by Ellie Wade
I swallow. “No, we’re not together anymore.”
“Really?” He seems surprised. “Alma had mentioned that she thought he was perfect for you. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say in all honesty. “He was great. He just wasn’t the one. You know?” I raise my gaze to meet his. “Do you believe in that sort of thing? Like destiny and soul mates and stuff?”
“Honestly?” He bites the corner of his lip and leans in toward me. “I’m not sure. Most of the time, no. But then every once in a while, I have a moment when I want to believe.”
I find myself leaning in toward him, wanting to share the air in which he breathes. My heart hammers in my chest. Separated by a whisper of longing, desire-charged air, and desperate want—the space between us dwindles to almost nothing. He’s so close, I can breathe him in. He’s all salty, sweet, and intoxicatingly fresh. He smells of wind, and waves, and warmth. His bright blues capture mine, and I notice for the first time, minute gray specks sprinkled throughout his deep blue irises. Our elbows rest on the table between us as our faces inch closer. The draw I feel toward him is all-encompassing.
Without warning, he blinks and sits back in his chair. A chill runs across my skin where his heat just was. I rub my palms over my arms and lean back into my chair.
“But then dealing with what I deal with every day, seeing the lives and hearing the stories of people who are so close to me, I can’t believe that something as juvenile as destiny could possibly exist,” he continues coolly, making me wonder if I just imagined those last few seconds. “No one is destined to go through some of the horrific shit that many people go through. You know?”
Am I losing my mind? Was that connection in my head?
I clear my throat. “Right. I see that.”
“But anyway.” His voice returns back to his usual carefree tone. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out with you and Ben.”
“Beau,” I correct.
“That’s right.” He nods. “Well, I think I’m going to grab some punch and make my rounds. It was nice catching up, Quinn.”
“Yeah,” I respond before Ollie is up and walking away from the table, leaving me with a severe case of emotional whiplash.
Chapter 3
Ollie
The clock on the garage wall flashes quarter past six as I set the torque wrench in my hand down and stand from the concrete floor. Tilting my head to the side, I take in the Harley before me, satisfied with my day’s progress. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I know who it is before I check it.
Retrieving my cell from the back pocket of my jeans, I rake an arm over my forehead, wiping the sweat from my brow. Clementine’s name flashes on the screen with a message.
Do you want to meet up before the meeting?
I type out my response.
Sure. Usual spot in 30?
She sends back a gif of some dude nodding excitedly, and with a chuckle, I place the phone back in my pocket and head into the house. I think the guy in the gif is her latest crush from a popular TV show, but I can’t be certain. I try to keep up with everyone’s interests, but there’s so much noise out there between all the shows on the hundred different streaming services, coupled with social media, YouTube, and influencers. I can’t keep it straight.
The truth be told, were it not for my role as a sponsor and my clients at the garage, I’d ditch my cell phone. Sometimes, I think I was born in the wrong generation. I like being simple and uncomplicated while living in a world that is anything but.
After a quick shower, I throw on some clothes before grabbing my wallet, keys, and cell. Once outside, I strap on my helmet before starting my own Harley-Davidson. I rebuilt my latest bike, a 1960 Softail Heritage Classic, about a year ago. It doesn’t have as much horsepower as my last bike, but I really like the feel of it, especially with city driving. It’s just chill, a sweet-ass ride.
It’s cheesy to admit, but I credit a motorcycle for saving my life or at least aiding me in saving my own. Back when I was getting clean, I bought an old Kawasaki W650 from a junkyard. It was in pretty rough shape, a literal hunk of metal. I spent every day in my parents’ garage working on that bike.
I knew nothing about bikes then. In fact, my parents had always warned me away from them, stating that they were death traps, and I was never to ride one. But what were they going to say when I came home with the bike at the age of eighteen? I had nearly died of an overdose months before, which put things into perspective. Tinkering with a broken down motorcycle suddenly became a wonderful idea when the idea of relapsing was floating around as a gruesome alternative.
Working on that bike gave me something to do, a purpose. It kept my hands and brain busy, helping me fight through the urges to use again, and it worked. Almost a year to the date of bringing that bike home—countless hours spent in the garage, dozens of trips to the library to borrow every manual and book on motorcycles I could find back before YouTube was a thing, many visits with the local garages and chats with the mechanics, and endless learning by trial and error—the Kawasaki started up.
It had taken a year, but I had done it. I rebuilt that motorcycle, and I hadn’t used once.
And I haven’t used since. Twenty years clean.
I learned how to drive that bike in the field behind my parents’ home. When I finally was able to take it out on the road and get up to highway speeds, I experienced a freedom and sense of peace I can’t explain. It was so needed though, and gave me the necessary push to move on from my past and bury the demons that I would no longer allow to haunt me.
I was free.
And I knew that I would never go back.
The garage is my sanctuary, a calming solitude away from a noisy world. Not everyone can say that they get to do what they love day in and day out, and make a living doing it. It’s pretty cool that I can.
I became a NA sponsor fifteen years ago after I’d been clean for five. Some might say that it’s my way of giving back, but the truth is, I like it. I dig people of all backgrounds. Though I choose to spend my days alone working with machinery, there is nothing like a good conversation with another person. Humans aren’t meant to be perpetually alone. We need others.
