“But I can’t handle all this,” she says. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hypocritical. God knows I’ve done a lot of stupid things. I’ve made just as many mistakes, just as bad mistakes, but—” She winces, and I find myself wanting to comfort her, even though it’s me who’s getting my heart broken.
I can tell that hers is shattering just as hard.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I understand.”
Jenna shakes her head violently. “I don’t think you do. It’s just—all that stuff I did, the guys I was with. Rachel and the car accident and—I hated myself so much, and I still hate myself— “ Her breath catches, and she takes a moment to recover, and I’m struck with the horrible realization that her dark past has weighed on her heavier and wounded her more deeply than I ever knew.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say. “What happened to Rachel.”
She takes a deep breath and steadies herself. “Maybe. But I made a promise I would take care of Ty now. That I would be there for him, and be his mom, and I can’t let anything be more important than that. I’m sorry, but I just can’t take the risk.”
She looks at me, and we’re both crying again, and I wish there was anything I could say or do to fix what I’ve broken.
“I’m not going back on drugs,” I say.
“I wish I could know that for sure.”
We both sit there for a moment, staring at Gabby’s rug, and I realize that’s it. It’s over. I’m now Jenna Rollins’s ex, and as far as anyone is ever going to know, this never happened at all.
I don’t have that picture of us together, and now I never will.
“I’ll help you find a new cellist,” I say. “I know a lot of musicians in the area, and I’ll help you find someone good. There’s a lot of people who would jump at the chance.”
Jenna watches me for a moment, and then she shakes her head. “I want you to stay in the band.”
I stare at her. “What?”
“Will you? I’ll be leaving after the tour, anyway.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s your band. I’m not going to—”
“It’s not because of you. I’ve been unhappy for a long time. Being with you made me realize how much, and I’m leaving no matter what you decide.”
I hold my breath. I can’t imagine seeing her, listening to her sing to Alec songs she once said would always be about me. I can’t imagine going back to being near her and not allowed to touch her, this time because she doesn’t trust me to.
But I also can’t imagine never seeing her again. That feels like the worst thing of all. “Okay. I’ll stay.”
“Thank you,” Jenna says.
I know I should leave it there, but I can’t help myself. “You’re going to find someone better than me. And that guy is going to be the luckiest person on Earth.”
Jenna’s face crumples. “No,” she says. “I don’t believe in that story anymore.”
I gape at her, and I feel like my chair is tipping, and I’m falling into an abyss. “What?”
She stares down at her hands, which I can see are shaking. “I don’t believe in the story anymore. I can’t.”
I didn’t think I could possibly feel any worse, that there existed a pain beyond what I’m already drowning in, but . . . “No, please, no. I know I screwed up, but please. Don’t let me take the story from you. You’re going to find someone who’s going to love you like I do, and I’m going to read about it and I’m going to cry, but I’m going to be so happy for you. You deserve that. You can’t let me take it away.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, standing up to go. And even though she’s right here in front of me I can’t help but think that I’ve killed her, too. We’re both crying, choking on our own tears, but as she moves toward the door, somehow she manages to say, “Ty still wants you to help him. Something about a surprise for me.”
I blink at her. “Does he know?”
She nods. “Not the details, but . . . yeah. He knows.”
“And he still wants to see me? You’d still let him?”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s ever going to forgive me for this. But you can help him with his project if you want.”
And now I’m crying for the way I’ve broken his heart, but at least there’s one last thing I can do for them.
I can set the kid straight about who’s really to blame.
Thirty-one
Felix
When I show up on Jenna’s doorstep that night, I’m pretty sure I look like hell. I haven’t shaved in two days, and my face is puffy and my eyes red-ringed. A part of me doesn’t know what I’m doing here, much less what I’m still doing in the band, but the rest of me understands.
I’m doing what Jenna asked because I love her, and love means doing what you can even when it rips your heart out. It’s not something I would have thought myself capable of a few short weeks ago without risking my sobriety, but while I’m playing it safe and staying away from temptation, I’m not white-knuckling through. As much as it hurts, as much as I wish I didn’t have to know this about myself, I’m proud I can give her what she needs.
She’s too good for me, but maybe I’m not completely and totally worthless.
Ty answers the door, wearing a Lego Batman t-shirt over flannel pajama pants. “Hey. My mom’s upstairs. She says she’ll come down if we need her.”
I jam my hands in my pockets. “Okay.”
Ty is still standing in the doorway, not letting me in, and I wonder if Jenna was wrong about him wanting to see me.
“Are you a douche now?” he asks, his eyes narrowed.
I laugh despite myself. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
He looks confused. “Mom says you’re not like Mason.”
“I’m not. But I used to be, and your mom is worried that someday I will be again, and she’s trying to take care of both of you as best she can.”
He gives me a look of consternation and backs away from the door. Like, literally, he backs up all the way out of the hall, each step carefully measured. “Did you bring a picture of the hair?”
I wave my phone at him. “We can find all the pictures you need.”
