The Fix

by Kristin Rouse

  But when they all pull away, we realize that Juliana hasn’t come any closer to us. And they can all tell that she and I clearly need a minute.

  Mama A and Constance both kiss my temples and lead the way out the door. Everyone follows, and Lukas and Mattias joke that they’ll kick my ass into gear later for giving them such a scare. It’s as lighthearted as it can be when their sister is glaring daggers at me.

  The silence between us is thick for a long, long time after we’re alone. Then, “God damn you, Ezra Mackenzie. God fucking damn you.”

  “Jules….”

  “No. You got to talk; now it’s my turn. I was worried sick about you. We all were. I figured you just needed some space at first, so I wanted to give it to you. Then you went and broke your phone so no one, not even your boss, could get hold of you. You disappeared. You could have died on us, wandering around for three days while it snowed without a roof over your head. You could have gotten behind the wheel of a car and died on us, and I swear to God, I would have figured out a way to bring you back from the dead to kill you again myself if you had.”

  She’s so angry that she’s vibrating. I sit and take it. It gives me a minute’s respite from being angry at myself for a change.

  “You were going to break up with my family, so I guess you were gonna break up with me, too, huh? Just like that? Because you decided for me I can’t handle it? That I can’t handle you?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I say quickly when she pauses for breath. “I’d rather never see you again than hurt you over and over and over.”

  “I can handle a little hurt when it comes to you. That’s what happens when you love someone. Can’t you see that I love you?”

  The tip of my index finger turns cold with the memory of dipping it into the snow collected on her car-share’s windshield and writing that same sentence. It must be a coincidence—she never mentioned seeing it, so I assumed she never did. And yet….

  “I want forever with you, Ezra,” Jules says, her voice cracking around the edges. “I love you. I want you to wake up with you in the mornings, and fight with you when you’re being stubborn and when I’m being irrational, and kiss you to sleep at night. I want bad Chinese food and pillow forts and cats you can’t remember the name of. I want you. I love you. And if all of that means I have to put up with a nasty version of you for a little while then I’ll take it. I’ll suck it up. Because you’re it for me. Do you understand that now? Just, please… don’t scare me like that again. I thought you were gonna die before we got a chance to do all of that. Don’t you dare scare me like that again, all right?”

  “Can I talk now?” I ask, still trying to process her words.

  “Yes,” she snaps, though I can tell she doesn’t mean to.

  “You’ve never said ‘I love you’ to me before.”

  She chews the side of her mouth. “Of course I love you, you idiot.”

  “I love you, too.”

  If I could get out of bed and swoop her into my arms, I would. All I can do is reach out for her and pull her against my chest when she falls onto the bed with me. She curls into my lap and shakes with anger until anger becomes emotion and she starts to cry. I stroke her hair and tell her I’m sorry, and she in turn tells me to shut up and kiss her already. I tilt her face up and cup her jaw, then kiss her long and hard. Something begins to unfurl within my chest, making it easier to breathe. But then, it’s always easier to breathe when I’m kissing Juliana.

  We break apart only when we realize we’ve somehow tangled up my IV, and a little alarm blasts to signal a nurse. We untangle it, laughing from frustration and fervor, and then when the alarm stops, my lips are on hers again. Her arms are wrapped around my neck. She’s here. She’s here.

  I could think of all the ways I don’t deserve her, her forgiveness, her affection, her promise of forever. Her love. Especially her love. But I kiss her, again and again, and tell her in so many words (how many do you really need, though?) that I love her, too. That I have since I met her. That, lovesick fool that I am, I always will. That she is everything I don’t deserve but have always wanted.

  I’ve been sober again for about 24 hours. It’s all just beginning, of course, but at least, oh at least, I have her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  You want to know something that sucks? Rehab. Rehab fucking sucks. I held out the vain hope that maybe it might not suck too bad by virtue of being an outpatient, and not being hounded all the time by overzealous nurses and orderlies. I was mistaken.

