by Piper Lennox
We eat in near-silence, listening to the live jazz band in the corner of the restaurant, for most of the meal. When their set is over, Tillie orders us another round and insists we each choose a dessert. Shepherd chuckles to himself when Tillie and I tell the waiter, at the same time, we’d like the chocolate ganache cake.
“The Davidson sweet tooth,” he teases, then orders peach sorbet.
“Sorbet?” Tillie gives him a stern look. “I said order dessert, Shepherd.”
With another drink in hand, talking comes more easily for me. I even exchange some words with Shepherd directly, though most of our conversation keeps Tillie at the hub. After all, she’s the only thing we have in common anymore.
After the check arrives (which Tillie grabs on her way to the bathroom, despite our protests), we step outside to wait. Shepherd helps me into my coat. I thank him, but try not to read into it.
“No cigarette?” he remarks, nodding at my empty hands once we’re out on the sidewalk. The restaurant is on my side of town, in the heart of the artsy, urban district. Storefronts are lit up, already advertising their spring lines, and college kids mix with young professionals along the street.
“I’m trying to cut back again. Tillie and I are thinking of going to a stop-smoking program next month.”
“Really? That’s cool. Never too late.” He checks his watch. “I’ve got my own meeting tonight, actually.”
“Ah.” I nod at his pocket, where I assume he keeps the chip. “So you still have to go to those? I mean, like, once you’re a certain number of months out, couldn’t you stop?”
“I could,” he says. I watch his breath form a cloud against the streetlights. “Actually, I haven’t gone regularly since I hit the year mark. It’s flexible. You go when you feel like you need it, or to help other people.”
I study his silhouette. “And you fall into which category, exactly?”
He wets his lips, stalling. “Told you,” he says. “I’ve still got a lot to work on.”
“Shepherd....” My sigh forms its own cloud and joins his in the air, gone in seconds. “This is hard. Being around you and...and pretending there’s nothing there. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I really miss you.” I pause. “Like, right now? All I want to do is kiss you.”
He smiles, but hides it by staring at his feet. When I step in front of him, the tips of my flats touching the toes of his boots, he glances back up. I press my mouth against his.
At first, he just lets me. Then he leans in, encouraging it.
It’s running my hands up his coat, wrapping my fingers around his collar, that snaps him out of it.
“Lila,” he breathes, grabbing my wrists and pulling them away from his chest. He licks his lips again. They’re already red. “I can’t. And you said you wouldn’t push the subject, remember?”
I bite my lip and nod, ashamed and a little annoyed. I don’t know if I’m more annoyed at him for stopping the kiss, or myself for initiating it in the first place.
“Sorry,” I mumble, putting more space between us. He touches his mouth as we stare at each other.
“If I relapsed,” he says, “I would say and do anything to keep you from leaving. And you’d probably believe me. That’s not an insult against you.” He puts his hands back in his pockets. “It’s just the kind of guy I used to be.”
“Used to be,” I emphasize.
Shepherd’s chest swells. He’s losing patience.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “It’s just, I can’t understand your rationale, here. Either you’re in recovery or you’re not. You act like you’re…I don’t know, in between. Like being clean is a dimmer switch, instead of On or Off.”
He nods. I can’t tell if this means he agrees with me, or that he’s not surprised I think this way.
“If you want,” he says, after a moment, “you can come with me to my meeting tonight.” Through the fabric of his pocket, his hand shifts, and I wonder if he’s holding the chip. “Then you’ll see what I mean.”
Twenty-Four
Shepherd
“Shepherd! Haven’t seen you since Halloween. How you doing?”
Lila and I both turn at the sound of my name. It’s been happening ever since we walked in. This time, it’s Collin.
“Hey, man,” I smile, slapping his back as he hugs me. “Lila, this is Collin, my sponsor. Collin, Lila.”
They shake hands. Collin asks Lila if it’s her first meeting.
“Oh,” she says. “I, uh...I don’t—”
“Lila’s my guest,” I interject. “She had some questions about recovery and the program.” I look over his shoulder into the meeting room, a plain concrete square in the basement of a church, where people are arranging folding chairs into a circle. “Is it okay if she sits in?”
“It is an open meeting,” he says, scratching his beard. It’s grayer than I remember; he’s about my dad’s age. He looks at Lila. “Did you want to share anything, or just listen?”
“Just listen,” she says. “I mean...if you think nobody will mind.”
“Should be all right. We can ask before we start.” Collin waves us inside. We help set up the last of the chairs. Lila sits down, still in her coat, while I get us some coffee. She smiles a silent thank-you as I sit beside her.
Collin asks the group about Lila listening in. No one objects, so he starts with the typical text, then moves into participation. A guy I don’t recognize raises his hand to share, followed by a girl I vaguely remember from the last time I was here. When people stop volunteering, Collin stares at me until I raise my hand.
“Uh, hi,” I say, clearing my throat. “My name’s Shepherd, and I’m an addict.”
A bunch of people in the circle smile, glad to see me again, and say hello. Some of the newcomers look me up and down.