Ty continues to back up through the house, only looking over his shoulder to get around the pointed triangular coffee table. He shows me where he’s already laid out the pages of the birthday surprise, and points to a panel where he’s drawn an angry-looking man with a cloud of eraser smears on top of his head.
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he says. “I can’t get it right.”
“I have a feeling there’s a hairdresser somewhere who feels the same way. Maybe several of them.” I run an image search and we sit next to each other at the table, debating the various merits of the different hairstyles as if either of us has the artistic ability to render them with nuance.
“You should just say you’re sorry,” Ty says, still looking at the images on my phone.
“I did. She knows I’m sorry. But this is my fault, not your mom’s.”
“If you say you’re sorry the person is supposed to forgive you.”
I hold my breath, trying to think of a way to explain this so it’ll make sense to him. “Did you tell your mom that?”
“Yeah. She said it was complicated.” He frowns. “Adults always say that.”
“Maybe. But does your life seem simple?”
He hesitates for a moment, and I can tell this isn’t something he’s ever been asked.
I click on a picture where Trump’s hair appears to be unaffected by gravity. “We should try this one,” I say. “And yeah, it’s complicated. But I’m going to try to explain it, and I want you to listen, okay?”
Ty nods solemnly.
“Say you made a mistake,” I say. “You were at a shop full of glass cases with lots of fragile things in them, and you forgot, and you ran down one of the aisl
es. But you couldn’t stop in time and you slid into the case on the end and you knocked it over and you shattered everything inside.”
Ty looks at me with wide eyes, and I smile grimly. “Would your mom forgive you?”
He thinks about that. “Yes.”
“Would she still love you?”
This one is easier for him. “Yes.”
“Would she let you in the shop again?”
“Nooooooo,” he says.
I nod. “Your mom is going to forgive me for the things I did before I met her—”
“Drugs.”
I let out a breath. I hadn’t been sure how much Jenna had told him. “Yes, drugs. Which you should never, ever, ever—”
“I know not to do drugs,” Ty says. “Everybody knows that.”
I smile. “Except us douches.”
He picks up an orange pencil to try to approximate the free-floating hair.
“She’s going to forgive me for not telling her everything, too,” I say. “But sometimes something is broken, and you can’t fix it.”
“Even with glue?”
The corners of my eyes start to tingle, and I swear if I cry any more my lids are going to permanently seal shut. “Even with glue. Didn’t you ever break something that couldn’t be fixed?”
Ty’s pencil stops on the paper, and his voice wavers. “I had a Ninja Turtle, and his shell fell off. I glued it back on, and Mom even tried super glue which you’re not supposed to touch because it will glue your hand to your head, but she did it anyway for me and she still couldn’t fix it and then she said we had to throw it away.” He sniffles. “It was a Michelangelo, too.”
I’m not sure how much of his tears are for the Ninja Turtle and how much are for the situation between us, but I’m willing to bet it’s a mix. “Yeah. It’s exactly like that.”
Ty’s face crumples, and he glares down at Donald Trump.
“It’s okay, kid,” I say. “You’re going to have a dad someday.”
“I want you to be my dad.”
I nod. “I know. I want that, too. But I’m the one who messed it up. Not your mom.”
And I feel like I should give him some substance abuse message now. Just say no, kid. Don’t be like me. But he’s already told me he knows not to do drugs, and I also know there’s nothing some douche could have said to me at that age that would have made any damn difference when nineteen-year-old me was handed that pipe.
“I’m sorry, Ty,” I say.
He hands me the orange pencil. “It still doesn’t look right. You fix it.”
And since I can’t fix any other damn thing, I do.
I head from Jenna’s house straight to a meeting, because if I don’t, I’m just going to curl up on my couch at Gabby’s and cry and wish I was high. Maybe I’m going do that anyway—Gabby did buy me a Breakup Tub from Fong’s that I’m only halfway through—but it’ll still be waiting for me after the meeting.
I go to a meeting in West Hollywood near Gabby’s apartment. It’s a hardcore NA meeting, always full of former junkies. Some of the meetings I go to are more general—alcoholics, sex and porn addicts, even people recovering from things like being controlling or food addictions. The core attendees of this meeting are a tight group of recovering meth addicts who go bowling together on Saturdays and have their morning coffee together at Joe’s down the street.
A couple of them nod at me as I walk in—the bald guy with the Stones tattoos who’s the de-facto leader of the social group, and the facilitator, who’s a skinny guy in his early thirties who just passed three years of recovery from synthetic opiates.
The room is more somber than usual today, and the guy with the tattoos—Jeff—leans over to me as I sit down in the circle of chairs. “Did you know Ronnie?”
I remember Ronnie, a heavyset guy with a deep laugh who did a lot of heroin in addition to the meth. “Not, like, personally,” I say.
Jeff moves over a chair and puts a heavy hand on my shoulder. “He ODed yesterday.”