  I detox first. I’m promised it won’t be as intense, because I don’t have many months’ worth of stored booze in my bloodstream, but I feel misled almost immediately. I thought the days I spent detoxing the first go-round were the worst days of my life. I was, again, mistaken, because now I’ve been teased. My body had enough alcohol in it to remember how much it liked it, so the withdrawal is fucking brutal. My entire body shakes. My body temperature can’t regulate itself. And I hate everyone, from the doctors and nurses who tell me I just need to keep going and it’ll get better, to Mac who I (wrongly) blame for feeling like this. It’s something like the worst hangover you’ve ever had in your life, combined with a stomach flu and vertigo. It’s the sort of thing that would make any sane person never want to pick up a bottle again. Picking up a bottle again is all I want, though. If I could only have a drink or two, this feeling would go away. It’d be better—for a little bit, anyway. After what might be two days or maybe two weeks, I’m done and can go home. Which is another problem entirely. My apartment isn’t anywhere near this hospital. Not only that, the first of the month is looming and I’m officially out of a job. I don’t know how long it will take me to find another, all things considered. I have a little money in savings, but I have no idea how I’m going to pay my rent. I make an uncomfortable call to the leasing office and arrange to break my lease. They’ll give me time to get back (literally) on my feet in order to pack up and move out. Constance has a spare bedroom she offers up to me without my even having to ask. We agree it’s a temporary solution, because the only thing I want less than to be an unemployed loser going through rehab is to be an unemployed loser going through rehab who lives with his mother.

  Once everything else is dealt with, I get to deal with something I find even shittier: living day-to-day, sober, and not being able to do anything but suck it up and deal. My rehab is your fairly run-of-the-mill Twelve Step variety, with lots and lots of therapy to boot. Sometimes I’m at the hospital for what seems like an entire day, for a morning group session and an afternoon one. Sometimes it’s hours upon hours of one-on-one time with my randomly assigned shrink. I hate it, but wherever they tell me to be, I’m there. It all feels like a very long, very intense AA meeting that just won’t fucking end. I’m angry and sad, and I hate myself for ending up here again. Being around Gemma, I have to hold in a lot of what makes me feel angry and sad, lest I terrify her. Perhaps that’s why I’m so insular when I’m at my group meetings.

  One of the treating therapists gives me a choice: be angry and sad quietly and live with the threat of another relapse because I haven’t coped—or talk. And yell. And cry. Get it the hell out. Stop wallowing. Stop feeling sorry for myself. Talk, yell, cry, over and over, as much as I want to and need to.

  I resist at first. The people in my group sessions are nice enough, but I don’t trust them. I don’t want to talk to them. It took me forever to find my footing when I started going to meetings with Anja… how do they expect me to open up and let all my ugly out for a room full of strangers to see? But the therapists reiterate their point again and again—I need to make the choice. Talk or don’t talk. I still don’t want to talk, but I have to concede that when it came to that day, not talking did a lot more harm than good.

  I try. I offer a couple of reserved statements here and there, feelings that aren’t really feelings but reflections of what everyone else is putting out there. It’s enough to get my shrink off my back, but mostly I still keep
my eyes trained on the ground when someone begins to yell or sob during group therapy until a counselor applauds them for their bravery and tenacity and encourages the rest of the group to do the same. I do notice that whoever it was that had that breakdown (breakthrough? Damned if I know) seems… lighter the next time we meet. Less edgy. Smiles a little easier. I envy them that, because I’m tired of being sad, and I hate that I’m so angry.

  I couldn’t even tell you who it was in group that made me snap, but it finally happened. I yelled. Screamed, really. I told whoever it was that if they honestly thought they’re the only one who felt like shit all the time they could go fuck themselves. That every single one of us is having a long series of the worst days of our lives.

  The counselor and everyone else blinked at me for a long, awkward moment.

