I lied to protect Bodhi and myself.
I’m the liar in this relationship, but I accused Bodhi of lying when in my heart I know he’s telling the truth. Why did I let him get away?
“I have to go after him, Dad.”
“No, Kim. It’s clear that he rushed into a relationship and isn’t man enough to handle it. It’s common with addicts. They need a person to hold their hand, even away from rehab.”
“No, that’s not it at all. I lost faith in him too quickly.”
My dad shepherds me into my apartment and sits me on the couch, then ducks into the bathroom and returns with a cold compress.
“Thanks. I’m sure I look crazy.”
“You’re always beautiful to me.”
I nod, remembering the words Bodhi said to me. He was always complimenting me, making sure I was comfortable, and he never let me feel like I didn’t belong with him and his friends.
And when he needed me the most, when he needed me to believe him, I gave up because it was easier to block him out and forget about everything we’ve shared over the past two months than to let him tell me his side of the story. Maybe I thought that was the safer route—take the hurt all up front rather than draw out a painful breakup. But the joke’s on me. I never should have doubted him in the first place.
As soon as my dad leaves, I dial Daphne’s number.
“He came to see you, didn’t he?”
“How do you know?”
“Just a hunch. Some blog posted about seeing him getting gas at a station in San Diego.”
“Yeah, he was here. I think I screwed up, D.”
“Tell me,” she says. I can hear her moving around her apartment, and I wonder if I caught her at a bad time. Even if I did, she’d never tell me.
“He said he was drugged.”
“Hmm. Seems to be a classic line from someone who’s addicted, right? ‘It’s not what it looks like’ and all that shit?”
“That’s what I thought, but now I don’t know. It doesn’t add up. The way he was treating me, how we were together—why would he suddenly get high while I was in the bathroom?”
“Because he’s an addict?”
Daphne’s words are no different from my father’s. But what good am I to someone I’m helping get clean if I think of them as only an addict once they leave here?
“I need to go talk to him, D. Even if it’s just to talk. He has to know that I believe him, and I do now. I do believe he didn’t get high by choice.”
“So what are you waiting for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for you to tell me I’m stupid. Or maybe that I need to follow my heart and go after the man I love, whether he relapsed or not.”
“Kimmy, I’m not going to tell you either of those things. Look at me. I haven’t had a single serious relationship in my life, so I’m the last one you should ask for advice. It seems to me that if you love him, that love should conquer all. I’d understand if you’d been down this path with him before and he kept using, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think you were confused and hurt by what you saw and you reacted like any normal human would. You were in a crowded club, emotions were high, and you did the right thing given what you saw.
“Now you have to ask yourself if he’s worth it. If you’re not sure, you need to let him go so you can both heal. But if he is, Kimmy, and you want to be with him, then go grovel and tell him how sorry you are for not trusting him. Only you can make the decision. This isn’t like asking me whether or not you should get vanilla or chocolate, because you know I’ll always choose chocolate. This is your life. Follow your heart and see where it leads.”
I laugh at her reference to ice cream—somehow I knew her favorite food group would make an appearance in any conversation about my love life—but I let her words sink in.
“I gotta go, Daphne.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“Back to Beverly Hills.”
“Are you sure about this, Kimmy?”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “I am. I love him, Daph.”
“Call me when you get there so I know you made it.”
“I will. Bye.”
I move quickly throughout my apartment, gathering my stuff. When I came home I just threw everything down and fell onto my bed and cried.
I know my dad wouldn’t want me to go. But my heart is telling me otherwise. Deep down I believe Bodhi, even despite the lingering thought that he put himself in her path and could’ve moved away from her. I guess he could’ve been trying to be nice, but I’m not sure I buy that. I don’t want him to be nice to her, because I fear that she could be a wedge between us.
Do I give him an ultimatum? Do I tell them that if wants to be with me, she has to be out of his life? That’s fair, right?
Rushing to my car, I toss my bag into the backseat and pull out before my dad can catch on to what I’m doing. No sooner am I down the driveway than my phone rings. It’s my dad, and I let it go to voicemail. I need to do what’s right for me, and that is Bodhi. Dad will never understand until he can see us together.
As soon as I hit the interstate, traffic comes to a standstill. I bang my head against my steering wheel and yell in frustration.
Chapter 26
Bodhi
The drive home from Serenity Springs was a blur. I can’t get it out of my head that Kim thought I would cheat on her or go back to drugs. I never would have thought that about her. But I guess I’m not a very good judge of character when it comes to women. The evidence: my association with Aspen.
Before I know it, I’m pulling into the garage. As if on autopilot, I hang up my helmet and make my way back into the house. My parents call out to me, but I tell them I’m going to bed. I’m sure they’re worried that I’ve relapsed, and honestly, I don’t blame them. I’m nothing but a fuckup, anyway.
As soon as I open my bedroom door, the smell of Kim’s perfume hits me like a ton of bricks. I miss her, and I had her here for only a few short days. I step inside the room, shutting the door behind me, and picture her everywhere. The chair holding her dress mocks me, reminding me what Kimberly and I shared in the back of the car. Even my closet feels empty without her stuff hanging next to mine.
