Dre snorted through a burst of laughter, wrinkling her nose. I’m instantly hit with an ache to my balls but it’s not an ache I mind. Not at all. Actually it’s the first even remotely pleasurable sensation in that region of my body I’d had since I came back from the brink. “Um…Preppy?” she asked, not waiting for me to answer. “Postpartum depression is what happens to some women after…after having babies. What I think you mean is something called post traumatic stress disorder.”
I waved her off. “Listen just because I call you Doc doesn’t mean you’re a medical expert,” I said, eliciting another small burst of laughter as she uncovered a ball of dough that had been rising in a bowl on the counter. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what the fuck it’s called, what matters is that I have it, so what I’m saying is that I’ll need to be taken care of. WELL taken care of. Mmmmmmkay?” I asked and when she flashed me a ‘what the fuck ever’ look I stuck out my lower lip in an exaggerated and what I could only imagine was a very pathetic looking pout.
“Oh yeah? Is that so?” Dre asked, turning around with one hand on her jutted out hip, one perfectly arched eyebrow craning upward toward her hairline, and her deep red fuckable lips quirked to the side. “And what kind of HELP is it that you’re in so much desperate need of?”
I opened my mouth to say my usual something sarcastic but at the last second I cleared my throat and even I didn’t expect what poured from my lips. My voice was much lower and raspier than a moment before. An almost-whisper. “All of it. I need all of the help.” There was no trace of humor in my words.
Dre seemed to be mulling over what I’d just said. Her lips flattening into a straight line. She looked over the sink through the window into the neglected backyard. The sun shifted out from behind a cloud and her face brightened instantly, illuminated by the early morning rays. She paused there for what seemed like a motherfucking eternity, closing her eyes and soaking up the warm light.
The clock above the stove ticked louder and louder as it announced each passing second until it turned into tick-ticking insanity pounding within my ear drums. TICK-TOCK TICK-TOCK.
Finally, Dre broke through my impatience when she turned to me again and wiped her floury hands on her apron. Her lips turned upward in a bright white, full-toothed smile that covered her entire face. My heart sped up like it had been hit with electric paddles, so much so it skipped a beat and I coughed into the crook of my elbow. “Okay, then.”
“Okay then…what?” I asked, casually looking down at my hands and turning them over as if I was inspecting my own tattoos.
“Okay then if you need help, I’ll give it to you,” she paused and I hadn’t realized she’d crossed the kitchen until I looked up from my hands and found her standing over me, so close her knee was pressed against my thigh. I craned my neck to look up at her face. “But my help is conditional.”
“What kind of conditions?” I asked. She stepped away.
“Why are you pushing me away, Doc?” I asked, hating the feeling of space between us.
She turned suddenly, her face serious. “Because you hurt me! Because you fucking destroyed me! Because when you pushed me away last time I might as well have died with you. And I went to rehab and school and there were a million times when I wanted to call you and talk to you and tell you about my day and I couldn’t because you decided that we shouldn’t be together. YOU. Not us, YOU. Then you fucking died on me and I fucking hated you for it. All of it!”
“You’re mad at me because…I died?”
“Yes, and because you never knew the truth. There are so many things you need to know that I never told you. Things I should have told you a long time ago.” Her eyes teared up. My heart made a thudding sound like it landed at the bottom of my stomach.
“So tell me, Doc,” I whispered, holding out my hand.
She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Please, everyone else spares me from the truth because they’re afraid I’ll fall apart. That’s what’s driving me more crazy than any of the other shit. Just tell me the fucking truth!”
“You might hate me!”
I took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes. I shrugged. “I might.”
“Okay,” she agreed, with a small nod. She straightened her spine. “Then come on,” she said, checking the clock on the stove. “We still have time to make it.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, confused why this conversation needed a field trip.
“To the truth.”
DRE
“So that’s how this all works?” Preppy asked, pointing to the man at the podium. “You just get up there and tell a shit load of strangers about all your fuck ups?”
My lips curved up into a smile at Preppy’s choice of wording. “Pretty much, it’s supposed to unburden the soul and remind you that you’re not alone. You should try it sometime. It’s very freeing.” I scrunched my nose in thought. “Well, not right away, but eventually it feels very freeing,” I amended. “Sometimes.”
“Yeah, I get all that, but who the fuck has that much time?” I swatted him with the pamphlet they’d given me on the way in which is what I assume they give out at most of the NA meetings. A schedule of meetings and a list of people you can call if you feel like using again.
“Why are you all the way back here?” Preppy asked in a loud whisper, scooting closer to me in the pew. “Isn’t the meeting in the front where all those other people are?”
“I just…don’t feel like I need to be up there right now,” I explained, although not really explaining anything at all.
“I don’t get it,” Preppy said, forgetting to whisper. Several heads turned around to see where the commotion was coming from and I flashed them an apologetic smile although I really wasn’t sorry. Preppy wasn’t a conformist. Being quiet, especially in a setting like a church was a huge undertaking for him. I was actually kind of impressed he wasn’t doing cartwheels up and down the isles. “I don’t always sit in the back. It just depends on…on how I’m doing.”
