by Claire Adams
“Yes, it hurt when I got it.” I laughed as I tried to talk with my tongue out.
“That’s not what I was thinking about.”
“What then?”
“Did you get it because some guy wanted you to have it while you gave him head?”
It was the first time anyone had asked me that specific question. Typically, people avoided the sexual reference to the tongue piercing and just concentrated on the pain it must have caused me. But Erik wasn’t just asking if I could give good head with the piercing – he asked if a man had made me do it.
“No, I don’t think a man made me do it. I think I just got it on my own in a drunken stupor. But I really don’t remember.”
“It seems very erotic.”
“I think we should stop this conversation right here,” I said as I moved away from him a little.
The desire I had for him to touch me rushed through my body totally uncontrolled. My chest heaved as I pulled in a deep breath and tried not to think about Erik or what his hands could do to my body.
“You’re trying to behave, aren’t you?” he asked mischievously.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said with a totally fake tone in my voice.
Obviously, I was trying to behave. Every time we were alone together, the sexual tension was huge. I wanted Erik to come home with me to my family’s house. I wanted him to get a break and have a real Christmas, but I didn’t want those things just because I found him incredibly attractive.
And, man oh man, did I find him attractive. My thoughts were stuck on him, especially since he had become nicer and friendlier in recent days. He seemed like a genuinely good guy now and that was even sexier than before. I certainly wasn’t into the whole bad boy thing, at all.
“You do what you need to do, boo.” He laughed and put his arms up on the back of the hot tub.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I understand if you have to pretend like you don’t like me. I get it. It’s cool.”
Now he was just becoming infuriating. I wasn’t pretending. Okay, maybe I was. But who was he to call me out on it? Erik was the issue here. Him and his romantic touching and seductive eyes. If he would just stay away from me with all of that, then there wouldn’t be any issues, at all.
“Oh, don’t you start with me.”
“I get it. You’re not into good-looking rich guys. It’s cool. Not all girls like the same things. I’m sure I’ll find a girl who’s into me sooner or later.”
He was hamming it up, and as much as I tried not to laugh, I felt myself slipping into a hidden giggle. Then, I started to play along, just for the fun of it. Our conversations flowed so casually that I almost felt like I could do or say anything I wanted. He was funny and easy to get along with and definitely someone I wanted to get to know more.
“Yeah, I’m not really into guys with money and looks. I prefer men who live at home and don’t necessarily have all of their teeth. I’m sorry, it’s just my thing.”
“Totally understand. You’re not really my cup of tea, either. If I’m being totally honest.”
“What? Shut up,” I said as I stood up.
“No, I’m serious. You’re freakishly beautiful. I could never date a woman like you. Man, I’d be freaked out all the time that people were looking at you and then wondering why you stooped so low to date a wretch like me. I couldn’t handle it.”
“You’re seriously crazy.” I laughed.
“Actually, I’m pretty sure they cleared me of being crazy.”
He was funny. I loved that. I had my own sarcastic wit that was sometimes hard for people to understand, so it felt good that he got it. I hated when I was being sarcastic and someone just looked at me with a blank stare like I had just said the most horrible thing ever. Sarcasm was definitely an acquired taste.
“I’m going to get dried off and finish up my charting here. You need to get dried off and pack. I’ll leave my address on a piece of paper in your room later.”
“This is so clandestine. I feel like you’d make a good CIA agent. Wait, maybe you already are an agent and this is all some ploy to get me over to your house so you can have your way with me.”
“Why would a CIA agent want you?” I laughed.
“Hey, they might. I’m really good with technology.”
“For now, I don’t want you. Let’s just have a good holiday. Okay?”
I really did want him. I knew he knew that. But I wasn’t ready to go for it. There were damn morals still in my way. Maybe it was perfectly okay to date a patient, or maybe it wasn’t. But I knew as a recovering alcoholic that having any sort of relationship with someone wasn’t recommended when you were first in recovery. All your time needed to be spent on yourself and that was it. I would be a hypocrite if I tried to get Erik to pay attention to me.
As we walked through the frigid air and back into the building, our little date night was over and we were flush with reality again. Guilt was the driving emotion as we walked back onto the unit. I saw how Kaitlin looked at me and I wanted to tell her what was going on, but certainly couldn’t do that after our night out on the town.
Kaitlin had tried to fix me up with a guy, and I had refused her. We went around and around over Erik, also. I told her it was because I wasn’t ready. I went on and on how my sobriety was a priority in my life and I wasn’t going to mess that up. I had made such a big scene of the issue that she would certainly have been pissed if I came out an admitted to actually liking him.
I gathered my things, finished my work, changed, and dropped off my address in Erik’s room as he ate out in the main area with the other patients. I had to get home and explain my made up story for why Erik would be coming over to the house for Christmas and why he’d need to spend the night.
Most of the people in my AA group were local, so surely they wouldn’t need to stay the night with me. I hadn’t exactly figured that part of the lie out yet. I hoped it would come to me as I went home.
