Sometimes, things between Sage and I were good. The kind of good where we'd blast Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and dance around on the expensive red leather couches in her living room, laugh until our ribs hurt, and kiss every inch of skin on each other's bodies. We'd fuck in her master bathroom jacuzzi tub and do coke on the deep emerald marble countertops. Her parents, who were both surgeons, were away at some conference, leaving us to fill their beach mansion with the smell of weed and pizza and the sounds of our twisted love.

And sometimes when the sunlight hit her golden eyes the right way, I wondered if I truly loved her - the kind made you ache all over. I had never been in love, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it. It was just a matter of someone actually loving me back.

Sage and I had been entangled in each other in some way since we were 13, when we were freshmen at the homecoming dance. Colored lights danced on the scuffed up wooden floor of the high school gym, and Hunter stood with me against the plastic bleachers with his blue slushee. I was in awe that pretty, rich, popular Sage strutted over to me - who was stumbling through puberty with gangly limbs and acne - and asked me to dance.

That was almost eight years ago. We were inseparable in high school, back when the only trouble we got into was smoking a joint in the parking lot of the grocery store. Over the years, a lot of shit had changed, but the one thing that never did was the inevitably of us crawling our way back to one another. College was harder, and a two hour drive apart seemed like light years away when it was a constant battle of who slept with who and what being on a "break" really meant. When Sage went back to USC after winter break back in December, it was an aggressive, committed break. But now that she was back, so was the storm that came with her, and I craved the rain.

As good as things were some of the time...there were times when things were as bad as they could possibly get. I'd call her names, she'd call me names. We'd fight and kick and scream until we couldn't even remember what we were fighting about to begin with.

That was the way everything in my life worked. With every soaring high came a crushing, cataclysmic low.

I stood in the cavernous bathroom attached to Sage's bedroom, my hands trembling as I reached for the shiny chrome handles on the sink and splashed water on my face. My forehead throbbed, but there was no physical evidence of where I thumped it on the corner of her bedside table. When I had stood up from her bed after our bout of angry make-up sex, a rush of blood ripped through me, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor of her room, head pounding and world spinning. As I rubbed my hand across my forehead again, slick with sweat, I wondered if that was what being in love really meant - that no matter how much pain someone caused you, indirect or not, you couldn't stay away.

I felt her wrap her arms around my waist from behind and the warmth of her breath through my t-shirt.

"You okay baby?" she mumbled into the fabric.

"I'm not your baby," I breathed out, feeling the sting of my own words on my tongue. My hands kept shaking.

"Whatever," she sighed. "Just come back to bed. I have something that might make you feel a little better."

I felt the warmth of her body rush out of me when she let go, leaving a chill on my skin. Still standing at the sink, I watched her from the corner of my eye walk over to that same bedside table I hit my head on. I made my way back to her bed, feeling my knees go weak with every step I took.

Sage pulled a small, intricately carved cigar box out of the bottom drawer and produced from it a small plastic bag, filled halfway with fine white powder, like freshly fallen snow before it got mucked up with dirt and grime from cars and people.

"So you know my sorority sister McKayla who was dating that douchebag law school guy from Alabama," she droned on so nonchalantly, "she nicked this from his secret stash after he dumped her. As pure as the fucking Virgin Mary. This is successful rich people shit."

"But you are rich people," I mumbled.

"I'm trust fund rich, there's a difference," she replied with a casual wave of her hand.

"I admire your self-awareness." I gave her an eye roll.

She replied with a faint smirk, then grabbed a small bundle of tinfoil from the same box the bag was in. My hands began to tremble again, and it was like I was watching Sage in slow motion. The clicking and flickering of the lighter and the crinkling of the foil sounded far, far away, like my head was in a bubble, and her hands were a blur as they moved.

I kept telling myself I could handle a joint and a few lines of coke. I could wake up the next day, put some eye drops in, and coast along like everything was hunky fucking dory. But I knew deep in the dark of my mind, there was a line I shouldn't cross. I was already a sinking ship, but it would doom me to the depths for sure.