I’m alone. I’m alone when I thought I was going to have someone to share my life with. Even with the distance between San Diego and Beverly Hills, I knew I’d hear her voice on the phone or we’d video chat. But now I have nothing and it hurts. My chest feels tight and my eyes sting as I try to fight back the tears. Why do I feel this way after only weeks of knowing her? I shouldn’t. I should be able to shrug her off like she didn’t matter.
Except I can’t, because I need her like I need air to breathe and water to live.
And she’s gone.
It’s with that realization that I finally understand why Dr. Rosenberg said that new relationships are frowned upon for people who’ve recently been through rehab. The threat of relapse is there. Except I have too much going for me to go out and snort some nose candy. Rebel wouldn’t give me a second chance, no matter what, and I need the group. I need Kimberly more, but she doesn’t want me.
I lie back on the bed and let the tears flow. Whoever said guys don’t cry are full of shit. It feels good to let everything out. I never used to understand when people say it’s good to cry sometimes, but I do now. I have so many suppressed emotions that they all start flowing once I open the gates: Kimberly, my parents, Virtuous Paradox. The memories aren’t all bad—some are good—but nonetheless the tears flow like they never have before.
I look at the bedside clock and make the decision that tomorrow is going to be a sick day for me. I need some time to get my head straight before I face Rebel. The last thing I need is for her to assume I’m using again if I show up with bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep. I don’t need to give her an excuse to kick me out of VeeP. It’s the only thing that I have left.
I pull out my phone. The screen comes alive, only to show me a picture that I took o
f Kimberly and me last night. Man, she looked like a fucking movie star in that formfitting strapless dress. She belonged on the red carpet, putting all the other women to shame.
She’s the first woman I ever really made love to, as opposed to just screwing, but it all seems to have been for naught. She doesn’t love me like I love her. It was so easy for her to dismiss the truth without listening to me explain.
Images of her beneath me with her head thrown back, her neck elongated and begging for me to bite it, replay in my mind. Every memory I have from every encounter is going to be distant before too long. Next week I won’t be able to recall the smell of her perfume, or the way her leg wrapped around my hip before she was about to come. Two months with her wasn’t enough to last me a lifetime.
I compose a quick text to Rebel and the guys, letting them know that I’m not feeling well. Before I can turn my phone off, Rebel replies, asking if I need anything. I’m certain she’s asking because I’m fresh out of rehab and the worry that I’m using again is at the forefront of her mind. When it comes down to it, she has to protect the group, not me. I tell her that I’m okay and just need tomorrow off. I know it puts us behind, but I can make it up. Besides, working seven days a week isn’t going to cut it in the long run, and she knows it.
I close my eyes as the tears fall again. They run down the sides of my face, wetting my ears and leaving puddles on my comforter. I feel like such a girl, lying here and crying because someone doesn’t want to be with me. I don’t know what hurts more, the fact that she rejected me after she told me she loved me or the fact that she doesn’t believe me. When I think of either, my chest aches and it’s hard to breathe.
This is karma coming back in the worst way. I was a douche growing up and while I was doing coke, and I hurt a lot of people. Now Kim’s shown me that I can hurt too. Feeling the way I do now makes me want to repent every misdeed I’ve done in the past. I have the urge to look up the chicks I dated and tell them how sorry I am that I was such a dick to them in high school and after. I should’ve known that someone like Kimberly was too good for me, even though most people would see it the other way around—according to Hollywood standards, I should have another A-lister on my arm, someone famous or the daughter of someone famous. Definitely not the daughter of a man who happens to run an exclusive rehab facility that caters to snobby rich kids like myself.
It occurs to me that that’s the classic fairy-tale romance that everyone is always looking for—minus the rehab part, of course. Celebrity falls in love with average girl, and they live happily ever after. Except we met at rehab, so that makes our story more like a Brothers Grimm version. Addict falls for his drug counselor, but in a twist of fate he’s drugged by his former dealer, and the one woman he wants to be with single-handedly destroys everything he thought was starting to go right in his life when she refuses to believe he’s telling the truth.
Maybe Kim saw the fairy tale turning into a nightmare and that’s why she left. I’d much prefer that she think she can’t fit into my Hollywood life than to believe I cheated on her or that I went back to snorting cocaine. And it’s funny, but this is why coke is the perfect numbing agent: it shuts off your thoughts. Your brain receptors shut down and you float through life on this high that you never want to come down from.
There are so many things I want to say to Kimberly. But the most important is that she didn’t need to love me in order to save me; she just needed to be my friend. Though it would have been hard if she didn’t feel the same love for me as I felt for her, I think in the long run I would’ve been perfectly fine with having her as someone I could trust, someone I could talk to when I needed to hear a voice of reason. But now I don’t even have that.
I don’t have her.
I don’t have anyone.
—
Someone is pounding on my bedroom door. I jolt awake and rub my eyes, swollen from crying. They open slowly, painfully. My mouth is dry and my lips chapped. Rain pelts the windows. The bedside clock flashes red numbers at me; there must have been a power outage at some point. I get up and press the switch for my bedside lamp. I search for my cellphone to see the time; when I find it, it’s dead.
