Lola. That was the name of my new girlfriend. The one my friends all warned me not to get involved with. But of course, it was my life and she had been through so much already.

Bi-polar mother, alcoholic father, maladjusted siblings. Not really surprising Lola cut herself, gambled her benefits on the arcade machines and didn't eat much apart from dried Chinese noodles you boil in a cup.

Now that she knew that someone loved her, all this would change. She could pursue her artistic abilities, finish those novels, sleep at nights instead of watching movies and worry about paranoid thoughts.

John and Mike, childhood buddies from the days we used to smoke joints in the tree house in old man McBerry's garden couldn't get through to me. She was bad news. Flaky. Draining the life out of me.

They both said that spending money on her was a waste of time. You can't buy love.

But I could buy her moments of security.

Why couldn't anyone else see that?