“Today,” I start, pulling the chip from my pocket, turning it in my palm, “I was tempted to use. It was right there in front of me, and I actually had this thought, like, it’d be so easy to just try it again.”
Collin is nodding as I speak, along with the other people who’ve been in recovery a while. They know exactly what that feeling is like. From the corner of my eye, I notice Lila watching their reactions. To them, that gray area makes perfect sense. They know it isn’t black-and-white.
“But I didn’t,” I add, which makes a couple of the newbies perk up, hopeful. Lila smiles. “For one thing, I was there to try and convince the user to get help. She wasn’t responsive to the idea, but still: if I’d sat down and shot up with her, that might have ruined any chance there is that...that she really did listen to me. For all I know, I got through to her, even if she didn’t show it.
“And for another,” I continue, taking a breath, “I looked around her place, and...and there was trash everywhere, and she just—” The tears that spring to my eyes shock me and, from what I can tell, Lila. No one else seems surprised. I clear my throat again. “She looked so sick, and...defeated.”
I force my gaze up to Collin’s, and then sweep it around the circle. “Going back to that life, that’s just not an option for me. So I left.”
Lastly, I let my eyes skip back to Lila, just behind my shoulder. “But before any of the newcomers think it was easy for me to leave, it wasn’t. I’m not, like, inherently stronger or something. Because I used to think that way, when I was new: some people stay clean because it’s easy for them to stay clean. But that’s not true.
“In one way, it was a no-brainer kind of situation. But it was still hard. I had to run away, in fact—I couldn’t even trust myself to walk.”
The group claps as I take my seat. Lila, instead, holds her coffee with both hands, keeping her eyes on me the entire time.
Frieda, a woman in her fifties and ten years clean, raises her hand. “If I can respond, or kind of add on, to what Shepherd just said?” She looks at me. “You make such a good point, about it being a no-brainer, but still difficult. For a lot of us, the urges don’t get weaker as time goes on. We just get st
ronger.” She holds up her chip. “It’s slow, but it’s happening.”
A buzz of agreement sounds around the circle. I feel Lila look at me through the rest of the meeting, but can’t bring myself to look back.
Lila
“Thank you.”
We’re a block from the church before the silence breaks. I keep wondering which of us will do it; in the end, it’s me.
“For what?” he asks, downshifting his father’s car to veer around a mail truck, crawling through the last of its route.
“Letting me come with you tonight. I think I see what you mean, now.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “After hearing you speak, and that woman, and the guy with the beard—”
“Collin.”
“Right, Collin. Getting everyone’s stories...it just made me realize the difference between ‘clean’ and ‘recovered.’ It’s a mental state. You’re clean, and you’re in recovery, but that doesn’t mean you’re recovered. Not completely. And you’re not addicted anymore, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t an addict.”
“Once an addict, always an addict.” He shoots me a smile. “Glad you see my side.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t try to, sooner.”
“It’s okay. It’s hard for non-addicts to understand it.”
This, I have to agree with. I felt welcome in the group, but also very aware I was an outsider. These people shared experiences and a common pain, a link I couldn’t comprehend unless I’d lived it.
“I gotta say, though,” I add, and feel him look at me again, “I still don’t agree with you, about not being ready to date.”
“You didn’t listen all that closely to my story, then,” he challenges. “I wanted to do heroin again, Lila. Don’t you see the danger in that? Fifteen months clean and that shit still appealed to me.”
“Yeah, for like a millisecond. And who cares if you wanted to? The important thing is, you didn’t.”
“It was quick,” he admits, “but it was strong.”
“So? That woman said the urges can stay strong, no matter how long you’re clean. What’s important is that you keep getting stronger. When you walked away—”
“I ran away.”
“Whatever. You left. You removed yourself from the situation. That’s strong, Shepherd. I get why you’re scared of dragging me down or hurting me, but I still think your reasoning is bullshit. That’s not a good enough reason to not even try.”
He gets quiet. In the flash of headlights from the other side of the road, I see him stare at his own hands, thinking.
After a minute, I ask, “The girl you talked about in the meeting...was that the one you got into heroin with? Your ex?”
“Yeah. Jess.”
“Did something happen with you two? When you went to see her?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Then why’d you make that face?”
“I did not,” he says firmly, hitting his turn signal hard as we near the restaurant, “make a face.”
“Yeah, you did. You still are. You look...I don’t know. Guilty.” I wait. When he doesn’t answer, I shrug. “If something did happen, I’d rather you just tell me. Get it over with.”
“Nothing happened.” He pulls into the parking deck where I left Uncle Wayne’s car. There’s graffiti on the concrete wall in front of us, but I can’t make out what it says before Shepherd cuts the headlights. All at once, we’re suspended in darkness.
“Lila,” he says, and something about his voice makes me brace myself. I’ve heard that tone before.
It’s the same one Dad used when he told me Mom was dying. It’s the same one he used when he admitted his kidneys were failing; exactly like the doctor who told me I wasn’t a match for my father, after all. Even Aunt Betty telling me I was adopted, with nothing but a stretch of silence, had this same ominous weight to it that I’m feeling now.
“Donnie was there.” Shepherd touches his keys in the ignition, jingling them like chimes. “When I went to Jess’s apartment today. I think they’re together.”
