by Anne Jolin
Kevin was right. The space had turned out better than I’d dreamed it would.
“We did good,” I spoke to him, but smiled to the ceiling.
He kissed my cheek. “Yeah, babe. We did good.”
I felt his presence leave the bathroom, heard the sound of the door closing, and tilted my chin down.
Addiction will take the very best of you, and no matter how many times you beg for mercy, it won’t come.
It would never ease your suffering.
My brother’s addiction had taken the best of me, but it was my addiction that allowed for the syphoning of who I was to continue.
My gray eyes looked hollow in the reflection and I winced. I did not look like the host I was expected to be.
Picking up the red mask from the vanity, I lifted the top half of my hair up and tied the strings in place. When they were secure, I allowed the remaining mass of blonde curls to fall from my hands and cover them up completely.
I sized up the woman staring back at me.
She was damaged, but she was beautiful.
The red silk dress was high in the neck and fell loosely around my generous chest. My back was entirely exposed before the fabric formed a brilliant V-shape just above my butt. It was floor-length, and in these nude stilettoes, it made it appear as though my legs went on for miles and never quit. The naked lipstick I wore matched my shoes and offset the dark smoke my eyes were painted.
I was a lady in crimson and perfectly disguised.
Sliding my speech into my large structured clutch, I left the hotel room.
The Fairmont was nearly full by the time I made it downstairs. My guess was Kevin had let me wallow upstairs a bit longer than he’d led me to believe.
“We’ve been looking for you!” Leighton cheered as she came into view, gesturing her arms around her wildly. “Char, it looks fantastic!”
I turned my head and tried to see what she and the other guests were seeing. I’d been envisioning this for over a year, so I of all people could appreciate how well it had come together.
Everything from the walls to the tables was draped in heavy black suede and red silk. It made the room feel rich and luxurious, as though somehow you’d wandered into somewhere forbidden and been allowed to stay. The lighting was low and moody to capture the mystery of a masquerade, and exquisite floral arrangements of matching hues lined every walkway throughout this floor of the hotel, as well as the dance floor and stage.
“And you,” she whistled low, “you look sultry!”
Only Leighton would use a word like sultry to describe someone in regular conversation, and I loved that about her. She looked heart stopping in a low cut black dress that showed off her petite frame and a tiny lace mask.
That had also been a theme to the event; all guest were required to wear black or red, as well as a mask. It was, after all, a traditional masquerade, and aside from the staff or those speaking, everyone’s identity should remain relatively anonymous.
It was then I noticed the male hand at her waist and her use of the word ‘we.’
“We?” I asked, eyeing the man next to her.
“Char, this is Morgan.” Her date reached the hand not affixed to her waist out to me. “Morgan, this is my best friend, Charleston,” Leighton said with unabashed enthusiasm.
I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Morgan.”
“Great event,” he praised, which was kind, and I responded with a, “Thank you.”
Leighton turned to him and smiled. “Would you grab me a glass of champagne?”
Her voice was breathy, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Which, in all honesty, wasn’t fair. I didn’t know Morgan, and I was judging him based on the other men who’d, for lack of a better word, screwed her romantically. I didn’t know anything about their, what I gathered to be relatively new, relationship, and I was critiquing it immediately.
I guess that’s natural for the faint of heart though. Those too damaged to give in to hope are all essentially judging books by their covers, even though we had no intention of reading any of them. Sad, I supposed.
“Sure, babe.” He kissed her cheek and disappeared into the slew of people surrounding us.
Hurling herself at me, she wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed. “How are you doing? You okay?”
“I will be.”
It was the lie I told her every year, at every one of Henry’s galas, when she asked. Truth was, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ‘okay.’ I hadn’t been ‘okay’ for a long time.
Letting go, she pulled back and smiled softly. “Yeah.”
“Who’s the guy?” I asked, eager for a change in conversation.
She beamed, smoothing out her dress. “I met him at work! He’s a lawyer on the floor above mine and we met in the elevator.”
She would meet a gorgeous man in an elevator like a made-for-TV movie, and he was gorgeous. His skin was a dark chocolate, and it made the green of his eyes seem as though they saw through you when he spoke. He was taller than me, which meant he towered over Leighton, and even I had to admit she looked adorable tucked protectively into his side.
The jaded parts of me worried for her, but I learned a long time ago not to rain on her parade. Leighton was a big girl and she made her own mistakes. Instead, I smiled back at her and wished that maybe Morgan just might be her Page Six happily ever after.
“You two look cute together,” I offered, and she jumped up and down.
“Don’t we?” She sighed, and I felt a small pang of jealousy for her never depleting romanticism.
It never mattered like that for me.
I could never fall the complete way she did.
Of course, I was only human, and thus hope did get the better of me from time to time, but unlike her, I despised hope.
Hope tricks you into believing in a reality that doesn’t exist.
