by Emma Scott
I started to put Olivia in her playpen but she fussed and squirmed out of my arms once she saw where she was headed. I set her on the floor instead, and watched her toddle straight to the kitchen, to Darlene.
“What are you doing down there?” Darlene cooed. “You want to come up here and help?” She scooped Olivia up and set her on her hip again, holding her one-armed. “Now, tell me, where does your daddy keep the baking pans?”
I watched a beautiful woman hold my daughter in my kitchen, talking easily to her, making her laugh. An ache—a thousand times more potent than any sexual frustration—rose up from a deep place in my heart. It felt like hundreds of emotions I’d been keeping locked down were suddenly erupting out all at once: what I wanted for me, for Olivia, what she had lost and what I was working for to keep her. They were all spilling out of me like a bag of marbles, and now I had to scramble to put them all back before I fell on my ass.
“This wasn’t a good idea,” I said.
Darlene was making a silly face at Olivia. “Hmmm?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what? Eat dinner?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “I can’t eat dinner. With you. And I can’t have you over here all the time, helping me out or playing with Livvie. I can’t.”
Darlene’s expression folded and I hated myself for stealing the light out of her eyes.
“Oh.”
She carefully set Olivia down and Olivia immediately squawked to be picked up again.
“Shit,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “This is exactly why I didn’t want any help. Because one thing leads to the next and before you know it…”
“Before you know it you’re eating a decent meal?” Darlene said with a weak smile.
“It’s not that.” I ground my teeth in frustration.
Darlene waved her hands. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s your place. Your privacy. I do this a lot. I get involved. I moved here to work on me.” She shouldered her backpack and took Olivia by the hand to walk her to me. “I have a lot of work left to do.”
“Darlene…”
She bent down to Olivia. “Bye-bye, sweet pea.” She raised her head and flashed me the tattered remains of her brilliant smile. “Have a nice night.”
The sound of the door shutting made me flinch. The room suddenly seemed a little dimmer. Quieter.
Olivia was tugging on my jeans. “Up,” she said “Up, Daddy.”
I picked her up and held her. She smiled at me and I bottled up my spilled emotions but for one. My love for her. She was the only thing that mattered.
“Come on,” I told her. “Let’s have some dinner.”
Darlene had the tuna in her bag, which she’d taken with her in her hurry to escape. I gave Olivia avocado, cubes of turkey, a hard-boiled egg, and another one of those biscuits Darlene had introduced me to. After, I bathed Olivia, and read Freight Train to her about ten times until she was yawning instead of saying, “Again!”
After I put her to bed in her small bedroom, I set up my study materials at the desk in the living room. The clock on the wall said it was eight-fifteen. I went to the fridge to find a frozen dinner. My stomach growled for damn tuna casserole.
Now that Livvie was in bed, guilt churned my empty stomach.
You didn’t have to kick her out.
I had a thousand good reasons for keeping my private business private, and yet being an ass to Darlene was like saying ‘fuck off’ to someone after they said they hoped you have a nice day.
I leaned my head against the freezer. Now I’d have to apologize.
I hated apologizing.
A soft knock came at the door. I whispered a prayer to any god that would listen it wasn’t Elena coming to tell me she had a conflict sometime next week and couldn’t babysit.
I opened the door to Darlene. She had a plate of food in one hand covered in aluminum foil. Steam wafted up in little tendrils, carrying with it the scents of warm noodles, mushrooms and tuna.
Dammit, she’s beautiful.
The images stored in my perfect memory were dull copies compared to the real thing. I crossed my arms over my chest as if I could put a barricade between us.
“Hi, again,” Darlene said. “I am not here to make you feel bad, or barge in again, I promise.” She thrust the plate of food toward me. “This is a peace offering and a parting gift. A promise that I won’t get up in your business.”
I took the plate. “This is a lot of casserole.”