“What?” I start laughing, even though it isn’t funny. It’s just that absurd. “Wait, wait, okay—so your ex is dating my ex.”
“Apparently. I mean, he definitely lives there.”
“How would they even know each other?” I shake my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Don’t get me wrong, I could not care less who Donnie is dating now, it’s just…weird.”
“We have friends in common or something, I guess.” The longer I keep laughing like this, the more nervous he looks, but I can’t help it.
That is, until I realize what this news really means. I sink against my seat.
“So Donnie does heroin too,” I whisper.
He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you, but—but I thought you deserved to know.”
I feel my ego build back up, replacing the wall around myself where my guard used to be. “Thanks. But really...it—it isn’t like I’m that surprised, you know? He did a lot of drugs when we were together. I mean, I never thought he’d do that, but....” My voice catches. I clear my throat and press on. “What he does now isn’t my concern. I don’t have any feelings left for him.” Silently, I repeat this to myself: I don’t have feelings for him, so I shouldn’t care if he’s on heroin.
It’s already half-true. I don’t love Donnie anymore. But the second half, that does get to me, because I still wish him well. I don’t want to be with him, but I want him to be happy. I want him to better himself and have a good life. Clearly, he isn’t.
“I was thinking you’d want to know for, like...getting tested, actually. I mean, Jess didn’t have anything when I was with her, but that was a few years ago, so....”
“Tested?”
“Yeah. Um, you know—for STDs, or whatever.”
“Oh, my God.” I seem to surprise both of us with my reaction, but like the laughter, I can’t help it. My hand covers my mouth. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, it’s just—”
“Wait, so you know they’re together? Like, you know it for a fact?”
Shepherd blinks at me. “Well...no, I can’t say it a hundred percent, but—”
“He could have just been buying something from her.” I know my brain is coming up with any excuse it can think of, but I can’t stop it. “They might not be together. So…so maybe he doesn’t have anything.”
“Lila.” His tone is grave. He waits until I look at him. “I saw him using it, and I saw her take his needle.” Pausing, letting this sink in through my broken defenses, he adds, “Don’t panic or anything, okay? I just wanted you to know so you can get tested, if you want to. I remember him saying you guys had—” This time, he cuts himself off.
“That we’d, what?”
He bites at some skin on his lip. “That you’d hooked up. A few days before you and I left on the trip.” The car shakes, he shrugs his shoulders so hard. “It’s not my business. Then again, maybe it is, because you and I slept together too.... Look, I just think it’s good to get tested. To know.”
“Do you have anything?” I ask, as soon as this thought occurs to me. “Is that why you used condoms?”
“What?” Shepherd stares at me, hard, like he thinks I’m joking. “No! I use them because…because it’s just smart to use them. And if you’ll recall, I didn’t use one the second time. God.”
“I’m sorry.” I undo my seatbelt and double over, the way they tell you to when you’re carsick. “I can’t believe this.” All through the meeting, I’d felt so removed, like this world of addicts was some distant realm I’d never set foot in. Now, suddenly, I’m tangled up in it anyway.
“Maybe you were right,” I whisper, the words choppy. “Dating an addict, even one that’s in recovery, like you...it would be really complicated. And stressful, and—and scary.” I turn my head, finding his face in the darkness, these features I already know so
well.
And yet, not well enough.
“Like this,” I finish. “The way this feels, right now? I mean, I don’t even care about Donnie like that, but getting the news he’s on heroin...what if I have to hear that about you, one day? That you’ve relapsed?” A sob hits my chest like a rock. “Or—or sitting here, wondering if I’ve got HIV or God only knows what, because he’s sharing needles and sleeping with other addicts....”
Shepherd stares at the logo in the center of the wheel. He doesn’t nod or add anything. He just sits there, perfectly still, waiting for me to finish freaking out.
“I get it, now.” I sit up and grab my purse out of the backseat. “I mean, I got it before, because of the meeting, but now? I totally understand what you were saying. I don’t think I could go through this with someone I like this much.”
I’ve already got my door open, ready to tell him goodbye for the night, when I feel his hand on my arm.
“Well, now, hold on a sec,” he says, laughing, but there’s a hint of anger to it. “Just a few minutes ago you were saying I was stronger than I thought. That my reasoning was bullshit.”
“What are you doing? This is what you wanted in the first place, isn’t it?”
Shepherd stares at me, his mouth sputtering with false starts. “Well, yeah, but....”
“But, what?”
“But you changed my mind,” he blurts, looking helpless, as though I pulled the words out with a hook. “I mean, God, Lila, who does a complete one-eighty like this?”
“You,” I retort, pointing at him. “You’re doing it right now.” He wilts against the seat with a frustrated groan and shakes his head.
“Go, then.” He runs his hand down his face and lets it hit the console with a slap. “You’re right, it’s a bad idea.”
“Your words,” I remind him, one foot on the pavement, the toe of my shoe sliding on some black ice.
“No,” he corrects, “both our words, now.” He sits back in his seat and buckles up. The click of his headlights reveals the graffiti again: I notice it says RESIST.
