by Joey Bush
“Let’s head back to the tables over there. You’ll find lots of magazines, scissors, and glue for you to make your collage with.”
I stood up as everyone made their way to the table. I expected that Erik would have sat as far away from me as possible, but instead he sat across from me as he started his project. He didn’t seem to be angry at me at all, which was very surprising to me considering how I had just acted toward him in his room.
“So, this is you helping teach the group?” he said with that grin I had seen before.
“Hey, it’s better than nothing. I’m helping with the fun part.”
“I’m not sure it is,” he joked and then went back to work.
I didn’t distract him, or anyone else. Instead, I went around the table and looked at the collages of their life. It was a fun little exercise and filled with meaning.
If I had made a collage, it would have certainly been my parents all over it. They were the greatest people on earth. I had been such an annoying teenager and then just pure trouble when I became an adult. I was grateful they had stuck it out with me and hadn’t given up home all together.
Sobriety was damn hard for me. I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be if I didn’t have my parents to help me. After I got out of treatment, I didn’t have a job, or money, and I could barely keep my body moving forward each day. My mom would make me breakfast and my dad would talk to me about my day. It was those little things that really helped me day in and day out.
I continued to look around at everyone’s projects. There were enlightening and showed so much about who each person was. It was very interesting to see who they chose to do their collages on and the pictures they assigned to their loved ones.
Kimber had pictures of men all over her collage, as well as expensive shoes and jewelry. It was clear that she valued material things and men a lot. I couldn’t help but think that would have been my collage back when I went through treatment.
As I walked around the table, I learned so much about each of the patients.
Stan had a beautiful display of everything music on his collage. He had drums, violins, singers, and concert venues. He had been a drummer for so many years; his happiness was tied to it. But his drumming career was over and he was left to try and make some sort of meaningful life and that had been when he started to struggle.
When I walked behind Erik, I took a look at his collage and felt like I was peeking into his soul. Colorful, vibrant pictures of mothers with their children were all over. He had playgrounds, pizza parlors, family dinners, and people laughing.
I couldn’t help but smile as I looked at his collage. It was clear that he had a mother who loved him, but it also seemed clear that she was no longer alive. I saw angels and clouds across the top of his page. I felt for him and the loss he must feel. I couldn’t imagine living without my mother; she was truly one of my best friends.
As we wrapped up the session, everyone took their collages with them back to their rooms. They also brought pictures and glue sticks, just in case they had anything else to add before the next day when they would share their collage with the group; no scissors were allowed back in the rooms, though.
“I just need to cut out a few more pictures,” Erik said as everyone was leaving. “I’d like to fill up this empty section, if you don’t mind. I know I won’t work on it later and I like to finish things once I start them.”
I felt like the last comment was totally aimed at me and the yelling fit I had had with him earlier. I still felt horrible for the way I had talked to him. Not just because he seemed like an okay guy, but really because he was a patient and it had been entirely unprofessional of me. The way I had talked to him was much more about me and my own issues than it was about him and his issues. I really didn’t know him well enough to know what his issues were.
“Cassidy, stay with him and put everything back in the cabinet when he’s done please,” Jarrod said.
“Sure.”
As everyone left the room, the comfort level between Erik and I seemed to go with them. Being left alone with him wasn’t anything I had planned. I sat there quietly as he cut pictures and casually looked up at me. I thought about apologizing to him for the way I had talked before, but that didn’t seem necessary. He clearly wasn’t angry with me, so I decided to just drop it and move forward.
Sometimes he smiled; sometimes he just looked at me and went back to work. I didn’t want to talk first. I really didn’t have anything to say. I had acted like a total jerk to him earlier and if I managed to say a single word, it should have been to apologize to him.
“I’m sorry,” Erik said as he put the scissors down and reached across the table and touched my hand.
My whole body froze as I looked at him. Why was his hand touching mine? Why was he apologizing? He hadn’t done anything wrong; it had been me who screamed like some sort of crazy person. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. I had been thinking about apologizing to him for so long that I thought maybe I had imagined him saying something to me. But there he was with his hand on mine and as he looked at me, I realized he definitely had just apologized to me.
“Okay,” I managed to mutter. “But what are you apologizing for?”
His hand on my skin was sending a nervous feeling throughout my body. I felt warm and shaky as I looked at him. Is he flirting with me, or just being nice? I couldn’t tell. Do I want him to flirt with me?
No. What am I even thinking? This guy was a patient. He was off limits. He was also a bit of an ass. He was going through withdrawal really badly and was literally reaching out for help though, so I couldn’t exactly just leave him hanging.
“Seriously, I’m sorry for being such a jerk. I had planned to leave after the first week and then decided to stay. But then I was going to leave again. I just couldn’t make up my mind. You were right. Thanks.”