I tried to seem nonchalant about what I was about to ask my parents. Lying to them had never been my thing. I actually hated to have to lie to them, but I knew if I told them the truth, my father would totally freak out. He didn’t like that I was an addict, and he would be very disappointed if I brought a boy home who was also an addict.
It was only because he loved me and wanted the best for me, I knew that. My mother wouldn’t be happy, either, but at least she would try to be happy if she knew it was important to me. My father, on the other hand, was stubborn and wouldn’t bend very easily to the idea.
“Mom, I’ve got a friend coming over from AA tonight. He didn’t have a place to go.”
“Where’s he from?”
The dreaded question that I knew was coming up. She was such a smart woman. There really was no getting things past her at all.
“He’s been living in New York and his cousin is vacationing here. He didn’t want to intrude in their small hotel room for the holiday.”
“And he’s your friend?”
Damn, my mother and her logic. Surely, I could have friends from other parts of the country, it was the twenty-first century. But I had to think of a reasonable expectation of how we could be friends.
“Yes, Mom. People meet online and know each other now. It’s weird, I know,” I said as I dramatically rolled my eyes. “He had posted in a forum I’m in and said he was going to be in town and needed the AA times. When he showed up a couple of days ago, we got to know each other.”
“Okay, honey, he can come over. He’ll have to sleep on the couch, though. Your father started painting the spare bedroom.”
“All right. Thanks, Mom.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as my mother bought into the story. If she liked Erik, then it would be all over. She wouldn’t ask another question about how we met and we would be in the clear. But if she didn’t like him, if my mother thought something strange was going on, then she would grill Erik throughout our meal until he eventuall
y caved in and admitted who he was. My relief would only last as long as dinner that evening.
Once my mom was well enough informed, I hustled to my room to take a shower and get ready before Erik arrived. I didn’t want to be wearing my scrubs and looking like a hot mess when he showed up at the house. I actually wanted to look pretty.
Working at the rehab center, I had never really cared what I looked like. I often kept my hair in a ponytail and didn’t do my makeup. The required scrubs kept me from worrying too much about what I wore and I liked it like that.
Actually, the fact that Erik was flirting with me at all was pretty remarkable considering I didn’t have any of the usual ways a woman impressed her man. No makeup, no cute clothes, and he was still flirting with me. I knew that should have given me a little more confidence, but it actually made me wonder more about him. Why was he flirting with me?
For a second, I let my mind think the worst. Maybe he was just flirting with me as a way of passing the time. He might not have any intention of actually getting to know me or anything like that when he was out of the facility. The thought sickened me.
He didn’t seem like that kind of guy. Erik certainly didn’t seem like a guy who would just want sex and then move on, especially now that he was sober. Maybe he had been like that in the past, but he wasn’t like that now.
The two of us had talked and gotten to know each other a little, but there were still a lot of things about Erik that I wanted to know more about. I wanted to know about his business and what it was and how he made money. It was clear to me that he hadn’t inherited his money like I had originally thought, but what else was there to the story?
The doorbell rang just as I was pulling on my dress. I had labored over which one to choose for nearly twenty minutes before finally sliding into a little, emerald green dress. My hair was pulled up and I had put on a touch of makeup to cover my dark circles from going dancing with Kaitlin the night before.
I slowly descended the stairs just as Erik was welcomed into our house by my mother and father. I hoped he hadn’t been standing there too long, alone with them. I hadn’t agonized over my outfit as much as I wanted to, but it had been a difficult decision to pick something that I wouldn’t feel totally useless in.
As his eyes looked up at me, I felt like I had made the right decision. He smiled and gazed at me like I was the last woman on earth. It made me feel amazing.
Chapter Fourteen
Erik
Every cliché about meeting a girl’s parents ran through my head as I got in the taxi to head to Cassidy’s house. I even imagined her father with a shotgun sitting on the front porch. So, when I arrived and there was no shotgun and Cassidy’s mother greeted me with a friendly smile, I was very much relieved.
“Hello, I’m Erik. Cassidy invited me over.”
“It’s nice to meet you. Bob!” she hollered into the other room. “Cassidy’s friend is here.”
“Does he look like an asshole?” the man asked loudly from the other room.
“Bob, he’s in the house. He can hear you.”
I had to laugh at the way the two of them interacted. Before that moment, I had never really thought about what it would be like to grow old with someone. I hadn’t had an example of that sort of relationship in my house, so it had been difficult to imagine.
Sure, I had seen cute old couples at the mall or out at restaurants, but I never imagined that I might have something like that one day. But Cassidy fired those feelings up inside of me. We were obviously just friends, but she was an all-around great girl who I could see getting to know more. Even if I didn’t end up with Cassidy, I did have the feeling I’d settle down someday, which hadn’t really crossed my mind much before I had gone to treatment.
“Hello, young man. Are you a drunk, too?” Cassidy’s father asked boldly.
“I’m not currently,” I said as I reached my hand out to shake his.
He seemed to value the honesty in my statement and shook my hand firmly before going to the stairs to holler up. But before he had the chance to yell up the stairs, Cassidy had started to descend from the top floor.
