Lola Carlyle's 12-Step Romance

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  I pull away just as we round the corner back to North America.

  “You are so hot,” he says into my ear, still sitting as close to me as he possibly can.

  “You are too, Wade. Undeniably. But, um…this might not be a great idea right now. I mean, we really shouldn’t be—”

  The conversation is cut off because the ride ends and we immediately rejoin the rest of the group. I don’t get the sense that Wade understood, or even heard what I said, because he doesn’t back off at all. Instead he stays right next to me, or behind me, constantly finding what he thinks are subtle ways to touch me—on my arm, my leg, the small of my back. I try moving away, but every time, he follows. I can’t even look at Adam, and it seems that in order to shake Wade I’m going to have to tell him more forcefully, more directly, which needs to happen in a private conversation—I don’t want to humiliate the guy, much less risk anyone, especially Adam, finding out I just let him kiss me.

  More rides. More Wade. I’m not having a good time anymore.

  “Wade, don’t,” I whisper/hiss at him as we’re getting belted into a roller coaster and he’s putting a hand on my thigh and squeezing. “We signed papers saying we wouldn’t fraternize, and I don’t want either of us to get in trouble.”

  Wade laughs. It’s almost a nasty laugh. And then he says, “You think Koch is going to care if we get involved? He won’t. He’s a yes-man. World is full of ’em. He’ll probably be delighted by two famous people getting together at his rehab center…as long as we promise him an invite to our wedding.”

  “Wedding?” I push his hand away.

  “I’m just illustrating a point—no ring yet, Carlyle.” He puts his hand back.

  “I’m not really famous. But even if that’s the case about Dr. Koch, I think we should…at least wait until we’re both out of the program to—”

  “I didn’t think you were such a worrier. Come on,” he says, and slides his hand farther up my thigh as we go on a huge ramp to a terrifying height, from which the roller coaster is about to drop us. The rest of that conversation is lost in screaming and yelling, and Wade removes his hand to hang on to the seat bar instead.

  Finally, we all get coffees and then find a grassy hill to sit on. I wait to see where Wade is sitting and then sit with Talia instead. Then I meet Adam’s eyes and wish I hadn’t. He’s, well, his expression is a lot of things, but pleasant isn’t one of them. Wade gets up from his spot and comes to sit as close as he can get to me, and Adam turns away.

  I can’t get rid of him and I can’t explain to Adam that I am, in fact, trying to get rid of him. I want to scream.

  Meanwhile Dr. Koch, who has been texting constantly and isn’t the most engaged of chaperones, wanders off to take a phone call.

  That leaves Adam with ten of us. Then one of the guys urgently has to go to the bathroom, which is a problem because no one is allowed to go unchaperoned, even to the bathroom, lest they run off and try to score some drugs or whatever. (As if.)

  “Adam, dude, I’m going to shit my pants!”

  Adam looks from him to us, then makes a decision.

  “Can I trust you guys?”

  We all nod.

  “Dr. Koch is around the corner and I’ll be right back. All of you stay right here.”

  We all nod. They go. Everyone is chill, lying on the grass and chatting, drinking their lattes, looking at the sky or whatever.

  Wade nudges me, points up the hill a bit, where no one else is sitting.

  I shake my head.

  He gets up and goes anyway. Talia kicks me and hisses, “Go—when will you have a better chance?”

  I’m about to enlighten her on the real situation when I realize it is a good chance—a good chance to tell Wade I’m not into it. I’ll tell him gently but firmly, and we can go back to being friends and he’ll hopefully stop trying to feel me up at every opportunity.

  I join him on the hill.

  “Listen,” I say as I’m sitting down, “I want to talk to you—”

  “I know,” he says, and now he’s all boyish and excited. “We’ve found each other after all this time, and I’m crazy about you and I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I know—maybe we should talk in private,” he says, then jerks his head to the rise of the hill. We could be over it and out of sight in about three seconds.