"Uh..Sage, you know what? I don't...I don't really think I should."

It took me a moment to realize I hadn't actually spoken. The words never left my subconscious, which was being drowned by a pounding, aching, gut-wrenching need. Sweat trickled down my temples as my bones continued to rattle. Line crossed. Ship sunk.

✗✗✗

We didn't even kiss. We giggled into each other's mouths, drawing pictures on each other's skin with our fingers until our limbs were too heavy to move. I didn't remember falling asleep, but when my eyes flickered open, hazy morning sunlight crept through the curtains in Sage's bedroom, where we laid still naked and still tangled up in each other.

"Shit," I mumbled, my tongue heavy and the back of my throat raw and straining as I spoke.

"What happened?" Sage slurred, still half asleep as I wrangled myself out of bed.

"I gotta go, I gotta go." The room spun as I fumbled around the floor for my clothes, putting my shirt on backwards and giving up after only finding one sock before slipping my sneakers on. "Shit shit shit, I'm so fucked."

Adrenaline kicked in, and I bolted out of Sage's room, almost knocking over a small table in the hallway and nearly tripping down the stairs that led into the foyer. A blast of sunlight blinded me as I stumbled out onto the front porch, my whole body shaking as I fumbled for my skateboard that I always hid in the azalea bush by their driveway.

Folly Beach had no sidewalks - since it was practically illegal in South Carolina to cut down trees - so you're in the street for all your endeavors, like walking, and biking, and rushing home so you don't get your balls nailed to the wall for being out all night and not telling anyone where you were.

Crisp morning air whipped past me as I propelled myself as fast as my aching legs would allow. I passed a few people on their morning jogs, their faces blurry but their stares crystal clear.

A horn honking behind me scared the shit out of me, causing me to lose my balance and go crashing face-first into the pavement. Pain radiated through my shins and my wrists, and part of me couldn't believe I reacted fast enough to brace myself from hitting my head. I was so focused on the tiny cuts and scrapes and bits of gravel in my palms, I didn't notice another car pull up beside me.

"You okay?"

I felt like I was having deja-vu as I looked up into the car, where a pair of icy blue eyes were looking down at me. She scrunched up her freckled nose as she waited for me to give her some kind of answer. Instead, I just sat in the street like a god damn idiot, staring up at her as the sun illuminated her in all the right places, like my guardian fucking angel.

"Kai? Hello? Are you alright? You took a pretty nasty fall." Her sharp voice brought me back down to Earth, and I shakily rose to my feet. Warm blood trickled in little rivers down my knees.

"No I'm..." I felt like I had a mouth full of peanut butter. "I'm fine."

"You need a ride home?" she asked.

At first I shook my head, but when I looked around and saw my skateboard in two pieces in the middle of the street, my heart dropped into my stomach. I slowly walked up to it, picking it up by the wheels and holding it like it was my cat that got run over instead of my skateboard.

"Come on, just let me give you a ride," AJ called from the car.

After one more moment of mourning my only means of transportation, I dragged myself back over to AJ's white Jeep and climbed in. She continued slowly down the street, and I felt her eyes on me every few seconds. I was suddenly very aware of how ragged I looked, and I wondered what she really thought of me.

"I need to know where you live, ya know," she quipped, but a subtle grin played at her lips.

"Hang a right on 7th Street East, and I'm the last house on the left." I motioned to the street without looking at her. Thankfully she didn't force a conversation, and we reached my house a few minutes later in silence.

I mumbled a "thank you" as I gathered my broken skateboard and slid myself out of her car.

"Hey," she called through the open window. I looked back at her, and she smiled at me. "That's two you owe me, Space Cadet."

She gave me another quick grin before driving away, leaving me dumbfounded in my driveway. I dropped my skateboard by the shed and slunk in through the back door, thankful my house was still dark. I climbed into bed immediately, still bleeding and still wearing my clothes from the night before.