“You insisted on paying for it back at the store, and I know you’d never cook it yourself.” Her radiant smile was back. “You can eat what you want now and have leftovers tomorrow.”
I stared down at the food in her hand. A simple apology and a thank you was all it would take, and then I could close the door and get back to my life. My stressed out, anxiety-ridden life.
Darlene tilted her head. “Okay, so…I’m going to go. Good ni—”
“Olivia’s mom abandoned her ten months ago,” I heard myself say. “My buddies and I were having a party and she showed up and just…left her. She left Olivia without a mom.”
“Oh no,” Darlene said softly. She wilted against the doorjamb. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, so, it is what it is, but…that’s why I don’t bring anyone here. I don’t have time for a relationship with anyone, and I don’t bring anyone over casually. Not even friends, really. I hate the idea of Livvie having strange women in her house. It’s hard enough for her without a mom. I don't want to confuse her.”
“I get it,” Darlene said.
“It’s probably stupid or overprotective but… She’s starting to call Elena ‘mama.’ She hears her kids call her that and I…I don’t know what to do.”
Darlene’s smile was soft and she reached her hand to pat my hand awkwardly for a moment, then pulled it away.
“I think you’re great with her. And she’s obviously very happy with you.”
“Yeah, well...” I ran a hand through my hair. “So listen, this is dumb. Olivia’s sleeping. Come in and help me eat this.”
Darlene grinned and shook her head before I finished my sentence. “Nope. I have my rules too. I’m working on me, remember? Trying to, anyway.”
Her cell phone chimed a text and she pulled it out of her sweater pocket. Her face went pale.
“Shit. I have to go,” she said. “Um, I have a meeting. It’s a…a work meeting in, oh hell, thirty minutes. I totally forgot.”
I frowned. “A work meeting at nine on a Friday night?”
“Yeah, bummer, right?” Darlene laughed loosely. “So I can’t stay to eat anyway. I’d be neglecting my obligations. I’m trying to be responsible to myself. No distractions.”
“Right,” I said, my chest feeling heavy. “No distractions. Well, thanks again for the casserole.”
“No problem,” Darlene said. She chucked me on the arm. “See? Not so bad, right? We don’t have to be BFF’s but we don’t need to be strangers, either. Neighbors.”
“Yeah, I guess that could work.”
“Good,” Darlene said, her smile widening, as she walked backward down the hall. “Okay. Bye.” She flashed me a little wave, spun on her heels and raced downstairs.
“Bye.”
I shut the door, and leaned against it for a few seconds, more tired than before. The entire night I’d been swept up in Darlene’s energy. I’d felt more awake than I had in a long time, and now I was sagging again.
Friend or stranger.
Aside from Jackson, I didn’t have a ton of friends anymore, and didn’t have time for them anyway. I didn’t have time for anything. ‘Neighbor’ fit somewhere in between ‘friend’ and ‘stranger.' Darlene could be there.
I couldn’t put her anywhere else.
Darlene
“Oh my God, this is going to suck,” I moaned.
I was hanging on to Max’s arm as we made our way into the YMCA. My heart was racing after my mad dash from the parking lot. Praise be to Uber, I
’d made it on time to my first NA meeting.
Praise be to Max’s reminder text, I added but didn’t say aloud.
“What’s going to suck?” he asked, frowning. “The meeting?”
That too.
“No,” I said. “My new living situation. It’s going to be a true test of my sexual willpower.”
“Sexual willpower,” Max mused. “That’s one I haven’t heard before.”
He looked exceptionally handsome in jeans and a black T-shirt under a black leather jacket, but I noticed my observation of him had changed. He was gorgeous, no question, but his eyes were light blue instead of brown, and his hair was perfectly straight with no soft curls.
He’s not as attractive in the same way because you know he’s gay. That’s all.
I gave my head a shake. “I’m a warm-blooded American woman,” I said. “I have needs. Urges. Like, a lot of them, and yet I’ve relegated myself to a year’s worth of celibacy. A year.”
