Lola Carlyle's 12-Step Romance

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  “Do you have any idea how fucking scared I was, Lola?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or how hurt?”

  “I’m not with Wade, Adam.”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  “No?”

  “No,” he says, not quite meeting my eyes. Then, “It’s way bigger than that, than him.”

  “Him” comes out with a particular violence of tone, but I decide not to press.

  “Fine, even if you don’t care about him, I’m going to tell you: I’m not with him. I don’t want to be with him. He somehow got the impression—okay, early on in the program I gave him the impression—that I liked him. I thought I did. And he came on like a tornado yesterday and I was…taken off guard and didn’t want to be mean and okay, maybe I was feeling a little hurt still, and rejected by you. Even though I now fully understand—fully—why I’m not supposed to be falling for my mentor, and vice versa. So I didn’t discourage him as much as I should have at first, and I didn’t get how…sort of crazy he can be, and not taking no for an answer, and not believing when someone says she’s not into him, which I finally had to just tell him, straight up.”

  Adam’s posture shifts, just slightly, and I can tell he’s at least listening.

  “It took more than once for it to get through, and he didn’t respond well, Adam.”

  “Is that why you took off with him?”

  “It doesn’t matter, I still did it. But…I was trying to be gentle with him because I finally got how fragile his ego is and how… Well, he’s an addict and he’s at a crossroads, right? I mean, I knew him as a kid, and he was a good kid. He was my friend. I didn’t want to mess him up.”

  “Part of growing up is realizing you can’t always have everything you want,” Adam says. “He has to learn it.”

  “And so do I,” I say, finding I need to look away…because I want Adam. Adam is really all I want right now, all I’m going to want for a long time. But the damage is too great, the trust is broken, and he was right that we shouldn’t have been getting involved. “Anyway, I am sorry. I’m about as sorry as I can be. That’s it.”

  He doesn’t say anything. I gather my courage and look back up at him. He’s less furious, but that’s about all I can read from his expression.

  “Are you… I guess you really are going to try to get reassigned now. From me.”

  A bark of laughter.

  “What?”

  “Reassigned? You think Koch is going to reassign me? You’re hilarious.”

  “I…I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, I think Dr. Koch has bigger plans for me than that.”

  “Wha—”

  “Put it this way, Lola: I’m not going to be asking for any favors. I did this for the experience, for the money, sure, because I need to pay tuition, but also for the ability to put it on my résumé and have a good reference. I’ll be lucky to get through the day with the job, much less the rest of it.”

  And with that, he heads back to the main building, lets me inside, and, feeling like a miserable, steaming pile of crap, I head upstairs to the dorm.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The community meeting starts two hours later, in the chapel.

  Inside, they’ve set up a zillion chairs in a kind of stacked semicircle and the place is packed with staff, patients, and visitors. The room is buzzing with worry, anger, supposition, and a thick tension.

  My eyes find Adam up front, facing forward in a chair like the rest of the staff. He’s showered and shaved and even put on chinos and a button-down shirt, not to mention his game face. It’s such a switch from his normal, casual uniform of jeans and T-shirt that I almost humiliate myself by gaping. He could be cast as a hot young lawyer (with a secret, gritty past he’s brooding about) on a legal drama, or as a cocky young surgeon on a hospital show. My mouth is dry and my increased heart rate is totally inappropriate for the situation, inappropriate for all the situations I’ll ever be in with him again, which is to say none. But still…

  He is delicious—painfully so.

  Wade is there, too, sitting in front with the other kids from yesterday. Like Adam and Talia and me, he’s obviously showered and put on clean clothes. Unlike all of us, he looks miraculously fresh, unworried, and clear of conscience. There are two empty chairs beside him, but I pull Talia toward the back row. Unfortunately Dr. Koch sees us and zooms up the center aisle.

  “Up front, ladies,” he says. “We need everyone to see you hearty and whole.”

  Talia gets there first and leaves the seat next to Wade open.

  I probably should have told her I’m off him, but there hasn’t exactly been a good time for conversations about boys lately.

  I sit down without looking at him. I will admit that once we were on Talia’s trail yesterday, he stepped up, stopped being a jerk. But I can’t help but remember the other side I saw, and I hate how he wants to go along with Koch now, and overall it’s hard to feel friendly toward him.

  “Carlyle,” he says in a low tone, keeping his face forward.

  “Yes?”

  “I meant to say, I’m sorry about yesterday. I was kind of a tool, you know, about—”

  “It’s fine,” I say, cutting him off before he can say more.

  “I just…I’m pretty stressed out. And tired. All that stuff. I know you are, too. But you being my friend is the only good thing I have going right now.”

  I close my eyes.

  “I just want us to get through this, okay?” he says, and reaches out to gently squeeze my hand. “And later, whenever we can, we’ll talk. We’ll have a big talk. I want to stay friends. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Moments later, Dr. Koch goes to stand at a lectern he’s had set up at the front, and the room quickly goes silent.

