Almost everyone made me sad except Mario. Abstinence only, which meant that Mario, who was there trying to wean off a Lortab habit, couldn’t get any medication assistance. So of course rehab failed. Of course he left rehab with a new dealer contact (his roommate) and a job at the clinic (also via his roommate, former employee). It was okay, though. Mario doesn’t believe in that abstinence-only bullshit, and unless you’ve used opioids, you wouldn’t understand, he says. Like addiction is more like a spectrum. It’s more like a balance. Like if you’re strung out and your whole life is fucked up, then yeah, you need to stop. But if you’re mostly clean and you want to indulge in something once in a while … how realistic is it that you’ll never use any kind of substance ever again?

He got kicked out of a sober-living house when they found his Percs, and by then we were talking every day and I said, Come, I’ll take care of you. Mario believes in gray areas, and people like my mom believe everything is black and white, and I’m not sure where I fall, except that Mario is the smartest man I’ve ever known. He can explain everything like how buying a house is the smartest investment and we can get a mortgage even without our parents’ help and even if we don’t have our own money and he never asks me about my family and he clings to me like I am the piece he’s been missing all this time.

I learn so much from Mario and I start to wonder if this is what I missed not going to college like him. I listen and it feels like growth. I listen and sometimes I drink and sometimes I do a little coke and stay up all night talking or molly and fuck and fuck or benzos when I need to finally get some sleep. And it’s fine. It’s mostly the weekends. And Mario, he doesn’t even touch the Oxys, just sells them or trades them for Percs but it’s just to keep the migraines at bay, not even as much as before. I’m afraid of addiction, I’ve seen what it did to my father. So we’re careful. I don’t say no—I’m not another girl—but I’m careful. I hug his head.