  “I don’t know…”

  “Just for a couple of minutes. No one will even notice.” He starts sliding backward up the hill, then does a very athletic back roll kind of thing, landing on his feet and managing to keep his Mickey hat on at the same time, then sprinting to the top of the hill and vanishing.

  “Shit,” I mutter, then follow him over the hill and down into a small copse of trees where he grabs me, pulls me close, and then backs me into a tree.

  “I’m all yours, baby,” he says. “The situation sucks and I know we haven’t spent a lot of time together, but you are the perfect girl for me, I can tell.”

  He lunges in to kiss me again, and I turn my head away.

  “Wade, wait.”

  “I know, I know, we’ll go back in a minute.”

  “No! I mean, yes, we should, but…I’m trying to say this nicely—I don’t want to do this.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to do this with you. It doesn’t…feel right.”

  “Like from a moralistic perspective? You get religion all of a sudden, or what? I seem to remember you kissing me the very first time I saw you here. You weren’t too worried about the rules then. Besides, I thought you liked me. I know you did.”

  “I do. I did. I still do, but not…I had a crush on you for a long time, Wade, and I always cared about you, but…I’m not sure this feels right, now that it’s happening.”

  “Too fast?”

  “Maybe…?”

  “We can go slower.”

  “No, I don’t think we should ‘go’ at all.”

  “Are you…not attracted to me?”

  “You’re completely attractive, Wade. I just don’t want to do it. It might have seemed like a good idea to me at one point, but it doesn’t anymore.”

  “Okay,” he says, raising his hands, palms forward, and backing away. “You know you’re missing out, right? I might not be so willing when you change your mind…”

  “I’ll take the risk.”

  “Because it’s not like I can’t get a girl. I can get almost any girl,” he says, and in that moment I see how little there is left of the Wade I used to know.

  “Well, then you should be fine,” I say.

  Though I’m really not sure he will be.

  “Right. See ya then, Carlyle,” he says…and takes off.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  For a few moments, I’m frozen with indecision—Wade is an addict, he’s upset, he can’t be allowed to run off by himself. But I might not catch him anyway—I should go back, get Adam, even Dr. Koch.

  With one last look at Wade’s retreating form, I run back over the hill to the group.

  But there’s no group there. They’re all gone.

  “Holy shit.” I look around, can’t see any of them, look back toward the hill. There’s no rendezvous plan, and no one has cells except Adam and Dr. Koch. Did they all take off, too, or are they somewhere looking for us? If so, I’m in super deep trouble.

  I am in super deep trouble no matter what.

  Maybe I can at least catch up with Wade…

  And so I take off at a run, back up the hill and through the copse of trees and out onto the roadway…where he’s waiting for me, a smug smile on his face.

  “Change your mind?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t be able to let me go.”

  “No, that’s not why I’m here. We have to go back.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” he says.

  “Listen! I went back and everyone was gone.”

  He frowns. “That’s weird.”

&n
bsp; “Well, either they’re looking for us, or they also took off, or somehow they decided to leave and no one noticed we were missing.”

  “So,” he says, “that means we’re free. Let’s go.”

  “No, we should go back to the hill and wait for them to come back.”

  “Oh, fine,” he says with a heavy sigh. “You’re kind of a wet blanket, you know that?”

  We go back.

  Thirty minutes—thirty uncomfortable minutes at that, since we just got together and broke up all in one day—and no one from our group appears.

  I am starting to feel panicked.

  Wade wants to go on some more rides—ideally the big ones again. He does, then he doesn’t. I’m noticing, the more time I spend with him, how his personality kind of flips around—one minute he’s sweet and funny and normal and reasonable, the next he’s slightly aggressive, devil-may-care, unreasonable. It’s like he has a Jekyll-and-Hyde battle going on inside him, and I never noticed it before because I was never with him for a whole day.

  “Fine,” he says, “you’re right—it might look bad if we went on rides. But we should at least walk around and see if we can find anyone, or go to an information booth.”

  “Actually, an information booth is a good plan.”

  Of course, there are still fans recognizing Wade, and we are waylaid multiple times for autographs and photos. Eventually we duck into a store where he buys himself a Mad Hatter costume, complete with hat.

