Escaping the Edge

by H. M. Sholander

  I had a dream about Grayson. We were arguing because he found me passed out when he got home. I know it was a dream, but it feels like it was real. We had the exact fight on more than one occasion.

  “When are you going to get help, Avery?”

  “I don’t need help,” I backfire.

  “Yes, you do.” Grayson makes an aggravated noise and angrily runs his hand over his face. “Every night, you’re either drunk off your ass or passed out. I can’t deal with this anymore. Either you get help or we’re done.”

  “Grayson,” I take a step toward him, but he takes one back and stretches his hand out in between us like a barrier, “don’t do this,” I beg.

  He closes his eyes and lets out a deep breath. “I love you, Avery, but it’s too much. I’m going to stay with my parents to give us both time to think.”

  “Please, don’t leave,” I plead as tears roll down my cheeks.

  Grayson marches into our room, and a minute later returns with a small gym bag slung over his shoulder. “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be. Just let me leave, so I can cool off.” He glances at me one more time before he walks out the door.

  What seemed like mere seconds later, Emily called me to inform he had died from a car accident.

  It’s not exactly the way it happened in real life, but it was close enough to freak me out. Either way, I feel responsible for his death. I know it sounds crazy, but I do. In the dream, it felt more like it was my fault than in real life because he was walking out the door as a result of our fight. In reality, if I could have gotten my shit together sooner, I like to think that he would still be here with me.

  I let tears freefall down my face as I feel the pain of losing him all over again. Each day it gets easier, but it still feels like someone is twisting a knife in my gut each time I think of that God-awful day.

  I lay in my bed willing myself to fall back asleep since it’s only two in the morning, but by the time the clock says seven, I still haven’t managed to get an ounce of sleep. Deciding to get up, I start my day by calling Emily. The phone rings several times before her voice fills the other end of the line.

  “Hey, Avery,” she says quietly.

  “Hey. Did I wake you?”

  I hear a door close and her footsteps on the hardwood floor. “No, not at all. What are you doing up so early?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” I omit the part about my dream of Grayson being the culprit. “I went to a meeting yesterday.”

  She’s quiet for a beat before she responds, “Good for you. I know it took a lot for you to go.”

  “I’m going again tonight,” I divulge.

  “That’s great. If you ever need a hand to hold, you know you can call me, and I’ll be there as fast as I can.” I hear pots and pans banging around in the background followed by a loud clanking sound. “Shit,” Emily whispers.

  “What are you doing over there?”

  “I’m going to make Bryan breakfast before he has to head out for the day. He’s still asleep, though, so I was attempting to be quiet. But, I’m sure he’s awake from all the noise I just made.”

  “You’ve become so domestic, Em,” I tease her.

  “Hey, don’t make fun of me.”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  We spend the next twenty minutes talking about her upcoming wedding. She and Bryan will be getting married in June. As much as I love helping her plan her wedding, I love having a distraction even more. It takes my mind off everything going on in my life, and I can focus all of my energy on helping my best friend plan a day she will never forget.

  “I have to get ready for work,” I sigh walking to my bathroom.

  “Call me if you need me.”

  “I will.” I turn on the shower, so it has time to warm up to the scalding hot temperature I love.

  “Grayson would be proud of you, Avery,” Emily says right before she hangs up.

  Great, I’m back to where I started before my phone call with Emily.

  Grayson haunting my thoughts.

  I have a sucktastic day at work. Nothing in particular happened, but all of my days there suck. When you hate your job with a fiery passion, every day is hell, even if you get a raise.

  All I want to do is lay on my comfy couch and watch mindless television until I fall asleep, but instead, I have to get ready to meet Ryan.

  To my surprise, he’s standing outside when I walk up to my apartment building. He’s talking on the phone to someone that I can only assume he’s not happy with since he’s yelling. I peer around the corner and spot him pacing back and forth.

  “I can’t come get you,” he says frustrated.

  There’s a pause while the other person says something before Ryan continues, “Because I have plans. I can’t run to get you every time you screw up. I tried to get you help more than once, but you’re not interested. All you want to do is drown yourself while I pick up the pieces. Call a cab because I’m not coming.” Ryan hangs up his phone and shoves it in his pocket. He throws open his apartment door and slams it behind him.

  The fact that he flew off the handle at whoever he was talking to has me stunned. I could see the tension in his body as his shoulders tightened and his back stiffened with each new word that flew from his mouth. Ryan seems so level-headed and calm, but I suppose everyone has a breaking point.

  When I open my apartment door, I drop my purse and keys on the ground. I assume he was talking to his dad on the phone, but his conversation hit too close to home for me. So close, that I’m not sure I want to go to the meeting with him. If that’s how he feels about his father, how does he feel about a complete stranger who struggles with the same issues?

  When it’s time to meet him, I head down the stairs where I see him sitting on the last step waiting for me. He turns around when he hears my steps and flashes me his gorgeous smile. How can that be the same guy I heard yelling on the phone? He appears calm. No traces of anger reside in his features. His eyes are full of kindness as he rises from the last step and waits for me to join him.