Back when I was completing the steps fresh out of high school, my sponsor was a sixty-year-old dude named Dwight. He was cool and all, and his intentions were in the right place, but he didn’t get me. Sure, he understood what my body was going through and what the immense withdrawal and cravings felt like. But Dwight didn’t get what was going on in my head, and I realized…that’s the most important part. He was out of touch with my generation.
The truth is, I was a spoiled, entitled, cocky-ass kid.
I was raised in a small, upper-middle-class town where sports are everything and talented high school athletes are gods. In the realm of gods, I was fucking Zeus. As captain of the varsity football, basketball, and baseball teams, I could do no wrong. I didn’t follow rules, and I was never held accountable. I received high marks that I didn’t earn in all my classes. Rules were a mere suggestion that I could choose to follow or not.
Junior year, some buddies and I broke into the local ice cream shop after hours because we wanted ice cream. We were caught, and I was told to “please, not do that again.” My parents paid for the broken window, and the matter was swept under the rug.
I was the town’s golden boy. Why? Because I could throw a ball. Simple as that. I was the starting quarterback in football, center in basketball, and pitcher in baseball. In the three sports that mattered to my community, I was the best.
Football was where I shined the brightest. Everyone knew I was going to a good college on a full-ride scholarship for football with hopes of being drafted into the NFL. Someday, they’d see me playing on the big screen as a starter for an NFL team, and say, “That’s our Ollie Hale.” I’d come back on breaks, and the town would throw a parade in my honor because I grew up in a place that would do just that.
My name and jersey number were painted
on each storefront window on Main Street every Friday. Everyone had dreams for me. My parents. My coaches. My friends. My neighbors. I was going to put our little corner of heaven on the maps.
So at the beginning of football season, junior year, when I hurt my knee, Dr. Shemwell, who was the father of my teammate and a member of our school board, prescribed me painkillers so I could get through the season on a bum knee. I’m sure he felt justified. It was inconceivable for me not to play, so he found a way.
I should’ve been out, resting my knee and going to physical therapy. Instead, I masked the injury with a prescribed medication. The pain could only be covered up for so long. As I continued to play when I should’ve been giving it time to heal, I needed more and more pills to get through my days.
I didn’t see it happening until it happened. I didn’t realize Dr. Shemwell was supplying the prescription to make me an addict until I was one. I didn’t realize the extent of what I’d become until I was pounding on his door at two in the morning, sweating and shaking from withdrawal, and begging for a prescription refill and higher dosage because I felt as if I’d literally die without it.
After a year of pain pill prescriptions, Dr. Shemwell cut me off, realizing the error in his ways. But by then, I was in too deep. I couldn’t stop. I needed more, and if I couldn’t obtain it legally, I’d find other ways. And I did.
Heroin is surprisingly cheap and accessible. It fed my addiction the same way as the pain pills had, and maybe even better.
My senior year passed with me shining on the field, a smile on my face as the crowd cheered me on, to hiding in my room withdrawn from those around me, stoned out of my mind.
Until April of my senior year when my parents found me unresponsive and mere minutes from death.
I barely made it to adulthood. My life was seconds from being over before I had the chance to really live it. It’s sad when I stop to really think about it because, let’s face it, high school sports aren’t worth it. Sports, in general, aren’t worth it. Nothing is worth throwing one’s life away for a high.
Nothing.
Yet it happens every day. It’s an epidemic few talk about. Teens across this country are becoming addicted to pain meds because of a sports-related injury. Most of them, like myself, never see the addiction coming until it’s too late.
Lives are ruined as people continue to be prescribed opioids, which are incredibly addicting. So much so that when prescriptions run out, alternative highs are found. Unfortunately, I see it all the time.
I finish tightening my helmet and start to inch out of the driveway as a neon green Volkswagen bug whips into my drive, halting me.
Releasing a sigh, I turn off my bike and take off the helmet.
Clementine, all five feet, two inches and a hundred pounds of her, circles around the front of her car, holding a root beer float in each hand.
“I thought we were meeting at A&W?” I raise a brow.
She shrugs, handing me a root beer float. “I know, but I was actually already there when I texted. So I figured it’d be easier to just grab our drinks and meet here.”
“Right, but remember we talked about boundaries.” I put emphasis on the last word.
As an NA sponsor, it’s okay to be friends with those I sponsor, but I’m not supposed to get too close or familiar as it can hinder their recovery if they rely on me too much. However, addicts as a whole tend to be needy, and I have an issue with being strict with my expectations. If someone needs me, I can’t find it in me to tell them no.
“Boundaries, shmoundaries.” Clementine rolls her eyes. “I brought dessert,” she says as if that fact alone excuses everything. “Plus, I wanted to see Saki. I’m sure she misses me.”
“Alright, come on.” I motion toward the house. Clementine skips beside me, content with the fact that she got her way.