  “Now everyone’s just going to think you’re Johnny Depp,” I say, although this ensemble does disguise him much better. He laughs, acting more like his normal self, and hands me his Mickey Mouse hat and we slip out a different entrance and into the crowd.

  A few minutes later, we find ourselves face-to-face with Talia and Jade.

  Talia and Jade without the rest of the group and with two random guys in tow.

  “Heyyyyy!” Talia says. “Check it out—this is Ricky and Sam and they are awesome. Ricky, Sam, our friends Lola and Wade.”

  The guys, older, overly buff, and tanned the old-fashioned way, shift from side to side and give us both the thumbs-up.

  “Thank God we found you!” I say, looking from Talia to Jade and back. “Where’s the rest of the group?”

  Jade, although she does talk these days, just shrugs.

  “Are you kidding?” Talia says. “You think you two get to be the only ones to have any fun today? Screw that, we took off. Ditched the rest of them before Adam came back. And guess what, we went crazy and flashed our boobs on Splash Mountain. Did you know its nickname is Flash Mountain? It’s right there in the photos they take—Jade, we have to go buy the photo! Two copies because our boobs look so good. And that’s how we met these sweetie pies.”

  “But Talia…where’s Adam? Where’s everyone else?”

  “Don’t worry, we left a note.”

  “A note?”

  “Yeah. On a napkin under a rock on the hill,” Talia says, and then she grabs on to one of the guys (maybe Sam?) and starts swaying against him and humming. He grabs hold of her ass with two hands, squeezes hard, and she gives a flirtatious squeal.

  “Uh-oh,” Wade says under his breath.

  “Oh my God,” I say and start trying to pull Talia away from him.

  “No, no, no! You are not going to ruin my day,” she says, and then before I have a chance to do anything else, she grabs him and runs off.

  I move to follow but suddenly the other guy is in my path. “Yo, get lost,” he says.

  “Uh, Sam?” I say.

  “Ricky.”

  “Right. Sorry, Ricky, but you don’t understand. My friend is very…fragile and she cannot be running around Disneyland with your ass-grabbing buddy.”

  “She doesn’t look fragile to me,” he says with a definite leer. “She looks like she can handle herself just fine.”

  I close my eyes. “Oh my God.”

  “Look, man, get out of the way,” Wade says.

  “Or what?”

  “Or nothing. Just get out of the way.”

  I glance over at Jade, who has sat down at the edge of a shallow pond and looks far too relaxed for the situation.

  “Jade?” I say. “You okay?”

  “All good,” she says. “Just leave her be.”

  I march over, lift her sunglasses up, and stare into her eyes.

  “Crap, Wade,” I say, turning to him, “I think she’s high.”

  Ricky starts laughing and ambles over to us, all the while making scaredy-cat squeals and going, “Oohh nooo, she’s high! Oh, oh, it’s the big bad wolf,” in a mocking falsetto voice.

  “You think it’s funny, huh?” I say.

  In response he makes a particularly obscene gesture at me and then reaches for Jade.

  And that’s when I kind of lose my temper…and use both hands to shove him from behind and into the fountain. He flies over the side, landing headfirst in the shallow water.

  “Holy shit,” Wade shouts, and beside me, Jade giggles.

  Nearby, some kind of alarm goes off. Ricky surfaces, swearing and with blood on his forehead, and from a distance I see security guards starting to run in our direction.

  “Time to go,” Wade says, pulling Jade to her feet.

  “I agree.”

  And with that, we start running in the direction Talia went.

  The next two hours are a nightmare.

  Wade and I chase after Talia, who’s stoned enough that she’s not doing the greatest job hiding but still managing to disappear every time we start to get close. Meanwhile we’re still dodging security and dragging an unwilling and very slow Jade along with us.

  I can’t imagine what is happening with the rest of the group—where they are, what they think has happened to us. And it keeps running in my mind, how I told Adam I wouldn’t cause any trouble. Of course I didn’t mean this, because how would I have even imagined it? But he is not going to be impressed. Not to mention, he is probably in a panic and making terrible assumptions about the kind of person I am.