His voice was calm and even as he spoke to me. I searched his eyes for some sign that he was being sarcastic. How was I right? I couldn’t even remember what I had said to him. The only thing I remembered was yelling at the poor guy and making him feel bad enough that he had climbed out of bed and come to group.
“What was I right about?” I managed to say with a bit of a grin.
It wasn’t often that anyone told me I was right about something. Typically, I was the one making mistakes and not following the rules, both at work and at home.
“About me not getting better if I didn’t get out of bed. Well, I’m not sure what better is for me yet. But lying around in bed isn’t me. That’s not who I am, and I needed some tough love to show me that.”
“Love?” I said with a raised eyebrow as I held back a laugh.
“Oh, you know what I mean,” he laughed and gave me a tap on my hand as he pulled his hand back toward his side of the table. “I needed someone to be straight with me and that was exactly what you did. I appreciate it, and I wanted you to know.”
I missed the warmth of his touch instantly and longed to feel his skin on mine again. There was one thing for sure: Erik’s touch had instantly made me feel comfortable with him. There was no longer awkwardness between us and instead, I felt like I was sitting across the table from a very close friend.
Weirdly enough, I didn’t know much about Erik at all. All I knew so far was that he didn’t have family that he thought cared about him and his mother appeared to have died. My initial impression of him was that he was some sort of rich brat who had been given the family money, but I was starting to rethink that version of who he was.
“Did your mom pass away?” I asked in an effort to get to know him a little more.
“Yeah, it was a long time ago, when I was a teenager, but I still miss her like it happened yesterday.”
“It must be hard not to have family there for you. I live with my mom and dad, and they are my rocks. I couldn’t imagine life without them.”
“Let’s change the subject,” Erik said without continuing down the path I was tryi
ng to take him.
“I don’t want to sound like a jerk, really I don’t. But why come to treatment if you don’t want to get better?”
“I don’t really have a drug or drinking problem. I’m just here so my business partner can get a deal closed for a new project we are working on.”
“It sounds like you must have had a problem if they wanted you to come here, though, right?”
“Nah; you know those California types.”
I had to laugh. No, I didn’t know those California types at all. I didn’t know them except for the addicts and alcoholics that had come through our doors. So if I compared Erik to those California types, he sounded exactly like all the others who had been through the treatment center. I probably shouldn’t have compared him to others, but the way he was talking was very familiar to patients who just weren’t ready for treatment.
“I’ll hold my opinion on this whole conversation for right now. Are you done with your project?”
He placed his scissors back in the bin and I gathered everything up and opened the locked cabinet to put them away. We had just made up from my previous yelling at the poor guy; I wasn’t about to tell him that everyone seemed to think they didn’t have a problem with drugs or alcohol when they showed up.
“You are one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen,” Erik said as he stood behind me near the cabinet.
My breath caught in my chest as I realized his body was closer than I had expected. Normally, I would have pushed him away. Normally, I wouldn’t have let a patient get as close as he was. But there was something different about Erik. There was something different about how I was around him. I didn’t feel like I had control at all when he was around.
Chapter 8
Erik
The words had come out of my mouth before I could sensor them. I had been thinking she was the most beautiful woman I had seen in a very long time, but as she stood there, my mouth spoke before I could stop myself. I really wasn’t the type of guy who gave out compliments to women. It even caught me off guard.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I had actually said the words out loud or not. She turned to look at me and then back toward the cabinet. I expected her to say something, I wasn’t sure what I thought she would say, but surely she would have some sort of response to the compliment I had just given her.
I had an overwhelming urge to kiss her. To be honest, I had felt that way since I had first laid eyes on her, but now I felt like I couldn’t hold back. I shouldn’t have gotten so close to her because the second I walked over to the cabinet to hand her the stack of papers that were left on the table, I was close enough to smell her. Close enough that my senses had taken over and the words had escaped me before I could hold my control over them.
A light, flowery scent combined with what I thought was cinnamon and made Cassidy smell good enough to eat. Oh, how I would have loved to nibble on every inch of her body. Seriously, I didn’t know what had come over me. I didn’t nibble on random girls. I screwed them. I wasn’t a flowery kind of guy. I wasn’t a crafting kind of guy, yet there I was, crafting and thinking about the flowery scent of this girl.
“Here are the papers,” I said as I handed the stack of collage paper to her and tried to totally ignore that fact that she hadn’t responded to me telling her she was beautiful.
“Thanks.”
She turned around to face me and then quickly back to the inside of the cabinet and stayed there for much longer than she needed to. My hand reached out to touch her shoulder, but then I decided not to. I wasn’t thinking straight. She was only being nice to me because she worked there, nothing more and nothing less. I had to be imagining the chemistry going on between us because I had been away from women for so long.
Cassidy was still close to me. She didn’t push me away. She didn’t seem to mind my close proximity to her. There was a primal urge that had me wanting to press her up against that storage closet and bang her. My body was hard with even the slightest possibility of feeling her wetness around me. My brain could only think about sex in that moment. All reason was long gone and somehow, I felt like the possibility of having this girl was real.