I guess that’s what makes the reality of dating so sad for someone like me. Sometimes I was the leaver, and sometimes I was the left, not that the distinction mattered much anyhow, the conclusion inevitable regardless. The fall out always being that a part of me was now sewn into the fabric of their heart’s memories. Truth be told, I’d given away so many pieces of my soul over the years that the woman looking back at me over the bathroom sink was often a stranger at best. We’d all sell our souls to the devil himself for a chance at being loved, so I never faulted Leighton for that, but perhaps I had none left to bargain with, soul that is.
I was nothing if not frequent in my fondness of “in for a penny, in for a pound,” but like every gambler, my luck would run dry and I’d turned up broke more than a time or two.
If love was a loan shark, my debt was already well past due, and I’d be left black and blue before the night was through.
It was because of this that hope and I remained in a lustful tangle as frienemies.
You know, I think that was the problem with using people to manufacture and generate a high. People were unpredictable. They were an uncontrollable chemical substance, and thus, the high varied dramatically from person to person encounters, as did the fall.
Some left bruises that faded, and others left scares that wouldn’t ever go away.
Leighton had heartbreak too, frequently, but she rebounded like a warrior. She became braver and more determined with each and every relationship misstep.
It was admirable.
For my heart, albeit wild, was grossly without bravery. The fear in me had bred a coward’s heart.
I’d spent many a night over the years bathing in the dim light of my alarm clock raining black tears on white pillowcases because of men. I was a smart woman, constantly bested by her own romantic inadequacies. I had to wonder though if the tears always came because fear whispered to me that I’d never be enough of something for a man, or if it was because fear challenged that I’d never be enough of something for myself.
I guess that’s why they say don’t believe everything you tell yourself in the night.
&
nbsp; If I did, I was worried that in addition to having a coward’s heart, I’d find in me a gutless soul, and that was more than I could seem to bear.
Morgan returned with champagne to interrupt my self-loathing, and Leighton’s dramatic portrayal of the author with whom she’d effectively ‘bagged’ this week.
I politely declined his offer for a glass.
I never drank at my events, but especially not this one. Not on Henry’s night. Not when I would tell a room of strangers about the brother I loved who died too young.
“Of course.” Morgan nodded sympathetically, and I decided maybe I did like him. He had soulful eyes.
“I need to go check in with Tom and make sure we’re running smoothly. I’ll come find you after the speech, okay?” I leaned forward and kissed my best friend on the cheek.
“Char.” Her fingers curled around my upper arm. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I will be.”
“All set.” Tom adjusted the small mic affixed to the neckline of my dress.
“Ladies and gentlemen, here to provide this evening’s opening address, I have the pleasure of introducing the founder of the Halo Foundation, and the woman behind tonight’s fabulous event, Miss Charleston Smith.”
Tom cued me, and I stepped onto the stage as the clapping grew louder at my introduction.
It was a small stage and only took a few paces of my long legs to reach Kevin. He welcomed me in a dramatic showboat of a hug, no doubt for the guests’ benefit, and as we separated, he squeezed my shoulder in comfort, no doubt for my benefit, before he exited the stage and left me alone.
My hands gripped the edge of the podium and I looked down at my speech.
I didn’t need to read it. It wasn’t very long and I’d memorized it weeks ago. Nevertheless, I was comforted by the safety net it provided.
“Good evening, everyone.” I smiled as a hush fell over the crowded room and all remaining eyes came to me.
This was always the hardest part of the speech, the hook. The hook was Henry, and it gutted me a little every year I used him for it, but it had to be done.
Henry was the reason we were all here. He was the reason I was here.
“I buried my brother the year he turned twenty-four.” I heard gasps as I expected I would, and paused accordingly like I’d been taught to do.
“Henry was my favourite person in the world, my only sibling, and with him, I buried his suffering, but our family’s suffering lives on with his memory.”
My chest burned in a way that made me grateful for the crimson of my dress. This way, if my heart actually was bleeding, they wouldn’t be able to see it.
“Addiction is a petty thief; it steals the ones we love from not only us, but from themselves. He was only fifteen when addiction began stealing pieces of who my brother was. It started so innocently, as it often does with teenagers. Just a little fun here and a little danger there, but it was the gateway to a world that inevitably cost him his life.”
There were sympathetic nods from the room, and I prayed that none of them were crippled with that theft in the way I had been. I wouldn’t have wished that on my worst enemy.
“I remember not being old enough to understand what was happening to my brother, and my father had tried to explain it. He told me that Henry wasn’t like other people, that he was sick. Other people could walk by the stench of stale beer on the sidewalk and never notice. It wasn’t like that for him, not my brother. He needed to beat down the door of the nearest liquor store or bar and drown in a twenty-four case of Budweiser to satisfy an inch. My dad had been right. Henry was sick, and was for nearly a decade.”
I took a sip of water and thought of Henry, the way he was at the end. There was hardly any of my brother left inside his body. He was so angry, all the time. He would pick a fight with the sky if he didn’t like its shade of blue, and feel no remorse. The brother I knew had never been an angry person, not like he had been at the end.
He hated himself.