I love Clementine like a little sister, and I understand her probably more than anyone else does. Much like me, she was a star athlete. Everyone said she was Olympic bound in soccer until she tore the Achilles tendon in her ankle. Desperate to keep her spot on the prestigious travel team, she was sent back into the sport before she was healed and prescribed opioid painkillers to help with the pain. Her journey took a dark turn, as many do, and now she’s here.
“Saki!” Clementine calls when we enter the house.
Saki comes running, and a loud purr resonates from her before Clementine has picked her up.
“Hi, beautiful.” Clementine grins into Saki’s fur. She turns toward me. “Has she already had her canned food today?”
“Yes.”
“Well, can she have more?” Clem’s large blue eyes open wide in a plea.
“Sure.” I shake my head and sit on a stool at the island in the kitchen.
Clementine sets her root beer float on the counter and Saki on the floor, all the while reassuring the cat that food is coming. Saki whines as if she’s starving, pretending there isn’t a full bowl of dry food in the laundry room for her. I watch as Clem opens cupboard doors, retrieving a bowl and a can of food while she talks to Saki, and I can’t help but smile.
Seeing Clem love Saki reminds me of…me.
I found Saki, a three-legged, one eye-kitten, starving at the dump where I found the Kawasaki twenty years ago. I, of course, don’t know what happened to her prior to finding her, but it was obviously traumatic as she lost a limb and an eye. She’s never been what one would call a cute cat, and now that she’s twenty years old, ancient as far as the life span of cats go, she’s more homely as her fur is becoming rough and patchy with age. Her front half is black, gray, and white tabby, while her back half is bright orange. It’s as if she got all mixed up in utero and came out this mismatched mess.
Despite her flaws, I fell in love with her the second I saw her hovering beneath the front edge of an old rusted-out Chrysler Reliant, and I had to take her with me. I couldn’t leave her in that place to starve to death. I loaded her into the front seat of my dad’s truck and the broken motorcycle in the bed. Three very broken things left that junkyard that day, and over the next year, they somehow all became whole—or in Saki’s case, as whole as she could be. In reality, Saki doesn’t seem to notice that she’s missing an eye or a leg. She runs around just like any other four-legged, two-eyed cat would.
Clementine leans her back against the countertop and picks up her root beer float, taking a sip while she watches Saki scarf down her canned food. I pretend that Clem giving Saki extra soft cat food is a treat because it makes Clementine happy to spoil the cat. Yet the truth is the senior feline rarely eats dry food anymore because it’s too hard for her to chew. She’s an old lady now and gets what she wants.
“How are you feeling, Clem?”
She raises her stare toward me. “Hesitant.”
“About?”
“Going to the meeting tonight.” She sighs. “It’s all so annoying.”
“How’s that?”
“Fucking Sharon and her bitching about her job. You know, in all the weeks I’ve had to hear her complain, I still don’t know what’s actually wrong with her job. Like, it seems like a pretty low-stress job, Sharon.” Clementine rolls her eyes. “Then there’s Marty who sits there acting like his shit doesn’t stink. He comes back with all these condescending comments like he’s holier than thou. Uh, no, Marty. You’re an addict just like the rest of us.”
Pressing my lips in a line, I work to keep my face neutral, though I want to laugh. I was an only child, but if I’d had a younger sister, I imagine she’d have been feisty just like Clem.
“We’ve gone over this,” I remind her.
She drops her head back, looking up at the ceiling. “I know, everyone handles stress and recovery differently,” she says in a whiny voice. Mimicking our past conversations, apparently. “But sometimes I feel like those people don’t even need to be there. Like, they think they are just hanging out with friends when the rest of us have real problems!”
“First of all, you know everyone�
�s problems are real and unique to them. You can’t judge others’ journeys because you don’t know what it’s like to be them. Right?”
Clementine nods, a solemn pout on her face.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you,” I urge gently.
Tears fill her eyes, and her bottom lip starts to tremble. She turns her head to look away from me. “I almost drank rubbing alcohol today.” Her voice is defeated. “Alcohol isn’t even my thing, and I saw it in the medicine cabinet when I was looking for a Band-Aid.” She turns to me, her pale cheeks now red with emotion and embarrassment. “I wanted it so bad, Ollie. Fucking alcohol to clean cuts, not even the good stuff. I dumped it down the toilet and sat on the bathroom floor and cried.” She lowers her gaze to the floor.
“I’m proud of you,” I say, and her stare jerks toward mine in confusion. “It’s normal to crave a high, Clem, and it’s really fucking hard to push through it, but you did. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I know. But every time you push past your desire to use, it will get easier. Next time will suck, too, but it won’t be as rough as it was today.”
“One day at a time,” she says softly as tears roll down her face.
“Exactly.” I take her in as she crosses her arms across her chest and grasps her biceps. “Do you need a hug, Clem?”
She nods once and takes the few steps until she’s falling into my open arms. I hold her tight as she sobs against my T-shirt. “You can do this, Clem. I know you can.”
I feel for this girl. At a time when most eighteen-year-olds are getting drunk at college parties, she’s dumping rubbing alcohol down the toilet. A freshman at the University of Michigan, she’s living alone in an apartment on campus because living with typical college students would carry too much temptation. And though her parents love her, they’re in denial and not fully aware of what she goes through on a daily basis to stay clean.