“Shit,” I mutter as I make my way to my bedroom door. I twist the knob, only to find it won’t open. I must’ve locked it when I came home earlier. I unlock it and open it, and I’m shocked to see Kimberly standing there, her hair matted and makeup running down her face.
My hand rests on the doorknob, and my heart is beating loudly, drowning out the rainstorm outside. If I let her in, I’m letting my wounded heart bleed more. If I close the door in her face, I’ll always wonder why she came here in the middle of the night during a storm.
I’m torn. It would be easier to just walk away. I can heal, move on, and pretend that the past two months never meant anything to me. With the success of Virtuous Paradox, getting laid won’t be an issue. And I’m sure Rebel much prefers if I don’t have a girlfriend.
Except I love Kimberly and I want to be with her. And even if I can’t be with her that way, if she doesn’t love me, I need her in my life. I need the support she can offer me. Even if all we can be is friends, she’ll be there in the middle of the night when I’m feeling like I can’t do this anymore.
For that reason I step aside and let her in, closing the door behind her. In the end, I need her in my life in any capacity that I can have her.
“Hi,” she says after a long moment of silence between us. I wanted to be the first one to say something, but the lump in my throat has prevented me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my tone harsher than I intended it to be. She takes a step back, and for some reason I find it comical that she’s caught off guard by my tone.
She brushes the wet hair from her face, takes a deep breath. “I had to come here, to talk to you.”
“So talk.” I go over to stand by the window and watch as the rain splashes in the pool. When she doesn’t say anything, I glance at her.
She looks down for a second before bringing her eyes back up to mine and squaring her shoulders as if she’s preparing for battle. “I’m sorry about not believing you earlier. I foolishly looked you up on the Web one night and found numerous pictures of you and Aspen. I figured she was one of your triggers. So when I saw you guys together I…I didn’t know what to do. I’m in love with you, but I feel like I’m having to compete for your time. Our schedules are different. You stay up all night, whereas I’m usually in bed by ten. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to fit in with your lifestyle, and you’ll forget about me.”
When Kimberly pauses, I open my mouth to speak, but she holds her hand up and goes on. “I never had any difficulty working with other patients one-on-one, but from the moment I met you in the parking lot you made my insides quiver. I found it hard to breathe when you were near, and I was giddy every time I saw you. I should’ve asked that you be reassigned to someone else to help in your recovery, but I’m selfish. Falling for you while you were at Serenity Springs was ethically wrong, but I did it anyway.” She stops, her gaze fixed on me.
At last I ask, “Why’d you leave?”
Kimberly shakes her head and wipes away tears. “Because I thought you chose drugs and her over me, and I couldn’t bear to hear that from your mouth. When I asked at the club what was going on, the look you gave me was soulless. There was nothing but a void in your eyes, and I thought that I had lost you. I knew Aspen was my competition; I just didn’t expect to run into her so quickly.”
“She’s not your competition, Kimberly. She’s not even in your league.” I push away from the wall and sit down in a chair. Taking a deep breath, I tell Kim the story about Aspen. “Aspen was a friend for a long time—her mother is an actress, so we’ve run in the same circles for a long time—and when I needed a pick-me-up, she was there with the coke. Aspen was my dealer, for lack of a better word. I stupidly let her move in with me because that meant I could get high anytime I wanted. We were never lovers, although s
he tried many times and we did fool around.
“But I don’t love her. I never have. You’re the one I’m in love with.” I look straight into Kim’s eyes. “But if you can’t trust me, then this isn’t going to work.”
“I know,” she says, shaking her head.
My heart falls. I thought she’d come here to tell me she wants me back, but now I don’t think that’s it. I don’t want to accept that our relationship is over before it even really had a chance to grow, but that’s my reality right now.
Kimberly walks over to me and stands in front of me. I fight the urge to touch her, keeping my hands glued to my thighs. When she starts crying, though, it’s my undoing, and I pull her into my arms—against my better judgment, because touching her and not being able to be with her is going to be the death of me. Her hands grip my shirt and she cries into my shoulder. This makes me want to scream at Aspen again, but what’s the point? Aspen needs help and isn’t going to get it before it’s too late.
“I’m sorry, Bodhi.”
“I’m sorry too, Kimberly. I thought things would be different. That you’d trust me and believe in me. I can see what Dr. Rosenberg means by new relationships beginning just after rehab not being a good idea. They probably don’t start off very healthy.”
We sit there together for a moment in silence.
At last Kim says, “I was wrong to assume that I was enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough for you to stay clean, Bodhi.”
I look into her blue eyes. “But you are, Kimberly.” Tears form in my own eyes. “For you, I want to be a better person than the one you read about. Because of you, I have a different outlook on life and want to share it with you. In the thirty days we spent with each other at Serenity Springs, you changed me. You showed me what it’s like to live for me and not worry about what others think. You guided me through one of the worst periods of my life and never judged me. And then you gave me a chance to be someone that I’ve never been before. With you I found a relationship that made me want to wake up every day. You’re the reason I’m going to stay clean. You’re the reason I smile and want to be a better person. So yes, you are enough to keep me clean.”
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