I was addicted.

From the very moment I laid my eyes on him, I was completely and utterly addicted like the way some people get when they've just taken their first hit of ecstasy.

He became my world.

I thought about him all the time. I craved him when he wasn't there, yearned to hear his voice. Sometimes I even imagined that he was lying under the covers of my bed, seductively beckoning me with his finger.

Malachi.

But he didn't even care a single shred about me.

Some of you might have thought that I was desperate or just needed to get laid and they're both probably true but all I could see was him and his shaggy mane of black hair, a cigarette just barely held between his full, pink lips.

The fact of the matter was that I, Wendi Charles, was addicted to something I could never truly have.

Have you ever been addicted to something and then suddenly decide you're going to quit that bad habit once and for all, but the next day, you're right back at it again? Have you ever felt the unbearable pain of separating yourself from that addiction? Have you ever felt the immensity of the withdrawal symptoms?

I wanted him more than I had ever wanted anything in the entire world but all I could do was watch him from the corner of my eye while I was serving him at the counter. I was nothing more to him than the high school drop out turned counter girl turned occasional shag if he was drunk enough and I could never even aspire to be more to him.

He had a girlfriend, one he'd been with for almost three years. I know for a fact that he has cheated on her on occasion because I have been a willing participant more than a few times.

I know. I'm the lowest form of human there is and I cannot deny that fact. But I can't help it. He's irresistible to me. When he calls, I run to him. When he asks for free coffee, I give it to him. When he tugs at my clothes in the dark, I cannot deny him.

He is my addiction.