“Unrealistic expectations are failures waiting to happen,” Max said.
“Is that in your Sponsor’s Manual?”
“It’s the title,” he said, shooting me a small smile. “Anyway, I thought your plan was to stay out of a relationship for a year. Not to go full chastity.”
“I can’t do one without the other,” I said. “It’s my addiction, too. Not sex, but filling the emptiness with something that makes me feel good. And being with a man…that makes me feel good. The sex and the touching and the morning afters. God, I love the morning afters.”
I glanced up to see Max smiling at me with amusement. I flapped my hand. “But then I get attached and try to make something out of nothing, and it all slips through my fingers. I’m back to square one, only with another failure under my belt.”
“Mmmkay,” Max said. We stepped inside the linoleum and fluorescent hallway of the Y where our footsteps joined the soft clopping of other people headed toward their respective groups. “So what brought this sudden revelation on?”
“The unbearable hotness of my new neighbor.”
“Oh…? Do tell.”
“He lives below me. And he has a little girl, and I don’t even care. I thought that would be a total turnoff but it’s not. The way he cares for her only adds to his ridiculous sex appeal.”
A small voice in my head whispered that Sawyer was attractive in a hundred different ways, but his extreme good looks was the only one I’d let myself admit.
We stepped inside the meeting room. It looked to be a small group, only fifteen chairs sat facing a podium. I glanced around at my fellow recovering addicts. They ranged from young like Max and myself, to the oldest, who looked to be in his mid-sixties. In a corner was a table with coffee and donuts, and a woman, with dark hair and a tired but warm smile, who was setting out napkins and paper cups. Angela, the program director, I guessed.
We headed for the snack table. Max gave Angela a nod and a smile of greeting, and leaned in to me. “I think you need to be careful.”
“Of what?” I asked, perusing the donuts. “Aside from the hundred million other things I’m trying to be careful of…?”
“This guy—your neighbor—has a kid?” Max said. “If you start anything with him, that’s two relationships you’d be having, not one. And the one he has with his daughter is always going to be the most sacred.”
“I told you, there will be no relationship, sexual or otherwise, for one whole year,” I declared. I chose a bear claw and poured a Styrofoam cup of black coffee.
A year. God, that felt like a prison sentence too. The image of Sawyer’s handsome face, smiling at his little girl, rose unbidden in my mind.
“And even if I wanted to pursue something, it couldn’t be with Sawyer,” I said quickly, as if I were casting a spell to banish him from my thoughts. “He’s got too much going on with Olivia and his studies to be with anyone.”
“This Sawyer is a student? Please tell me he’s not in high school.”
I swatted Max’s arm with a laugh. “Don’t be gross. He’s at UC Hastings,” I said proudly. “He’s going to be a lawyer.”
“Sawyer the Lawyer?”
“This is why I love you, Max.”
“So he has no time for relationships.”
“Correct! So that’s good, right?” I said, taking a huge bite of donut. “He has no time, and I have to get my shit together.” Crumbs spilled down the front of my shirt. I brushed them off irritably. “It would just be easier if he weren’t so damn hot. And smart. And funny. He’s grouchy as hell too, but only on the surface. It’s like he turns this certain face to the world, but when it’s just him and Olivia...”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Max said. “How do you know all that about him?” He gave me a stern look. “Are you hanging out with the guy who already said he has no time for you?”
“Jeez, when you put it that way.” I rolled my eyes. “Yes, we hung out. Once. Tonight. I ran into him at the grocery store. The poor guy is living in frozen dinner hell. So I cooked for him.”
“You cooked for him?”
“Tuna casserole. It wasn’t as sinister as it sounds.”
We took seats toward the back of the group. Max wrinkled his lips.
“I’m serious, Dar. If you want to succeed at being sober, or at finding your own self, or whatever it was you came out here for, then you have to give yourself a chance.”