“I still don’t get it, Doc. Use small words if you have to, but explain it to me.”
“Okay, so like right now I’m sitting in the back pew by the door, just listening. It’s like being back here makes me feel like I’m straddling this invisible line separating the meeting going on up there and the outside world, which is how I feel most of the time. Like I don’t quite belong up there, but I know I need to be here in some way.”
“What about on other days?” Preppy asked, seeming genuinely interested in what I was about to say.
“There are some days that are a little harder,” I admitted. “Days when I’m up there with the others, participating, telling my story, because I feel like the outside world doesn’t get it and I need to be up there with people who do.”
“How long has it been since you’ve been up there?” Preppy asked, just as Steve, the meeting leader, called out my name.
“Andrea, are you ready?” Steve asked, gesturing to the empty podium with a smile.
I nodded to Steve and stood. “I’ll be up there in about three seconds.” My heart hammered in my chest as I shuffled sideways out of the pew. “I’ll understand if you want to leave before I’m done,” I added, looking him over one last time.
He wanted the truth and I was about to give it to him in a big way.
The BIGGEST way.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he reassured me, although there was no way he knew what exactly he was agreeing to. I made my way to the front of the church where the small wooden podium was positioned directly in front of the pews in the center of the aisle. I looked over the crowd of a dozen or so other men and women, a few teenagers in the crowd and I took a deep breath.
Preppy flashed me one last reassuring smile from the back pew and I hoped it wouldn’t be the last.
“My name is Andrea,” I started, my voice shaky. “But everyone calls me Dre. I’m an addict. Heroin was my weapon of choice if you’re interested in knowing.” I look
ed over the crowd. “And I’ve been sober for a few years now.”
My introduction was met with several “Hi’ Dre’s” from the crowd and a few claps of encouragement. “You know, I’ve been to a thousand of these meetings. I’ve introduced myself to hundreds of others just this same way.” I shook my head and cleared my throat. “For some stupid reason I keep expecting this to get easier.” The crowd laughed. “But telling my story never does.”
Steve chimed in from the front row, “It may never get easier, but it’s a good reminder of why you are here and why you can never go back.”
There were more words of encouragement murmured from the small crowd, but it wasn’t their reaction that had me holding onto the edges of the podium for support. I cast one last glance to Preppy in the back row. He was partially hidden in the shadows so I couldn’t make out his expression and in that moment I was grateful for it.
I continued. “I’ve been sober now for several years. I’ve lost people. I guess that’s how this all started. I lost my step-sister and I blamed myself. Her boyfriend blamed me too, and we fell into our addictions together. He became violent. He…he hurt me. He RAPED me. I told myself I deserved it. In the end, I lost him too.” I took a deep breath and looked down at the podium.
“I almost killed myself one night. I almost jumped off of the water tower right here in Logan’s Beach. But I was saved by someone. I wouldn’t call him a guardian angel exactly. More like a devil with good timing.
“After a bunch of other stuff that I won’t bore you with, I sobered up and my dad took me back and I checked into rehab.
“One night, not long after I’d gotten there, I realized how fucking tired I was. Not like sleep tired, but tired of hurting. Because just when I thought my heart couldn’t break anymore it kept shattering over and over again and after a while, just when I thought I was going to be okay...I couldn't take it anymore.
“And as an addict, I only knew of one way I could make it all go away.
“I don’t even remember how I managed to escape the rehab facility, or what door or window I snuck out of. All I know is that night, less than an hour after thinking about using again, I was sitting on the dirty floor of some dealers drug den holding a lighter in one hand and a spoon in the other.”
I paused. My chest tightened. I fought back the tears that threatened every single time I was about to start on the next part. The most important part. The tears won and by the time I started speaking they were falling in warm streams down my cheeks.
“That night everything changed in a flash of a second. Before I could tie off my arm, my gut twisted. I thought it could’ve been the guilt of what I was about to do. And I think it could have been a part of it, but when it passed I tied off my arm and just as I lifted the needle to prick my skin a pain tore through my stomach and I blacked out.
“I woke up in the hospital thinking that I’d overdosed. My dad was there and he told me I didn’t have any drugs in my system. He had tears in his eyes and when I asked him what was wrong,” my voice cracked. “He told me he wanted to be the one to tell me himself that I…” I took a deep breath to compose myself. “Sorry. He wanted to be the one to tell me the news that I’d lost a baby. My baby,” I said, a sob escaping my lips. “A baby I didn’t even know I was carrying for fifteen weeks. A little girl.
“I loved her the second he told me about her and I grieved her as hard as any mother can grieve for the loss of a child. When the guilt came again, the overwhelming maddening guilt, it crashed into me a thousand times worse than it ever had before and I realized that she was never fated to make it in this life.
“If it weren’t for those pains I would have used and I know in my heart that she wouldn’t have made it if I had. Or possibly me as well. That sweet unborn baby, who never stood a chance at taking her first breath, stopped me from making the biggest mistake of my life.
“She saved my life.
