kitchen door, focused not on cake but on Seb. The temptation to call or text was enormous, but he knew that was wrong. He had to give Seb space.
I said I’d understand if there were no call.
He’d meant it, too, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hoping with every fiber, nerve, and cell in his body.
Seb had fallen down the rabbit hole.
He sat on the couch, his laptop balanced on his knee, and a bottle of water on the coffee table. His head was spinning.
Christ, there’s so much here.
The first links he’d found were mostly articles sponsored by rehabs and addiction centers, which only made him more certain Marcus had it wrong—until he recalled something a professor had told them in college. Something about looking at the organization or individual funding whatever study or research, and seeing if they had a vested interest in the outcome—an agenda. All those rehabs and centers were paying huge sums of money to get their articles seen first, and they were in it for profit.
Find something else. There has to be something else.
Then he came across a post by a guy called Alexander Cheves, who maintained that queer culture was a drug-friendly culture. That’s for damn sure. Some of what he said made a lot of sense, and one paragraph in particular caught Seb’s attention.
Drugs, like sex, get glamorized and damned. To some, drugs are like forbidden fruit—they must be wonderful. To others, they are the devil’s work, the corrupter of youth, a commodity of society’s lowlifes—they must be terrible. People have these same polarized views of sex, and like sex, drugs are both of these perspectives and neither of them—they are not as great or as terrible as anyone thinks.
Seb’s chest tightened as he read those lines. That second perspective could have been his own words to Marcus. And Marcus hadn’t claimed drugs were wonderful. If anything, he’d tried to give a balanced view.
He wanted me to think for myself.
By the time he remembered the sandwiches Marcus had made, it was hours later and they were curling at the edges. He threw them into the trash, and heated some soup. Then he went back to the couch to continue his online search.
It was so easy to get mired in a site that got way too technical. He didn’t want to know how the drugs did what they did—he was seeking confirmation. It was no longer a search to be told all drug users were a lost cause and irredeemable.
He wanted Marcus to be right, because the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
I want to believe him, to trust him again.
When eight o’clock arrived, Seb was exhausted. His research had branched off tangentially on several occasions, and it was only with a supreme effort that he’d forced himself back on track. It seemed as if everyone had their own opinion on the ‘evils’ of drugs. One site in particular had stopped him in his tracks. Marcus’s mention of Carl Hart had intrigued him, but what he found on the man’s website astounded him. Dr. Hart had written a book about drug use for grownups, but it wasn’t that which gave Seb food for thought—it was a few lines from the book’s introduction.
After reading this book, I hope you will be less likely to vilify individuals merely because they use drugs. That thinking has led to an incalculable number of deaths and an enormous amount of suffering.
Seb read those lines over and over. He couldn’t deny his own perception of Justin had been colored by Justin’s habitual drug use. I claim to want to steer kids in the right direction and away from distractions, but when they succumb to those distractions, how do I react?
He closed his eyes. Fuck, I’m tired. He decided to call it a night and rest his aching head, until a headline caught his eye.
The war on drugs is over—and drugs won.
What kept his attention on the article was the name of its author—Marcus Gilbert.
No way.
He read it through three times, and each time one particular part engrossed him.
The war on drugs as declared by Nixon and institutionalized by Reagan is over. And drugs won. By demonizing the chemical, we made it easy to castigate the user and the addict. It is likely that most who try a recreational drug initially do so out of curiosity or as a result of peer pressure, but research increasingly shows that sustained addiction is a symptom of a deeper problem, societally, socially, or emotionally. As we readily recognize as a cause of alcoholism, abusing a drug is far more often than not a means of self-medication; it has become for the addict a means of alleviating pain, grief, or anxiety. For a society to then add the shame of addiction to whatever the addict is already suffering does the addict far more harm than good, and more often than not drives him deeper into addiction. Hence if in our efforts to help those who would free themselves from drugs we only address the drug use, we set all of us up for failure. If these deeper problems are not identified and addressed, any addict who might try to recover will find nothing in his life or environment fixed, and will certainly be tempted to return to self-medicating. We must stop taking the lazy way out, suggesting that this is someone else’s—i.e., the addict’s—problem. These difficulties they face are societal, too large for the addict to change alone. Hence if we are to expect any turn towards victory, we need to stop making this a “war on drugs”, or by frank extension a “war on addicts”. We as a society are causing this malaise; only we as a whole working together can fix this.
What struck him most was the humane attitude toward addiction.
He knows what he’s talking about. Seb shook his head. Of course he does. He’s been through it, or at least knows others who have. The piece was insightful and articulate, and he regretted the intolerance and unwillingness to bend that he’d shown Marcus. And the more he thought about it, the more Seb realized his cookie-cutter image of guys who did meth was seriously flawed. Not once had he seen Justin’s habit as anything other than a desire to get high. It had never occurred to him to wonder what had started Justin down that particular road in the first place. And what about my students? Did I ever stop to think why they started using? I put it all down to experimentation, and left it at that.
Which led him to Marcus, and even more questions that would go unanswered—unless…
Seb glanced at the laptop’s screen. It was already nine o’clock. Far too late to be calling Marcus. Seb wanted to be wide awake and alert for that conversation.
It can wait till tomorrow.
He climbed into bed, and it was as if someone flicked a switch, and all trace of fatigue fled, pushing his thoughts into overdrive. The conversation with Marcus replayed as though in a loop, to the point where Seb was seriously considering raiding Gary’s bathroom cabinet in search of something to knock him out.
By the time sleep came, he sank into it, craving oblivion.
