“You don’t have to worry about that with me,” I manage. “Like I said, you can test me anytime.”
“I know,” Jenna’s voice is quiet. “Sorry, I don’t mean to put that stuff on you. And it’s not like I’m asking you to watch Ty. I’m sure that’s the last thing you want to be doing.”
She sounds sad, and I think back to us talking about Jerry Maguire, how she’d been so sure I wouldn’t want to date someone with a kid.
“I wouldn’t mind,” I say. “I mean, I’m sure you have plenty of people more qualified to do so, but—”
“Ha,” Jenna says. “I was a mom at fifteen. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m qualified.”
“That’s not true. You’re a good mom.”
“Who leaves her kid with her drug-addict friend.”
“Who trusted someone who it turned out was lying. Welcome to the world, Jenna. That happens to everybody.”
She doesn’t speak for a moment, and I realize how much I mean it. She is a good mother. I can tell by how much she worries about being a bad one.
“Four years ago my son barely knew me,” she says. “My parents were raising him—them and Rachel, who was only seventeen at the time. Mostly I wasn’t even living with them.”
There’s a harshness to her voice, a judgment she’s passing on herself. And while I do that, too, I still hate hearing it from her. “Where were you living?” I ask.
“With guys, mostly. Boyfriends, sometimes. I was a mom with a four-year-old son, and I was out partying and drinking and—”
She takes a sharp breath, like there’s more. I can tell there’s something she’s deeply ashamed of, and I’m afraid to ask. I’m still not telling her everything about my past. I have no right to ask for everything about hers.
But I can’t help but wonder. “Was it drugs?”
Jenna sighs. “That was part of it. I did a lot of pills at parties. I prided myself on being up for anything, so half the time I didn’t even know what I was taking. I don’t remember a lot of that.”
My breath catches. “You don’t remember because guys drugged you.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I mean, I knew what was happening. I took the drugs. It’s not like they made me. But sometimes I’d wake up and not know who I was with.” Her voice grows quiet. “Or how many.”
This sick feeling settles over me. Sometimes when I was high, days would pass and I wouldn’t really be able to account for them, but nothing ever happened to me like that. But I know how much worse it is for women—I got drugs from a lot of girls who were looking for a partner to get high with, someone they knew who would be by their side, making them that much less vulnerable to asshole guys taking advantage of them.
She told me before about the frat guys, about the statutory rape. I want to use that word now to describe this, but if she isn’t ready to hear it, I’m afraid it will just shut her down. I take too long to figure out what I should say, and she continues. “I get it if that changes your mind about me.”
“What?” I say. “No, no way. And I still think you’re a good mom. God, to have gone from places like that to having the relationship you guys have now—it’s really impressive, you know?”
“I don’t know about that. The way I let them treat me—I wish I could just go back to the girl I was and shake her, you know? She had this amazing kid who needed her and a family who loved her and everything in the world going for her.”
“I was that person once, too,” I say. “Minus the kid. And I hate myself for it.”
“Really? I mean, you said you partied, but you were in college, right? Practically everyone does that.”
The part of me that wants to rationalize screams that she doesn’t need to know. I’m not on drugs, and I’m not going to be on drugs. It’s the same part of me that wants to rationalize going by the houses of some of my old friends, just to see how they’re doing.
I know how that will end up, and it’s not pretty.
“I’m going to tell you something,” I say. “I’m not ready to get into all the details yet.”
“Okay.” Jenna sounds nervous, and the longer it takes me to get this out, the worse that’s going to get.
“I used to do drugs.”
She’s silent, and my mind reels. After what happened to her with Mason, this is the end. It has to be.
“Is that it?” she says. “Because yeah. I used to do drugs, too.”
“No. I mean, yes, that’s it, but you don’t understand.” I take a deep breath. “I did heroin.”
“I’ve heard that’s intense.”
“It was. And I did things on drugs I’m not proud of. I got kicked out of school, and I gave my family hell.”
“I know what that feels like,” Jenna says.
She doesn’t. She can’t. But it feels so good to hear her empathizing with me instead of rejecting me that I tell myself it’s enough for now.
“You’re sure that’s not a deal breaker?” I ask. “I’m not on drugs now, and I’m not going to be. You can test me every week if you want to.”
“No. I’d be a total hypocrite to judge you for that, after everything I’ve done.”
A wave of relief crashes over me. I can let the story come out slowly. I don’t have to bare my soul overnight, and I don’t have to lie to her, either.
For the first time, I let myself think about telling her everything. If I could be sure she wouldn’t hate me, I’d do it right now.
“So you’re sure my stuff isn’t a deal breaker for you?” she asks.
“Of course not,” I say. “We’ve both done stuff we’re not proud of, but . . . god, no. Not a deal breaker. Not even close.”
There’s a pause, and I wonder if I should say it again, say it stronger somehow so she gets that I wouldn’t judge her for any of that. Not like I do the guys who did that to her.