  “Sorry,” I said, suddenly much, much calmer. “That’s just… how I feel.”

  It’s really weird to have people applaud you after you’ve called them all assholes. But apparently, that’s some sort of progress.

  The next time I talk, I have a little more control over my words. The time after that, I have even more. I find I like talking to some of the people in group more than others. I decide I like people in group a lot more the more I open up and allow myself to know them. We’re all different, but we get along surprisingly well. We understand one another in ways most of my friends and I just quite can’t. As the days go by, things do start to get easier. Not all the time, of course. There’s plenty of crap moments, moments I wish were hazy and muddled with booze-goggles so they wouldn’t upset me so much.

  But I’ve made my choice. I talk. I scribble in a sketch book and find I’m not too terrible at drawing. I take the medicine they give me. I reach out to Anja after weeks of near-total silence and accept what she can do for me, and what she can’t. And for now, that’s to continue to keep her distance from me while she forgives me for the rotten things I said to her. I get a new sponsor. I remember I’m not only doing this for me—this is for Juliana and the rest of my family, too.

  Slowly but surely, it starts to make sense.

  ***

  After a few weeks, my leg comes out of its cast, and on the very next weekend, Jules, Mattias, and Lukas agree to help me pack up and move out of my apartment. I’m honestly afraid of what I’ll find when I step back into my apartment. Jules and I get there before the rest do, and she holds my hand while I approach the front door. My key fits smoothly in the lock and turns.

  “Did I leave this open when I…?” I hate to ask her such a painful question, but I know she and Anja and Mattias came over at some point the day I took off and found the place a wreck.

  “Mattias got to the door first. I’m not sure.”

  I look around. “I’m surprised my TV is still here.”

  “Looks like maintenance came in to take care of your window.”

  It’s true; they have. There’s not a shard of broken glass anywhere to be seen. That seems strange, since I’ve never known the maintenance department to not half-ass anything they’ve ever been in my apartment to take care of. This is the same bunch of guys who left moldy drywall in my mop bucket when they came to fix a leak in my bathroom ceiling.

  My eyes flit around the unusually tidy unit (Jules doesn’t have to tell me that she and Anja cleaned up while I was in the hospital—I know it instinctively), and my heart lurches when I see the cat’s bowls. I look at Jules’ feet. If Birdie were here, she’d be twining around her ankles, mewling pathetically.

  “Still no sign of her,” Jules says, reading my mind.

  I shake my head. “There was one cat who looked a little like her when I called the animal shelter, but it was a boy. They told me they’d call if she turned up, but….”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Jules says.

  “She wasn’t mine. She never felt like mine. But the least I could have done was take care of her for Mac,” I say, pressing down the thick lump in my throat the best I can.

  “You did, though. Sometimes cats run off and you can’t find them. Try not to beat yourself up over it, okay?”

  She was the one piece of Mac I had left, I think. And she was probably torn to shreds by a coyote.

  “You could still find her. You’ve got the Craigslist ad up still,” Jules says, but I can tell by her inflection she doesn’t really believe it. She wraps her arms around my neck and holds me there for a long time, and I give myself permission to cry into her hair.

  When she pulls away a few minutes later, she wipes my cheeks with her thumbs and kisses me. She has a soft, tentative smile on her face. Juliana always has a smile on her face for me, even when I don’t deserve it. I wish I’d noticed that more, before.

  “I love you,” she says. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She holds me again, and, honestly, I can’t and shouldn’t ask for anything more than that—those three words are so much more than I probably deserve from her.

  In the minutes we have before the guys arrive, we put on a pot of coffee and pack some of my clothes, a few books, my computer—the basics I’ll need for the interim at Constance’s house. A portable storage unit will be dropped off in a couple of hours for everything else so I have it out of the way while I figure out where I’m going next. As we’re stripping the bed and folding up my towels, Jules starts to mutter to herself. It’s clear there’s something else on her mind, and I have to pester her to figure out what it is.