“I am.”
“You moved in two days ago and you’re already having dinner with the guy.”
“I did not have dinner with him,” I said, and busied myself smoothing my napkin on my lap. “I cooked for him, true, but we…decided it was better if we kept things strictly neighborly.”
I glanced up quickly to see Max watching me. I suddenly felt naked, as if my stupid little half-truth was tattooed all over my skin. I thrust my chin out.
“I’d never have told you about him if I knew you were going to freak out.”
Max frowned. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to put yourself in a situation that is only going to get more intense.”
“We’re not even friends, Sawyer and me. Not really.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Of course. Sure. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m not going to be the same idiot I was in New York who gets attached to the first guy who’s nice to me. I’m not.”
Max inclined his chin to the podium where Angela was standing, bringing the meeting to order. “Tell it to them.”
“We have someone new with us tonight,” the program director said. “Will everyone please give a warm welcome to Darlene.”
The group turned in their seats and gave me a smattering of applause.
Max nudged my elbow. He’d finally exchanged his gloomy grimace for an encouraging smile. “You’re on. Let’s see what you got.”
I moved to the front of the room. I hated this part. Getting up and telling my story to a bunch of strangers. I know it was supposed to make me feel a sense of solidarity, and to keep confronting what I had done and what I was; to speak it out loud so I couldn’t pretend like it never happened. But it just felt like telling the story of my weakness all over again.
“Hi, I’m Darlene.”
The chorus returned with, “Hi, Darlene.”
Ugh. So stupid.
Briefly, I sketched my history. Three months in jail for possession, parole, an overdose at a New Year’s Eve party, more parole, and finally freedom but for mandatory meetings three times a week.
“And how do you feel being here?” Angela asked when I moved to take my seat.
“Good. Great. Happy to be here in a new city. Starting over where everything is new. Except, for here. NA meetings are the same no matter where you go, right?”
I laughed weakly. No one else did.
When I’d slunk back into my seat, Max’s frown looked etched in stone.
“Didn’t your mom ever tell you if you keep making that face, it’ll freeze that way?” I whispered as another gal, Kelly, was taking the pod
ium to continue a story she’d begun last session.
“Later,” Max said and nudged his chin at Kelly. “Listen.”
After the meeting, a few other group members introduced themselves and shook my hand. Two younger gals and one nervous-looking guy offered to hang out some time and grab coffee. I declined politely, blaming work. I’d already decided that the only time I was a recovering addict was when I was in this room. The old Darlene was here. Everywhere else, I was brand new.
I gathered my backpack as Angela and Max talked near the podium. They both glanced at me at the same time, like parents trying to figure out what to do with their problem child.
Let them, I thought. The past stays inside these walls. That’s what anonymous means. No one has to know. Sawyer doesn’t have to know…
Why he should pop into my thoughts—again—irritated me. Being here irritated me. I stood up and headed for the door, feeling as if I were being chased by the ghosts of everything I was trying not to be anymore.
Outside, Max still hadn’t shaken his frown.
“I take it you were not impressed with my debut?” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
“You sounded like you were reading a grocery list,” he said.
“What you mean? I told my story.”
“That was more of a plot summary. Point one: I did drugs. Point two: I got caught. Point three: I did more drugs.”
“Yeah? And?” I snapped. “Look, to be honest, I don’t really feel as if there’s much more to tell. I got clean and have been clean for a long time.” I squared my shoulders to him. “I’m never going back. I hit my rock bottom and I came out the other side. End of story.”
“You hit rock bottom?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Weren’t you listening? When I OD’d at a New Year’s party a year and a half ago.”
“You said that happened but you didn’t talk about what rock bottom meant for you. Or what it felt like.”
“How do you think it felt? It sucked! But right now I feel good. Why should I talk about all the bad crap when I’ve gotten past all that?”
Max crossed his arms over his broad chest. “So you’re just here because the court has ordered you to be?”