  “Ready to go?” he asks looking down at me when I reach the bottom.

  “Yep.” I look around for a minute wondering how he plans for us to get there. “Are we walking?”

  “I thought it would be nice. It’s only a couple of blocks from here. Unless, of course, you don’t want to.”

  “Fine by me.” I rush ahead of him not waiting for him to catch up with me.

  We spend the walk in complete silence. I’m thinking of a way to bring up the phone call I overheard without it sounding like I was eavesdropping on him. I know we had a “meet and greet” yesterday, but I still feel like I don’t know anything about him. Does he hate his father because he’s drinking again? Does he hate that his father failed? Will he hate me when I fail?

  We arrive at the meeting five minutes early. Ryan takes the opportunity to chat with some of the people hanging around outside, but I’m not in the mood to get to know anyone today…or maybe ever. I head inside and sit in the same dark corner I did last time. I squirm around in my chair while people meander in and out of the room as cigarette smoke wafts in from the outside that will soon bathe the small space.

  Ryan strolls through the door and settles on the chair next to me. “Are you doing okay, Avery?” He unexpectedly places his hand on my knee causing my head to snap in his direction from the contact.

  “Yeah.” I look down at his hand, still resting on my knee, wishing he would remove it.

  He leans in close to my ear and whispers, “Are you sure? You know you can talk to me, right?”

  My heart pounds inside my chest, and my breathing becomes shallow. It’s not from his question but from his proximity. My palms are hot and sweaty. Subtly, I wipe them on the leg of my jeans. Before I have to answer him, Rachel saves me, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “I would like to thank you all for being here tonight. Let’s get tonight’s meeting under way.” She sits down in her chair
, and the first person begins.

  Unfortunately, the meeting starting doesn’t invoke Ryan to remove his hand from my knee. For a while, the only thing I can concentrate on is the heat scorching me from the weight of his hand. The heat radiates through my jeans, igniting a fire that burns a hole through my knee. I haven’t had any other guy except for Grayson touch me in the last five years. I haven’t thought about another man in that way even before Grayson and I were together, and while we were apart, my only thoughts were how to win him back. One thing is for sure, Ryan is highly attractive, but it’s not the best time to act on anything while I’m trying to work through my problems.

  I force myself to pay attention when Rachel speaks. “I want to share an experience tonight that changed my life forever. It’s the one thing I can neither forget nor forgive myself for. It still feels like yesterday even though it’s been fifteen years.” She pauses to take a deep breath to compose herself. “I was in a dark place in my life during my addiction. My husband was an addict like me, and neither of us saw anything wrong with what we were doing.

  “Every Friday night, we would leave our house and stay out until Sunday night. We’d get drunk and high the whole time and had no worries in the world. Weekends, we stayed at shitty motels with people we didn’t know any better than a stranger sitting next to us on a bus. Everyone was in the same shitty motel for one reason. To get their next score. Their fix. That’s all that mattered to any of us. That’s all that matters to any addict. As you all know.

  “The thing is we had two kids at home. A daughter who was seven and a son who wasn’t even one yet. We never paid a babysitter to watch them on the weekends when we were gone nor did we drop them off at anyone’s house. We left them every weekend at home…

  by themselves.” She sniffles and brings the sleeve of her shirt up to wipe away her tears. “One weekend, my husband and I were so far gone we didn’t know our own names. We didn’t have a grasp on reality because we were so trashed. Late that Sunday night, we took a cab back home. At least, we were smart enough not to drive while we were still coming down from our high. When we walked up to our front door, we could hear our daughter crying. We quickly opened the door and rushed in to find her crouched in the middle of the living room floor. Laying in front of her was our one-year-old son. His limp body was eerily still, and I knew in that instant he was no longer with us. We called 911, and when the ambulance arrived, they declared him dead.

  “It was the most horrific night of my life. Both of my babies in the middle of the floor hurt because of their parents’ negligence. Nothing will sober you up faster than seeing one of your children hurt or in pain because through all the addiction they meant the world to me.”

  I wipe at my own tears falling down my face, and Ryan’s thumb gently rubs soothing circles on my knee.

  “Our daughter told us he fell down the stairs. She said she wasn’t watching him closely enough, and it was her fault he wasn’t alive. In that second, I knew that my addiction had become more than a problem. It had taken over my whole life. I left my seven-year-old, who could barely take care of herself, to take care of her brother who couldn’t even walk.

  “I turned everything around in the following year. I got clean for my daughter. For myself. I helped my daughter through her grief that she never should have had to carry because of my faults as a parent. I divorced my husband when he couldn’t get himself clean. My daughter and I started a new life, and I’m grateful every day for the woman she has become. I’m grateful she was able to forgive me for my past and for putting the responsibility of being a parent on her shoulders when she was still a child. I’m also grateful she came here with me tonight for the first time, which means the world to me.”

  I notice a girl in her twenties with short black hair sitting next to her. She holds Rachel’s hand while placing a kiss on her temple.

  “I know some of you have heard this story before, but the reason I decided to share it again tonight is because today is the anniversary of my son’s death. This is always a hard day for me, but it makes it easier having the support of every person in this room.”