“The worst part is, I don’t really know why I did it,” she says, softly. “Any of it. It’s like there’s some part of me that’s so broken I just needed someone to need me, but god, I shouldn’t have wanted anyone to show it like . . . like they did.”
There’s even more behind those words, more darkness she’s not telling me, and it makes me furious to contemplate the kinds of things she might have been subjected to. But I don’t think telling her that will help her any.
There is, however, something that just might.
“I need you,” I say. The simple truth of those words stun me. I’ve spent so much of my life not ever thinking I needed anyone, not really.
Her breath catches, but then, as if she can’t let herself believe my words, she scoffs. “Yeah, I’m so sure you need all of this dumped on you by some crazy girl who makes your life more difficult.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I do. And I think you need it, too.”
She’s quiet for a moment, but then her voice is softer. “I do,” she says. “So, my emotional intimator. What the hell are we going to do?”
I know she’s talking about the future, but for now, that’s a question without an answer. “For starters,” I say, “I’m going to keep you on the phone for at least another hour. Maybe two. And at some point in there, you’re going to tell me how you got insanely good at pie-making.”
“Mmmm, okay,” she says, the smile evident in her tone. “I think I can live with that.”
I curl up, hugging my pillow. Wishing it was her. “Me, too.”
Eleven
Felix
When I wake up the next morning all I want to do is get high. There’s no trigger; there’s no reason. Talking to Jenna last night was incredible, but that feeling somehow abandoned me in my sleep. Maybe my brain was sorting through old boxes and found the snapshots of the first time I smoked H, and the easy, laid-back way it made me feel, combined with the brightest, sunniest, best-day-of-your-life happy that was everything I didn’t know how t
o be in my real life. Everything I was chasing when I went out to New York, but could never seem to catch. One of the reasons heroin is so dangerous is there’s no hangover after, no shitty feeling when you come down.
You just feel normal. And after a while, heroin is the only thing that makes you happy, and real life is the hangover.
Like a binge-drinker the night after a keg party, I don’t want to open my eyes. I already know what I’m going to feel—the nerves and confusion and frustration and loneliness, all things my therapist says I repressed before I started doing drugs, all things I could wipe away now if I’d just shell out for a gram and some new equipment. It wouldn’t be like before. I’d do just enough to get by. The needles would be clean and the doses low and no one would have to know.
Ultimately, it’s this thought that forces me to squint at the light sliding between the blinds in my dad’s picture window.
Those lies will lead me right into relapse. A part of me wants to focus on Jenna, but that’s not right either. I can’t stay clean for her, or for my family, or for anyone, really.
In the end, if I’m not doing it for me, I’m going to fail.
I get up and shower, walking the mile like I learned in rehab, instead of just trying to push the craving away. If I bought a gram, I’d be throwing away six weeks of sobriety. I’d lose my job with the band and any chance with Jenna. Gabby would know, and my parents. It would change the way I acted, from my interests to my ability to be honest. I’d go back to being that guy, and maybe I’d wake up one morning next to someone else who was cold and dead because of something I gave her.
Or maybe karma would finally stop doing its wicked dance, and this time, it would be me.
I’m not shooting up. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever, ever again.
My hands are shaking when I leave Dad’s house, but it’s okay because I’m confident I’m not just finding excuses to leave so I can use. Just last week I felt like I had too much time on my hands, and now I don’t have nearly enough. Even though I don’t have to go into the clinic every day, there’s still practice, and meetings, and my weekly visit to my therapist, which I’m dreading. Addicts aren’t supposed to make any major changes in their lives for the first year of recovery, and I’ve had enough happen in the last week for a whole year of upheaval.
I’m a few minutes early for my therapy appointment, and well-dressed, because the last thing I want to look like today is an addict. The waiting room is empty except for a kid who looks about twelve or so playing a game on a tablet. He looks nothing like Ty—he’s black, for one, and older, and not dressed like he’s a senior partner at an accounting firm. Still, there’s a hollowness in my chest as I watch him swipe on the tablet. I want to ask him if he’s playing Angry Birds, but I also don’t want to be the creepy guy who chats up random kids, so I settle for drumming my fingers on my knees while I wait.
What I really don’t want to be is the guy who has to be here in the first place, but it’s years too late for that.
The kid’s mom comes out of the office and they leave. My therapist, Cecily—who is big on punctuality—shows up in the waiting room to retrieve me right after, not three seconds past our appointment time. Cecily’s probably around thirty, tall and slim and always wearing these drab, old-style pantsuits that look like they came from the wardrobe on Law and Order. Still, she’s got a nice smile, and a kind of girl-next-door attractiveness. And way more importantly to me, she’s damn good at her job and tough to bullshit.
“So?” she asks as we sit down in her office. Behind her desk on the windowsill sits a potted plant that appears to always be in the same state of wiltedness and a row of Simpsons bobbleheads. “How was your week?”
I don’t lead with how much I wish I was high. “Well, I got a job.”