  He launches into the spiel: “As you are all aware, an incident occurred during one of our sober outings yesterday”—yada yada—“internet is a place of unfiltered information… Cannot be taken at face value”—blah blah—“set the facts straight and more importantly to reassure you”—and so on—“Miss Jade Montgomery…unfortunate accident…DEHYDRATION…RECOVERING WELL… Because of our numerous high-profile patients…misinterpreted…used by the media…LIES…OUTRAGEOUS LIES…”

  Ding, ding, ding. Clearly Dr. Koch does not suffer from any kind of internal bullshit bell. Meanwhile I’m hearing it and I’m not even the one talking.

  Next comes the stuff about Wade and the handcuffs and the supposed movie, which apparently Talia and I are also cast in.

  “The man has no shame,” I murmur.

  “No kidding,” Talia whispers back.

  “Can you act?” I ask her.

  “Not well,” she says.

  Then he has Wade stand up and everyone cheers and Dr. Koch gestures toward Wade’s management team—three of them sitting together looking very shiny and Hollywood next to two slightly frumpy and extremely wholesome-looking people who I realize, with a shock, must be Wade’s parents—and all of it is suddenly like we’re at freaking Comic-Con or the Sundance Festival, instead of in rehab.

  Two weeks ago that would have made me happy.

  Wade sits down just as Dr. Koch is saying, “And I’m guessing if we’re very lucky, Mr. Miller would sign some autographs after the meeting for those of you who may be fans…”

  “Are you kidding me?” I mutter.

  “Better than being kicked out,” he whispers back, but his face is taking on a pinkish hue.

  “Uh, you shouldn’t have to sign autographs in rehab, Wade.”

  “This is one of those real-life things, Lola,” he says, his voice taking on an edge. “Play the game. Or it plays you.”

  “Those your parents back there?”

  He nods grimly.

  I turn for another peek.

  His mom is tiny and trim and put together in what I imagine is a going-to-church-in-Ohio kind of ensemble—a long flowered skirt and matching ivory sweater set. His dad is lean and broad-shouldered in a c
hecked navy-and-white shirt and khakis.

  “They’re cute,” I whisper.

  “Thanks. Yours, too.”

  “What?”

  “Shh. Right behind them.”

  “No.” But I do a subtle check and proceed to have a minor coronary because Wade is correct—my mom is sitting just behind and to the left of Wade’s parents, and directly beside her is my dad.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper.

  “Merry Christmas,” Wade says.

  The people I would normally most want to see, on the day I least want to see them, not to mention in the place I least want to see them, and sitting together, no less. Nothing like a scandal to bring on the supposedly concerned parents. They both look like they’d rather snort wasabi than acknowledge each other, which means Dr. Koch probably strong-armed them into it.

  For the first time since this morning, I’m happy I agreed to go along with Dr. Koch’s cover-up, because what I do not need is my mom and dad to know I am the person whose reckless actions nearly killed someone less than twenty-four hours ago.

  Of course, there’s another problem. If my parents stick around after this meeting, anyone who spends more than a minute in the same room as us will know how full of shit I’ve been about them. They’ll all see how “Daddy’s Girl” is a term that could only be applied ironically. God help me, we might even get dragged into group family therapy, and then both my parents will either be lying their asses off or it’ll be obvious to everyone that they don’t know anything about me and basically don’t give a shit.

  This thought shoots through me like a downward-facing space shuttle, scorching my insides, and all of a sudden it’s clear to me that this knowledge/fear that my parents don’t care about me, and the fear that everyone will find out, and under that fear the very deepest fear that they’re right not to and I am essentially worthless, is at the root of almost every crazy, stupid thing I’ve ever done.

  It is my deeper why.

  I sit in the midst of the meeting, floored, and glance at Adam. I wish I could talk to him about this, because it’s sort of huge and he would get it. And Dr. Owens. She would be very excited for me right now. I wonder if she has another bell, one she could ring for truth, because I can practically hear it.

  “And now I’ll open up the floor to questions, in case any of you have lingering concerns,” Dr. Koch says, his voice breaking into my thoughts as he winds up his speech.

  Of course the panic and anger in the room have subsided, what with the reassurances and Dr. Koch’s nauseating charm combined with the prospect of a celebrity autographing session. Nevertheless, several hands shoot up, and the doctor starts fielding questions.

  Simultaneously reeling from my little epiphany and trying to figure out how to deal with the upcoming face-to-face with Mom and Dad, I tune back out.

  But a few minutes later, there’s a shift in the energy of the room and Dr. Koch is wearing his gravest face and saying something about consequences for the staff member responsible for the patients at the time we became separated.

  Adam has gone pale and is unnaturally still. He seems to know what’s coming. I didn’t believe him earlier, but now I do.

  Trust me…

  Yeah, right.

  He’s about to fire Adam—and in the most humiliating, public way possible.

  He’s stringing him up, essentially.

  For something I did.

  My insides, ringing with bells of truth and clarity and freaking rainbows just a few minutes ago, now twist and clench and boil.

  I swallow, remembering how this morning I vowed to become something better if only Jade would live.

  And she’s alive.