  There isn’t a dry eye in the room, including the man sitting next to me. Ryan discreetly wipes his eye and places his hand back on my leg. This time the contact doesn’t freak me out. It comforts me.

  The group continues and each person who wants to speak shares a different story. I never knew there were so many reasons for being an addict. Not one person has the same story even though they share similarities. When it’s my turn to speak, I pass. I’m not ready to share any more than I have, but I’m hopeful one day my story will touch someone the way Rachel’s touched everyone in this room.

  FIVE

  After the meeting, Ryan and I walk home in silence. This time, it’s a comfortable silence. We’re both reflecting on everything we heard tonight. I don’t know if that was the first time he heard Rachel’s story, but even if it wasn’t, I don’t know how it couldn’t still affect a person. I can’t imagine having to go through the pain of losing a child. She probably blamed herself for a long time. She might even still blame herself, but she has turned into a woman her daughter can admire.

  “Do you want to come inside to talk?” Ryan asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

  I gaze up at him, confused, because I’m not sure why he wants to talk. We’ve barely spoken to each other the whole night.

  “It would be a good idea for us to talk about how you’re doing. You can tell me if you’re struggling with anything.” He backpedals when he sees the hesitant look on my face. “Or, we can talk about the meeting.”

  I think about it before I give in to the hopeful look in his eyes. “Yeah, okay.” I do need to give him a chance to be the support I’m sure to need sooner rather than later.

  A small smile graces his face before he leads me to his apartment. He swiftly opens the door, and the scent of his cologne fills my nose as I step over the threshold. It’s a cross between spicy and woodsy that I find very welcoming.

  As my eyes wander around his apartment, I notice it’s clean for a guy. There are no dirty clothes or shoes left on the ground, and there aren’t any dishes with food caked on them laying around his apartment. A brown couch rests against the living room wall adjacent to his giant flat screen television. A leather recliner sits across from a sliding glass door that leads out onto a furnished patio. From what I can tell, there are two cushioned wicker chairs situated on either side of a glass table.

  “Do you want anything to eat or drink?” he asks, playing the host.

  “Water’s fine,” I reply as I venture into the living room to sit on the recliner. This way, I don’t give him the opportunity to sit next to me, but the plush leather recliner also looked too inviting not to sit on.

  “Here ya go.” He hands me a glass full of water before plopping down on the far end of the couch and stretching his legs out in front of him. “I love that recliner. Sometimes I end up sleeping on it for the whole night.”

  That might explain why the smell of his cologne was more potent the second I sat down. “Yeah, it’s not too bad.” Okay, it’s pretty great if I’m being honest.

  “What did you think of Rachel’s story?” he asks, sipping on his own glass of water.

  “It was hard to hear but also inspiring. I know it must have been difficult for her to work through her grief without falling into her addictions, but she was strong enough to overcome it. She had to be…for her daughter.” Too bad my parents didn’t feel the same way. I drink some of my water to deliberate of my next words. “If she can do it while raising a child, I can find the motivation to work through my own demons.”

  Ryan’s quiet for a long while before he speaks. “That’s the most you’ve said since I met you. You’re already making progress.”

  I don’t respond to his comment, but I do find the courage to mention his phone call I overheard earlier today. “Were you talking to your dad outside before we left for the meeting?”

&
nbsp; His body stiffens and his expression turns stoic. “How do you know about that?”

  “I-I heard you when I got home from work. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. I just happened to walk up when you were on the phone.” I glance down at the glass of water in my hands, not able to meet the expression on his face.

  “Yeah. It was my dad.” He leans his head back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “He needed me to pick him up from a bar, but it was too far away. I wouldn’t have been able to make it back in time to meet you.”

  “I would have understood if you couldn’t have gone.”

  “I wanted to be there for you. That’s what a sponsor does. They are there for you through every turn. I couldn’t abandon you in the beginning. You might not have trusted me down the road, and I want you to trust me.” He lifts his head and stares into my eyes from across the room.

  I don’t know much about him, but I do know he wants nothing but for me to succeed.

  He quickly changes the subject back to me. “I noticed you didn’t speak tonight.” He pauses and shifts on the couch so he’s sitting closer to me. “It’s difficult to divulge a dark past to a room full of people, but eventually, you’re going to have to do it. You know, it’s one of the reasons the lights are always off—to make you feel more comfortable about speaking. No one is there to judge you for your actions or past. We all have a past, Avery. Some are more sordid than others, but the people with the darkest pasts are the ones we can learn the most from.”

  He speaks as if he has a past he isn’t proud of which couldn’t be true. He’s not the one with the problem, his father is. But, it does make me wonder what happened in his life to allow him to speak from such a dark frame of mind.

  “I’m not ready yet.”

  “I know. One day you will be, and I’ll be by your side when that happens.” He drinks the last of his water and places the glass on the black coffee table situated in front of him. “Is alcohol your only vice?”

  I turn my head away from him and hide my face with my long blond hair, ashamed of my answer. He shifts on the couch, and I feel his presence closer to me than he was a moment ago.