“Really? No more playing on the street?”
Cecily was not fond of this method of making money, and had suggested I either teach music lessons or try to find employment that didn’t involve my cello, due to the “entanglement of music with the origins of my addiction.”
She had it all wrong. Music never made me want to do drugs. It was everything else.
“Yeah,” I say. “I joined a band.”
Cecily looks substantially less pleased. “A band.”
“Yeah. But it’s a real job. I’m on salary and everything. They’re a pop group who are going on tour in a couple of weeks, and they just lost their cellist. It’s an incredible opportunity, really.”
“So you’re excited about this.”
“Yes,” I say. “Employment, music, travel, awesome people—this job pretty much has it all.”
She nods. “You don’t sound excited.”
“Well, the cravings are making me their bitch today.”
“If they were,” Cecily says, “you’d be out getting high instead of sitting here.”
I want to snark and say maybe I should get on that, but I don’t. That joke will never be funny.
“Was there a particular trigger?” Cecily asks.
“No. Just living.”
“That’s one trigger you should never avoid. What about the other musicians in your band? Are they addicts?”
I smile. I like this about Cecily. She doesn’t beat around the bush when she thinks I might be doing something stupid. “No,” I say. “Actually, their manager does random drug testing, and if anyone in the band fails, they’re out.”
Cecily raises her eyebrows. “You sound excited about that. You’re not worried about the pressure?”
“No. It means I can play music with a rock band without having to worry about my band mates doing lines off a mirror on the way to the concert. If I relapse, I’ll lose more than just my job.”
Cecily smiles. “Well, that’s great, then. If they’re so specific about testing, are some of them in recovery?”
I should have known this was coming. Cecily has this thing about me needing to make friends with people who are recovered addicts, when to me that seems like a really stupid thing to be doing. “I don’t know,” I say, “but I doubt it.” Jenna made it sound like they’ve all done some drugs in the past, but I hadn’t gotten the sense that any of them had needed a program to recover.
Cecily looks down at her notes. She has this list of things she’s trying to get me to do, and I know which one is coming next.
“Any progress on finding a sponsor?”
“I’m still going to meetings. But I’m not really looking, no.”
Cecily taps a pen on her paper. “You’ve decided against it entirely?”
“Not necessarily,” I say. “I just haven’t met anyone I’m close to yet. It takes me a while to get to know people.”
Usually, anyway. I think of Jenna’s ankle against mine as we talked over sushi. Of telling her things within days of meeting her that I’ve never told anyone in my life.
“Are you still hopping meetings, going to a different one every day?” she asks.
“Whatever’s convenient, you know? Especially now that I have to practice.”
“Different programs, even.”
“Sure,” I say. “AA, NA, there’s a couple of churches with their own programs. It’s all twelve step, and it’s all the same stuff. Just different locations and times, is all.”
“And different people,” she says.
“Yeah. I mean, new people like me I’ll see again every once in a while, because they’re going to a lot of meetings, too. And I see the veterans at this meeting or that meeting again when I go back. Especially to the ones with the best coffee.”
I smile at Cecily, and she gives me a look. She doesn’t call me out this time for joking about not taking recovery seriously, but it’s implied.
“How are you going to get to know anyone well enough to be comfortable asking them to sponsor you if you’re seeing different people all the time?”
“Maybe I’m not,” I say. “Look, I know it says in your little handbook that these people at meetings are supposed to magically be my BFFs now. But I know that sixty percent of addicts relapse, a lot of them again and again. It seems like the last thing I need is a group of friends, more than half of which are going to be getting high again within the year.” My hands are gripping the armrests of the chair too tightly, and I force myself to ease up.
“So you’re afraid of losing your friends again.”
“I’m thinking that sounds a lot like this life upheaval I’m supposed to avoid.”
Cecily narrows her eyes.
“So no, I don’t have a sponsor, and I feel like hell today. But I’m still clean. So take that, statistics.”
Cecily wisely decides to move on, though I know we’ll revisit this. “Any major triggers this week? Besides the cravings today, I mean.”
I take a deep breath. “The other day I was busking down on Hollywood Boulevard, and there was this drug deal going down across the street.”
Cecily turns fully toward me. “How did you know?”
I shrug. “Guys leaning against the wall, trying to look casual, stuff changing hands. Plus, the look of them. They were probably meth heads.”
“You can tell just by looking at them?”
“A lot of the time I can.”
“That must make it hard to avoid making contact.”
“Well, I did avoid it,” I say. “I sat and played and didn’t get up until I didn’t want to go over there and ask if the guy had heroin.”
“And then you did get up?”
“Then I didn’t have to think about it. I just went back about my day, like, not high, and not worrying about getting high. Mostly.”
“That’s good,” Cecily says. “So you recognized the trigger and you coped with it effectively.”
“I guess so. I’ve been doing what you said, you know? Trying to pay attention to how I feel and listen to myself instead of just shoving it away.”
Everything We Are Page 11