  “I was just thinking about how you were hardly ever here, except to feed the cat.”

  “Well, it’s kind of a dump, isn’t it? Your place is nicer. Plus, it’s easier for you to get to work from there than from here.”

  “Constance’s is so far….”

  “It’s not that bad from your place. Now that I can drive again, I can come by more often.”

  “Is it weird for Constance, you staying nights away with me?”

  “Um… I’m pretty sure she realizes I’m an adult with a girlfriend and a sex life,” I say, although the last bit stings. I haven’t spent too many nights with Jules since I was released from the hospital. I’m on a slew of meds for my recovery, and they’re kinda killing my sex drive. She hasn’t said anything to imply that it’s been tough on her the nights I stay over and just drop off to sleep as soon as we climb into bed, but I feel like a rotten boyfriend for it. Once I’m a little farther along in the program, they’ll ween me off and I’ll be back to normal. For whatever normal means for someone like me, anyway.

  “Are you really not getting what I’m suggesting here? I feel like I’m being kind of obvious,” she says, her eyebrow quirked at me.

  I open my mouth to reply, and that’s when I get it. “Oh. I… Um. Are we ready for that?”

  “Are you ready for that? ’Cause I would have asked you weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure you’d go for it. I want to help, Ez. I want to see you be successful. And it sucks not sharing a bed with you.”

  She does the thing where she scrapes her bottom teeth along the Cupid’s bow of her mouth and turns it red. I go to her and wrap my arms around her waist. “I love that you want to help. But I don’t want to be a burden or something you have to take care of all the time. I have to learn to take care of myself.”

  “So learn to take care of yourself at my place. I’m not asking because of what happened, I’m asking because I want you there. You were practically living there before—what’d be so different, really? I want forever. Maybe this is how our forever starts.”

  What is it about the word ‘forever’ when it comes across her lips that is so thrilling? A warmth settles in my chest and she tucks in closer to me and presses her lips to the patch of skin under my ear.

  “Please?” she asks.

  I reply with a feverish kiss that I hope tells her everything.

  ***

  Later that evening, as I look over the apartment now empty of all but the one thing I’m leaving behind, Mac’s voice echoes in my head. Not in the bad sort of way something haunts you. The s
ort of way that’s comforting, soothing even.

  You never take your broom when you move, Ezra, he told me when I was ten. Dylan and I had managed to pack up all of our things from our bedroom, and Mac was claiming only what he felt was his out of the kitchen cupboards. He’d wrangled my help in packing some cleaners and detergents as our very last act in the house. On impulse, my hand had wrapped around the broom handle. Mac had shaken his head at me until I put it back where I had found it. I’d asked him why.

  You leave your broom behind for the people who come next who have to sweep out your memories, Mac had told me. I was confused, but I obeyed all the same, because why question Mac? We left it for Constance, double- and triple-checked the security of the trailer hitch, piled into the car, and left.

  Jules creeps up behind me and slips her arms around my waist. She presses her lips in between my shoulder blades through my shirt, and I tuck my arm around her shoulders when she moves to snuggle into my side. She smiles at me in that lovely, soothing way only she can.

  “The guys are on their way to Goodwill with the stuff you didn’t want, and then they’re going to meet us at my place. We’d better get going.”

  I nod, but my legs aren’t ready to move. Even though I’m leaving it on shaky terms, leaving this place feels right. I’m ready to leave this apartment and all its drunken, terrible memories behind and forge a new, clean life with Jules. But this place was still home for a long, long time.

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  “I’m not, I promise,” I say. “I’m just caught up in my head.”

  “You want another minute?” She nods towards the door.

  “Just one.”

  “I’ll go get the car started then.” She kisses me on the tip of my nose, but I pull her in for a proper kiss before she leaves. When she’s gone, I rub my palms along my arms where I feel goosebumps pebble up and down my flesh.