  By 5:00 p.m. we are sweaty, thirsty, hungry, sore, and completely stressed out. We’ve lost Talia again somewhere on Tom Sawyer Island and decide to pause and regroup. Wade and I slump on a bench and Jade sits down on the grass a few feet away, looking like she’d rather not be seen with us.

  Suddenly two security guards jog in front of us, talking into walkie-talkies and looking toward the woods. They continue around and out of sight, and then we hear a distinctly Talia-like hoot coming from the same woods.

  “That’s her,” I say, standing up, all exhaustion forgotten.

  Wade is on his feet and running already. I dash over to Jade and pull her up.

  “Come on! I think we found her.”

  “Yeah, well you can all jusfuckofffff…”

  “No, Jade, it’s Talia. Come on.”

  I tug at her arm and she comes, but not easily. Nevertheless, we’re soon on the path after Wade.

  “Know about you,” Jade mutters.

  “What?”

  “Knowallaboutyou…fucking fake,” she slurs. “Fuckingrichbitchfake.”

  “I thought we were over this.”

  “Fuckingruinmydaybitch.”

  “Focus, Jade. You can call me names later.” I hear shouting erupt ahead and pick up the pace—as much as I can with Jade the deadweight along for the ride.

  “She said…youwerecoming,” Jade continues, still slurring but words clear.

  I stop cold. Turn to Jade.

  “What?”

  She squints at me and then laughs.

  “What did you say? Who said I was coming?”

  “You know, your”—she puts her fingers up in air quotes and says—“friend.”

  “My friend?” Please no.

  “Ssssydnnneyyyy. Hahahahahaaaaaaaa . Sydneyyourshittyfriend…s’true you can’trustanyone.”

  I’m standing there, jaw hanging open and watching Jade sway in front of me, and I feel like someone has stuck his hands into my insides
and pulled them out.

  And then we hear a screech and I remember why we’re here.

  “Shit—Talia! Come on, Jade.”

  “No,” she says, and plops down on the ground. “I’ll wait…here. I’mgoodhere.”

  “Fine. I think I’ve looked after you enough for one day,” I say, and, though the events of the day should make me know better, I leave her there.

  I arrive in time to find Wade, who has lost his disguise hat, rolling in the dirt with Sam and Ricky. He’s outnumbered but they’re wrecked, which means nobody’s winning the fight.

  Talia huddles nearby, shaking and—surprise, surprise—naked.

  I’m trying to decide whether to go to Talia or enter the fray when one of the security guards bursts into the clearing, bellows, and jumps into the fight.

  I run to Talia, casting about for her clothes, and another security guard comes running through the trees followed by Adam (I have never been so happy to see him) who is, in turn, followed by some guy with a camera. The fighting intensifies and then abruptly stops. The security guys have Ricky, Sam, and Wade pinned in the dirt and Adam is helping Wade to his feet.

  With Wade standing, Adam’s eyes land on me, and he rushes over.

  “Jesus, Lola,” he says, and for a second it looks like he’s going to hug me. The relief in his eyes is intense, but it’s soon replaced by fury. “You’re okay?” he asks with a clenched jaw.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Not now.”

  “Right.”

  The guy with the camera is taking zillions of pictures and suddenly I realize he’s the same head-to-toe khaki guy from this morning, which means he must be a paparazzo and he might have been on us all day. Crap. He’s all over Ricky, Sam, and Wade, but it’ll only be a matter of time before he spots the naked girl, and I haven’t been able to find any of her clothes.

  If I had a T-shirt I’d gladly whip it off to cover her, but all I’ve got is my slip dress, which would leave me almost naked. Instead I opt for basically sitting behind her and wrapping my arms and legs strategically, trying to cover her, warm her up, and hide both our faces at the same time.

  “Get that guy out of here,” I scream at the security guards. “Get his camera and then get him the hell out.”