  Time seems to stretch, giving me a sudden, strange, quiet space in my mind. (Holy cow, it’s the quiet place.) All this time I’ve been pretending to be something better than I am, all the while feeling worse, and yet hoping that pretending will somehow make it real and I can go back to feeling wanted and loved and all that crap that seemed to disappear when my family blew up. I would get it from my parents or I would get it from Wade. Or I would get it from my parents because they would see I had Wade and suddenly think me worthy. Or I would get it from Wade, which would make me care less about not having it from them. Or something.

  Even with Adam, even though my attraction to him feels different from all that, still I might have used him just to fill the hole. Except he knew it somehow, and he wouldn’t let me.

  The point is, I keep doing things to make people love me…being bad, being good, pretending not to care, faking and bullshitting my way through everything…

  It wasn’t supposed to hurt anyone, but here’s Adam about to get fired and possibly have his education and future jeopardized, on top of everything else.

  Telling the truth wouldn’t make them love me any better. And Wade would be furious and I’d probably get kicked out and Adam would probably still get fired.

  Better to stay out of it, right?

  Exactly.

  Except I appear to be on my feet all of a sudden, saying, “You can’t fire Adam.”

  “Indeed I can,” says Dr. Koch with a lift of his eyebrow.

  “Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. Because it’s my fault.”

  Dr. Koch levels an icy look at me.

  Wade tugs at my arm.

  “Sit the hell down,” he says under his breath.

  I yank my arm away.

  Fuck it. I have to love me better.

  And so I stay on my feet and tell the truth.

  Well, most of it.

  Some of it.

  That is, I tell the part that should keep Adam from being fired—that Adam had no choice but to leave us alone, trusting us as a group, and then I was the one who stupidly instigated everyone taking off. I skip the stuff about Wade and me because it’s private, and I leave out Jade and Talia taking drugs and Talia running around naked because I don’t want to cause either of them any more problems and I figure if they feel the need to confess, that’s up to them.

  Plus I’m very aware that Dr. Koch is looking more wound up with every word I speak and it doesn’t take him long to weigh in. “This young lady has proven herself to be unstable. She has been disruptive and disingenuous.”

  “Yes, I have, Dr. Koch. You’re right. And I’m very sorry.”

  This stops him, at least temporarily.

  “I realize now that I took this whole experience too lightly. I didn’t understand addiction or the crazy things it can make you do. I wasn’t even sure I had anything wrong with me—I actually kind of thought I was coming to a spa. Funny, right?”

  A few people—fellow patients—actually laugh.

  “Turns out I have my share of issues, though, and I’m coming around to believing when things go wrong we should admit it and talk about it, not hide it and cover it up and bury it inside. That doesn’t work, especially not for addicts. I mean, what good does it do me to let someone else get fired for my actions?”

  I turn to look at Adam, whose stunned, fixed stare makes me dizzy for a moment. I continue, looking right back at him. “Why would I do that to someone who has been awesome to me even when I’ve been a total pain in the ass, and gone out of his way for me, and taught me—taught me by example—some of the most important things I’ll ever learn about trust and…love…and…” I clear my throat, freaking out inside that I just said “love,” while looking straight at him. “And…putting other people’s needs before your own? Why would I let that happen to someone I care about? I won’t.”

  “You are poisonous,” Dr. Koch says, practically sputtering. No doubt he can already taste the shit he’s going to be in once someone thinks to ask why Adam was left to chaperone ten teenage addicts all by himself. “You are a master manipulator and a nuisance.”

  “Excuse me, that is my daughter you are speaking to.”

  I stop breathing entirely as people around me gasp.

  Because Ben-freaking-Carlyle, my dad, is on his feet, and he is pissed.
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br />   “This is a gong show,” he continues in his booming, perfectly enunciated, Yale-trained voice, his sheer presence dwarfing almost everyone in the room. “It is an outrage. And you, Dr. Koch, are a most despicable little weasel. A cockroach.”

  “Ben, don’t,” my mother murmurs into the silence. “You’re not helping.”

  “Mr. Carlyle,” Dr. Koch intones, then clears his throat, “you know how pleased I am that you’re here, but perhaps we can discuss your daughter in private, once this meeting is over.”

  “Don’t you try to handle me,” Dad roars. “And don’t you insult my daughter simply because you’re too weak and stupid to handle her. She is worth a hundred of you.”

  My throat is tight and I’m shaking. It’s beautiful and also terrible because once Dad gets into this zone, no one is safe from his temper—not Dr. Koch, not the staff and patients, not the strangely familiar-looking guy sitting right beside Dad.

  Well, my mom can stop him. Sometimes. And now she’s on her feet, a picture of blazing righteousness. “Can it, Ben,” she says.

  “I will not,” he thunders.

  As my parents start to have it out in front of practically the entire universe, I put my hands over my ears. LA LA LAAA…

  But it doesn’t stop me from hearing the next thing, which is Mom saying, “Don’t come in here pretending you give a shit when you have been a total asshole and an absentee father. You’re the one who froze Lola out more than a year ago. I’m sure you’re the reason she started drinking in the first place.”

  No, no, nooooo…

  “Mom,” I manage to choke out, “I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to. I know what he’s like.”