My stomach sinks. Ronnie wasn’t a friend or anything—I’ve always declined invites to coffee mornings and bowling. But there’s this thing about hearing about overdoses. Every time, I remember how easily it could have been me.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah, we all are. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.”
That was a good call. The sharing will no doubt be all about that today, and it makes me feel bad that I want to whine about my breakup when these guys have lost one of their own.
I lost someone, too, though. And even if they judge me for it, I have to let that be real. The moment I start trying to avoid it, I’ll be headed back to the needle.
The facilitator starts the meeting, and already a couple guys look like they’re going to cry. Hell, I probably look like that, too, which may be why Jeff thought I might be friends with Ronnie. We read through the steps, and I listen. The step I’m working on always sticks out to me—right now I’m doing step four, making an accounting of everything I’ve done. It sucks, but I’m doing it, making notes on my phone whenever I remember something else.
I’ve added a lot over the last two days.
When we get to the sharing part of the meeting, the room shifts. Some people slouch in their chairs and cross their arms. These are the non-sharers, people who don’t want to be here or aren’t comfortable talking to the group. Sometimes also people who usually share, but today are too tired or embarrassed by their latest slip or just have nothing to say.
Some of the sharers lean forward on their elbows or rub their hands together, clearly composing what they’re going to say. Different meetings have different customs. Some expect you to go up to the front of the room to speak. Others let people talk from their seat. This meeting is arranged in a circle, and when it’s time to share, we go around to the left. A lot of people pass, but most of the regulars talk about Ronnie, and how his overdose is affecting them. It’s the opposite of a funeral, where instead of talking about the dead, they each share how much they want to get high to dull the pain, or how knowing he’s gone makes them never want to touch the stuff again. A big guy to my right breaks down into tears and says he keeps hearing “Spirit in the Sky” playing from his phone, which was the ring tone he had set to Ronnie, and so all day he’s just checking it over and over.
Then it’s my turn, and everyone looks at me. I almost pass, because I didn’t know Ronnie, but damn it, this is a recovery meeting and not a wake, and I’ve had a hell of a couple of weeks.
I have things to say.
“I broke up with my girlfriend,” I say. “I’m in love with her—like really, crazy in love, but it’s over now.”
Faces around the room crease in sympathy, and I have to look at the floor to continue. There’s a sign in the middle of the room, resting on the tile. What’s said here stays here.
But I know what I’m about to say is going to follow me around for the rest of my life.
“The first time I went to rehab,” I say, “it was because my family found out I was using. I got kicked out of school, and my parents knew why, and they told me I was going to get treatment, and so I did. The whole time I was counting down the days until I could get out and get back to the drugs and be happy again. And one day I was mouthing off to my therapist, telling her how pointless all of this was, and she pointed out and said, ‘there’s the door.’ I left, and I didn’t look back. My parents didn’t even know I was out before I found myself a dealer and got back on the needle.
“The second time I went to rehab, I thought I’d hit bottom. I’d sold something so important to me that I thought I’d never be able to part with it. I was ready to admit that drugs were a problem, but I still felt like without them I’d never be happy. Like I was resigning myself to this miserable life because the only joy I had in my life was also killing me.”
I take a dee
p breath, and dare to look up. There’s a lot of nodding happening. These guys have been there. They get it.
“By the third time I went to rehab,” I say, “I understood that drugs only made me happy for a little while, and then after caused me excruciating pain. They’d destroyed everything I cared about—my ambition, my family, my music. I was ready to accept that even the most boring life was infinitely preferable to going back on drugs.
“And then I met this girl.” I press my lips together, and it takes me a second to continue. “And for the first time in my life, I was really happy. Everything with her made me happy—being around her, giving to her, loving her, sex with her—all of it. It was better than drugs, because it was real.”
I want the story to end there, but it doesn’t. I’ve known guys who said they’ve lied to their twelve-step groups because it made them feel powerful, in control. If it stays in this room, then for one hour a week, they can be anything.
But I’ve always felt like the circle is a place for truth, especially truth that I hate.
“I told her I had a drug past,” I say, “but I didn’t use the words addiction, or rehab. I didn’t tell her I’m on maintenance drugs, or in therapy, or going to meetings. I thought I had good reasons for that, but now I think it was all BS. I lied for so long and now I’m trying to be honest but I suck at it. And when I told her the truth, she said she couldn’t trust that I was going to stay clean, and now it’s over.”
I’m getting a lot of sympathy from the room, now, which is what support groups are for, I suppose, but I still don’t want it. “I did this,” I say. “It’s my fault for using, and for taking two and a half years to be ready to get clean. I did bad things and I have no track record of recovery. Just sixty-five days, which feels like an eternity to me, but really, it’s nothing, right? And I get that. I don’t blame her.”
My eyes are starting to tingle, and I know I better finish up quick.
“But now I know that it doesn’t matter if I can’t outrun the past. I’m not going back to the drugs. Even if she’s gone forever, even if I never feel happiness like that again, even if it takes years to get off Suboxone and feel completely normal again—I’m never going back to the heroin.
Everything We Are Page 27