“It was never enough. That inch never went away. It wasn’t long until he added cocaine to his list of poisons. This, of course, allowed him to drink more and never feel the need to sleep. He lost days and sometimes even weeks to a high.” I paused, catching my breath. “As a family, we ran ourselves into the ground, trying to help him. We did everything we could. Henry completed two stints at world-renowned rehabilitation facilities and burned through over a half a dozen sponsors, but it never stuck. My parents drained their life savings and nearly destroyed their marriage trying to save their son, and they lost him. They lost him long before he died.” I was grateful in that moment my parents chose not to attend these events. “That’s the saddest part about loving an addict: no matter how much you are willing to sacrifice, you will never be able to save them from themselves.”
I flipped the page in my speech and gripped the podium a little tighter.
“I used to position the phone next to my pillow all through high school when I slept. I was terrified I’d miss the call, the one that told me my brother had died. That this time he’d driven drunk and killed an innocent family and himself in the process, that this time my seventeen-year-old boyfriend hadn’t been there to stop him from being beaten to death by one of his drug dealers. Or worse,” I paused, “that this time he’d followed through on what was one of many suicide threats and someone had found his body.”
The room had fallen heavy with sorrow, and I felt the air claw at my neck as I struggled.
Almost over.
“My brother told me once that alcohol had taken everything he’d ever loved from him, and yet still, he wanted it. It was the love of his life, it was his best friend, and it is what killed him. Henry was my angel with no halo and one wing in the fire, and it is in his memory that I started The Halo Foundation four and a half years ago.”
Applause ensued, and the pressure in my chest eased long enough for me to finally breathe.
“It is my hope that we can prevent what happened to my family from happening to yours. Addiction touches the lives of nearly every one you meet, and currently only one in ten addicts seek treatment for their disease. It is my hope that we can one day see that number be 100%.”
More applause.
“This year has been an incredible year for us. Through your donations, we have managed to integrate our addiction education program into post secondary schools across British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. It is our hope that in this next year we will continue to expand into the remaining provinces until we are in every school across Canada.” I paused to allow the clapping to subside. “It has also been a remarkable year for our Clean Teens initiative program. In British Columbia alone, we have helped over three hundred teens get clean this year.”
More applause.
“I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your continued support, and it is a pleasure to have you joining us this evening at the Fourth Annual Halo Foundation Gala.”
I exited the stage to applause as Kevin returned to the podium to thank our sponsors, the first of which was political candidate Beau Callaway.
The 2014 elected mayor, Jeffrey Huntsman, was not in attendance and would be finishing out his year in office, and the mayoral municipal election for which Beau was running would take place in November of next year.
Leaning against the railing to the stairs, I pressed my eyes tightly closed.
I love you, Charlie bear.
“I miss you,” I said to the voice in my head.
“To Charleston.” Emma raised her champagne flute in the galley of the hotel kitchen.
“To Charleston,” the rest of the team, including Kevin, Tina and Tom repeated after her.
The speeches had concluded and the party was officially underway. We were celebrating a job well done, and I was already emotionally exhausted.
“To all of you.” I lifted my flute of ginger ale into the air. “Thank you, for everything.”
We toasted, and Kevin wrapped an arm around my sh
oulders. “Proud of you, Char.”
I leaned into his body and nodded.
“Where’s the dreamboat?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t had a chance to go say hi yet.”
Kevin sighed. He knew me well.
“Want to dance?”
“Yeah.”
He kissed the top of my head and emptied his champagne glass.
“We’re going to mingle.” He tapped his breast pocket, indicating he had his cellphone. “Buzz if you need us.”
Sliding his arm from my shoulders, he joined our hands together and we joined the party.
“Where’s your date?” I asked, as he spun me around.
Kevin rarely came stag to an event, and he was also a magnificent dancer.
Rolling his eyes, I saw him scan the crowd over my head. “He’s dull, but probably around here somewhere, boring some pour soul to death.”
“What do you mean he’s dull?”
Kevin dipped me and whispered, “It’s like having sex with a mime.”
Throwing my head back, I laughed.
“Actually, a mime might even be better.” He frowned and lifted us upright again.
“So why did you ask him to be your date?” I questioned, now having composed myself enough to speak.
It felt nice to talk about something other than Henry for a few minutes.
“Char, darling.” He winked behind his mask. “Mime sex is still better than no sex.”
I laughed again, and Kevin smiled.
He was trying to make me feel better, and it was working.
“May I cut in?”
Looking over my shoulder, all I saw was a wall of black Prada and hard man-chest.
“Sure thing,” Kevin drawled.
I wasn’t even able to mock him, because I was still looking up, up, and up. The man looked like something straight out of a Sylvester Stallone movie.
I felt Kevin’s lips on my cheek. “Relax, Char.”
Then his hands were gone, rougher ones taking their place on my naked back.
Even in my heels, this man stood at least five inches taller than me. His chest was broad enough that I was almost certain his suit had to be a result of a custom fitting. Brown hair in messy waves fell to just above his shoulders, and through his mask, I could tell his eyes mirrored the colour of coal.