“After I got out of the hospital I checked back into rehab and I never touched a needle again. And every time I feel myself sliding down into the abyss I find comfort in thinking about her. In a way I like to think that talking about her gives her a new kind of life, because although it was short, it had so much meaning. SHE had meaning.
“I was slipping. I wasn’t strong enough to save myself, but it turns out that she was strong enough for the both of us. So now it’s my job to be strong for her.” I scanned the crowd and my eyes fell on the motionless shadow in the back row. “And I have no intentions of ever letting her down.”
I left right after I was done telling my story, not waiting for Steve to dismiss the group or for the parting prayer. I walked down the aisle to find the last row empty. Pain welled in my chest as I told myself that it was expected. There would be no reason for him to stick around after what I’d just said. I knew he’d be angry, I knew he’d hate me for what I’d done and he had every right to. But he had a right to know and although I was crushed he wasn’t there, a big part of me was glad he finally knew about his daughter.
I pushed open the double doors that lead to the front room of the church from the chapel and was about to exit through the front when a voice stopped me. “She was mine?”
I turned to find Preppy standing against the wall in the corner, his expression unreadable. “I thought you left.”
“She was mine?” he repeated.
I nodded.
“Fuck you,” he spat. “Why didn’t you come tell me? Why…” he stopped, pushed off the wall and came to stand in front of me. His eyes rimmed in red as they searched mine for answers.
“After how we left things I didn’t think you’d really care and even if you did care what would’ve been the point? It was too late, there wasn’t anything that you could have changed.”
“I would’ve cared,” he argued. “And I could’ve been there for you.”
“I wouldn’t have known that,” I responded, biting my bottom lip and I could tell from the shift in his expression that he understood.
“You…” he started, his eyebrows furrowed. He glanced down to my stomach in confusion and reached out, placing his flattened palm over the fabric of my dress then bunching the fabric in his hands. I felt the warmth of his hand through the material of my dress as if he were touching bare skin. “You were carrying my baby,” his voice almost a whisper.
Although it wasn’t a question, I nodded, sniffling and shuffling my feet as he continued to stare at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.
“You had to go through that all alone,” he said. “My baby…”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, filling the awkward silence. “My body was still recovering and too weak to carry her and I’m so…”
“Stop,” Preppy said, holding up a hand.
“But…”
“Stop!” he said. “God damnit, Doc! You should have told me. I would’ve been there for you. I would have come running if I knew you’d just lost our baby. You shouldn’t have been alone for that.”
“I’m just so so…”
My apology was cut short when Preppy descended on me, crushing his lips against mine. I squealed as a surprising bolt of confusion and desire pulsed through my entire body as his kiss grew deeper and more desperate. He lifted me off my feet and swung me around, pushing my back against the wall next to a door marked OFFICE. I opened my mouth to him and when our tongues tangled together he groaned and used his knee to spread my legs further apart. My dress rode up my thighs, one less layer between us as his hands met my bare ass.
A thin strip of wet cotton was all that was left to cover me.
Preppy rocked against me, groaning. I gasped into his mouth when I felt his hard cock, huge and ready, against my core. “I thought…” I started, searching his face. The chords in his neck were tight. His face was flushed.
Preppy chuckled and spoke against my lips. “I thought so too, Doc. I guess my cock was just waiting for the right place and time.”
“A church during an NA meeting?” I asked
with a smile, panting as my body responded to his every touch. He rocked against me again, harder this time. My insides clenched, needing him to fill me, wanting him deep inside of me.
“If my cock wants to fuck you in a church then who the fuck am I to argue?” Preppy asked before pressing his lips back to mine and continuing the agony of the most passion filled kiss I’d ever experienced in my life. “I’ll take it as a sign from God that I should fuck you right here and now.”
“What?” I asked breathlessly, as Preppy dipped one hand between us pushing my panties aside. The second his fingers connected with my delicate flesh I bucked off the wall and Preppy grabbed me tighter by the waist, pulling me in closer, locking me to him.
“Shhhh, gonna fuck you, Doc. Gonna make you come so hard you’re gonna drip down my fucking cock,” he said, his voice low and raw as he circled my aching clit and I writhed for more.
“Is that what’s happening? We’re fucking?” I asked. “Because there is a room full of people in there that will be coming out of those doors in about ten minutes or so.”
He stared deep into my eyes. “Doc, I’ve waited way too long for this. I don’t care that it’s in a church. I don’t care if we have an audience gathered around us. I don’t care if the cops show up and try to drag us away because I won’t let them. All I care about is this and us. Right now. Right fucking now,” he groaned inserting a finger inside me. “Holy fucking shit, Doc. You’re tighter than I remember. Holy fucking shit.” Preppy looked around and then back to me. “Here,” he said, reaching for the door handle to a door marked ‘office’. He carried me inside the small room. “But only because I know once I get inside that tight fucking pussy that I won’t want to come out for a while.”
My insides screamed for his words to be reality and I was embarrassingly wet, dripping down my inner thighs.
Preppy, The Life & Death of Samuel Clearwater: A King Series Trilogy Page 35