“We should get you back to your unit,” she said as she expertly closed the cabinet and stepped away from me at the same time.
She didn’t look at me as we walked back to the unit, and I tried not to look at her. But it was impossible not to watch her as she walked in front of me. Her ass was insanely perfect in a pair of tight, black scrub pants. I physically had to hold onto my own hands to prevent myself from reaching out and grabbing her ass cheeks.
It wasn’t like me to have to control myself. Normally, I was the center of attention. The girls would throw themselves at me; they wanted to land me just as badly as I wanted to land them. Girls literally showed up naked in my bedroom, just wanting to screw and take a selfie of us together in bed.
I wasn’t complaining. Most guys my ages wouldn’t complain at the number of women I had. But it got old. The same lines all the time. The same women, even. Well, not literally the same women, but they all tended to blend together. The women at my parties laughed at my jokes, dressed in tiny outfits, did drugs with me, and any sexual thing I asked of them. When I would get bored, I would come up with random things to do in the bedroom, just to see if they would do it.
“Pour that shampoo all over yourself and roll around on the tiles,” I had said to one girl when I was drunk.
She didn’t even hesitate. Before I knew it, she was slipping all over the ground.
It wasn’t real, though. That was the problem. The girls that showed up in my bedroom weren’t there because they had gotten to know me and thought I was a great guy. They were in my bedroom to say they had slept with Erik Levy, the Silicon Valley tech millionaire.
I didn’t blame them. I was much more at fault than they were. I could have said no. I should have said no on many occasions. But I was caught up in the drugs, booze, and girls at the time. There were plenty of guys in the Silicon Valley that were millionaires and didn’t act like total jerks. They had a normal life with friends and family, but I was on a totally different road.
Now, as I watched Cassidy walk, my primal instincts flooded back to me, but my clear head also brought a bit of sense. I knew I couldn’t have this girl. I knew that it didn’t matter if she was beautiful and intelligent; she was out of reach for me. It was an entirely new feeling for me. I didn’t normally feel like a girl was off limits, but Cassidy had to be.
A girl like Cassidy wasn’t going to fall for a guy that was in treatment, anyways, and definitely not a guy that was barely participating in treatment. If I ever wanted to land any sort of stability in my life, I really had to take more control of my decisions.
Certainly, I felt like people exaggerated my drug and alcohol use. I still felt like I could control myself. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to hang out at Paradise Peak through the end of the program. The staff was nice, even the other patients seemed pretty enjoyable. Suddenly, the idea of making the most of my time at the rehab center seemed like the best possible option.
I wouldn’t have to be alone at Christmas or feel bad for not going home to visit my father. The idea of staying at treatment was much more appealing than I had imagined it would be. It gave me the excuse I needed not to deal with my family.
Not only did I feel a little more motivated to explore what Paradise Peak had to offer me, I was also going to avoid the uncomfortable holiday season back at my big house all alone. It was perfect and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it earlier.
“All right, there you go,” Cassidy said as she walked me onto the unit and then turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said and reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry for being inappropriate. The words just came out before I could stop them.”
“It happens all the time,” she laughed and then looked down at my hand on hers.
“I bet it does,” I said and pulled my hand away.
Surely, she was joking. Did Cassidy actually not realize how truly pretty she was? Her clear skin looked like milk; it was perfectly smooth without even the slightest sign of aging. Then there was her red hair. It wasn’t a dull or brownish color; no, instead her hair lit up a room as the lights reflected off of the shiny deep red tones.
“That can’t be true,” I managed to say. “You are beautiful.”
I was one hundred percent sincere. I wasn’t trying to bullshit her and I wasn’t trying to get anything in return, I just really hated the idea that she didn’t think she was beautiful. Cassidy was both beautiful outside and inside; she was the ideal of what men looked for in a woman. It baffled me that such a beauty really couldn’t see what she brought into the world simply by being herself.
“You better get back to your room,” she said as she pulled the door shut.
She didn’t look like she believed me at all, but there was a small smile on her face as she left me on the unit. I was glad to be right where I was. For whatever reason, I was at the treatment center and I finally felt like it was good for me. Even if I just used the time to relax and better myself, that would be at least worth the time and money I was putting into it.
There was a new sense of purpose as I went back to my room and crashed on the bed. Somehow, my embarrassing incident with Cassidy had just motivated me to make a little effort and participate. What was the worst that could happen if I made an effort and participated during my treatment at the facility? I didn’t really see a down side, except maybe lack of sleep from getting up so damn early.
Lunch in the dining room, afternoon group therapy, evening individual therapy – I went to it all. I didn’t always participate, but I made more of an effort than I had since arriving. Even my conversations with Jarrod during my individual therapy were much deeper than they had been before. There was still a wall up around me, but I felt like I was in letting people see a little bit of me.