It took me a moment to fully realize it was her, though. Cassidy had curled her hair and put some makeup on. Although she clearly didn’t need to do such things because she was beautiful without them – that was the truth.
Cassidy also had on a short, green dress that could be best described as a “fuck me” dress, or so my friends and I use to call them. It was a short dress, with enough movement to slide it up over a girl’s hips while you bent them over and had your way with them. Many of the women who threw themselves at me liked to wear dresses like that.
Of course, Cassidy didn’t look like that was the thoughts she wanted to evoke. The dress she had on wasn’t a body-hugging dress; it was loose around her body and skimmed her curves. But I could only think about how easy it would be to get that damn dress off of her. I stared up at her and watched every inch of her body as she moved slowly down the stairs.
“Oh, you look nice, honey,” her mother said.
“Yes, very festive,” I added as I tried not to sound like a total pervert.
“Are we eating?” Cassidy’s father asked flatly.
“Not yet, Bob.”
“Mom, Dad, this is my friend Erik from AA,” Cassidy said as she started to introduce the group. “Erik, this is my mother Katherine and my father Bob.”
“It’s good to meet you,” I said.
Meeting parents had never really been my thing, especially fathers, not that I had met that many. But in high school, my girlfriend had brought me home to meet her parents and I fumbled the whole thing. I tried to tell jokes, which weren’t received well. Then I tried to sit quietly, but when her father asked me a question, I basically yelled at him. It was fair to say that fathers and I didn’t mix very well.
“Let’s go out back for a little bit and sit on the covered porch; it’s fun to watch the skiers wipe out.” Cassidy laughed.
To get away from the anxiety of worrying about everything I said to her parents, I would have done just about anything. I followed her out back to regroup for a little bit before dinner. It was exhausting meeting someone’s parents. I felt ready to take a nap and would have if I had been given a room to sleep in.
“Thanks, I felt like I was failing out there.”
“They aren’t an audience. You don’t have to worry if they like you or not. You’re only visiting for the night.”
“About that…” I started to say and then couldn’t keep my laugh in as Cassidy looked at me with a serious face.
“What did you do?” she replied.
Cassidy was really cute when she was angry. She wrinkled her nose up and had her hands on her hips like she was about to scold me. She wasn’t actually angry with me; I could tell that much. It was hard not to laugh at her as she tried to be stern with me and get me to answer the question about what I did.
“I sort of told them that I was going to be gone for two nights.”
“Two nights!” she exclaimed. “I only told my parents you’d be here for one night.”
“Sorry, I got flustered. You can just send me back when you’re done with me,” I teased her.
“It’s all right. We’ll figure it out. By the way, I told them you were in town visiting a cousin and you were from New York.”
“Why didn’t you just say I was from San Francisco?”
“I don’t know. I got flustered.” She laughed. “I’m not all that great at lying.
The funny thing was that Cassidy didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who could lie very well. Maybe she had done it well while she was drinking, but now I saw every emotion on her face. She couldn’t even hide the desire she felt for me, and I knew she was trying really hard to do that. Not that lying was a particularly good skill to have – I was much happier that she sucked at telling lies.
It had been a long time since I had actually felt an interest in a girl like I felt toward Cassidy. I w
asn’t even sure what it was that I was feeling. All I knew was that I wanted something more than to just sleep with her, and that was totally new territory for me. I wanted to have her in my life long after treatment was done and if that was going to happen, I really needed to behave myself.
Relationships didn’t last in my world, but I might be able to make a friendship last. Especially since Cassidy would know what I was going through after treatment. I really liked that she had been in treatment before and that she was clean and sober. It dawned on me that when I returned home, I wouldn’t know a single person who was openly clean and sober. Maybe there were people in my life who didn’t do drugs or drink, but I didn’t know who they were.
It was a sad realization that all of my friends and acquaintances were drinkers and drug takers. Even my friend Spencer enjoyed a few too many drinks sometimes. But the difference between Spencer and I was that he had never almost killed himself because of his alcohol use. I had rationalized that all my friends drank alcohol so it was okay if I did, but it had taken me this long at treatment to realize they weren’t me. My friends might all drink, but none of them had consequences like I had.
Jarrod had helped me also realize that I couldn’t control other people in my life. I couldn’t control how Cassidy viewed me. I couldn’t control how my family wanted to treat me. The only thing in life I could control was myself, and even that was going to take a lot of work to get it right.
“Thank you for inviting me. I really hope you won’t get in trouble for this.”
“I don’t think I will. Mr. March loves me. The worst that will happen will be that he tells me not to do it again. Anyways, I’m not planning on working there much longer. I applied to nursing schools.”
“Oh, God. You’re going to be a nurse?” I said as I tried to hide the wide grin that made its way across my face.
“Why does it sound like you’re already thinking of something dirty?”
“Because you in a tight, little white nurse’s dress sounds amazing.”
“Since when have you ever seen a real nurse in a tight, white dress?” She laughed at me. “The nurses at Paradise Peak wear baggy and comfortable scrubs.”