Addicted

by Amelia Betts

  Epiphanies are a wonderful thing. Like a recently awakened, slap-happy coma survivor, I decided to think of everything I was legitimately grateful for: the sunshine, the beach, this meeting, OA, all the healthy foods I’d ever eaten and all the ones I planned to eat in the future—including but not limited to the Mischa Jones Patented Juice Cleanse!—my job, good old flaky Sasha Myers, Julien’s guesthouse that I got to live in rent-free, Julien’s tortured and complicated daughter, Isabella (!!), Gracie (!!), and Liam’s tight pants (even if I never got to see them again), my childhood dog Jolene (named after the Dolly Parton song), my mother…

  I could have gone on like that for hours, throwing my arms around everything in my life as if I’d just unwrapped it on Christmas morning and discovered that it was exactly what I wanted. Walking out to the parking lot, I was stepping on softer ground, breathing better air. I felt like someone had saved me from a burning building and now it was time for me to pay it forward. I decided to call my mother right there from the parking lot and left a mushy voice mail about how much I loved her. After that I left another for Gracie, a long rambling speech about friendship and fate and how I’d die without her, then repeated the sentiment in a message to Isabella. Hanging up, I decided to make some plans: First, I would throw away all the junk food I had left in Julien’s pantry, burn it if possible; second, I would eat a healthy snack, maybe talk to Cecile if she was around, see if I was on her good side today; third, I would take a walk; fourth, do some sit-ups; fifth, make a to-do list for tomorrow and get to bed early…

  I was whispering this laundry list to myself, walking faster than normal with an (inevitably) insane-looking grin on my face, when a frantic male voice called out from behind.

  “Milla! Hey! Hey there! Meena, Milla? Hello?”

  Answering reluctantly to these approximations of my name, I turned around to find Bobby, Liam’s sponsor, speed-walking toward me, pumping fists and all. He was downright winded by the time he reached me, as if he had just run a mile. “I need your help,” he said between gasps. “I’m looking for Liam. He didn’t show tonight.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is,” I said, adding, “I’m turning over a new leaf!” as if someone like Bobby cared.

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “Have you tried the restaurant?” I stated the obvious with a polite little shrug.

  “They haven’t seen or heard from him in three days. Milla, this is important. Have you talked to him at all?”

  “I’m actually Mischa,” I clarified, “not Milla.”

  Bobby jerked his necked impatiently. “I’m sorry, Mee-shah, can you remember the last time you saw or heard from him?”

  “I saw him Tuesday.”

  “And where was that?”

  “At his restaurant. He was working,” I said, leaving it at that.

  “Okay, listen. We’ve gotta find him.” Bobby continued to sound very desperate. One side of the chain that held his drugstore reading glasses had come undone and was dangling around his neck. Personally I didn’t see how someone like Liam falling off the map for three days could warrant this much hysteria—a grown man with a sex addiction was liable to go missing sometimes, no?

  “Bobby, he doesn’t want to talk to me,” I said. “And frankly, I don’t want to talk to him. Why don’t you just wait till he comes down from his latest binge, or whatever you call it. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “The last time Liam missed a meeting, he was considering suicide, okay? Does that sound serious enough to you?” Bobby jerked his head again and placed his hands on his hips, his spindly arms looking like they belonged to a skinny teenager.

  I froze upon hearing the word suicide, officially shocked out of my good mood. If Liam hadn’t told me about his attempt to jump off a bridge at eighteen, I would have thought Bobby was exaggerating. Unfortunately, I knew he wasn’t. “Of course it does.”

  “Well, I don’t know what your ‘new leaf’ entails, but I would hope that helping friends in need is part of it, instead of just standing there bug-eyed.”

  Hearing this, I tried to make my eyes less big but couldn’t. And then came the inevitable realization that it was my duty to help. If I was really turning over a new leaf—like he said, like I had said—then I had no other choice. “Fine,” I answered after another moment of mulling it over. “What can I do?”

  * * *

  Bobby didn’t really explain where we were going. He just instructed me to follow his car, and I did so blindly, trusting that he hadn’t been secretly plotting my death and using Liam as a way to get me alone on the edge of a cliff somewhere. He drove slowly through the main drag of Oceanside—so slowly that I had to stop at two red lights because he’d inched through the yellow like a slug. Fifteen minutes into the drive, I followed him up a hilly street that I’d never seen before, lined with nice houses. At the top of the hill, we stopped outside a gated lot, the house obscured by lush palms all around the periphery. Bobby pulled to the curb, parked, and put on his hazard lights. As he walked to my car, his puny chest puffed out as far as it would go. I rolled down my window, bracing myself for whatever was next.

  “So I need you to call up, just press the button on that box at the gate,” he said, pointing authoritatively.

  “Where are we?” I must have been completely disoriented, or the obvious answer wouldn’t have evaded me so easily.

  “Liam’s house,” Bobby answered like I was crazy. “You’ve never been here?”

  I shook my head. I chose not to explain that Liam’s and my relationship had only involved sex in public places.

  “Well, I think he will buzz you in, hopefully. That’s the plan anyway. Then I’m gonna sneak my car in behind yours, and you’ll be free to go.”

  “Isn’t that kind of misleading?”

  “I’m not worried about misleading. I’m worried about saving a life.”

  Bobby’s plan wasn’t what I had been expecting—although what I had been expecting was anybody’s guess. I started to question his level of intensity and whether or not his claims about Liam’s mental state might be a little overblown. However, I had agreed to help, and if this is what helping entailed, I figured I should take a shot.

  “All right,” I said after a few seconds of hesitation.

  “Make it sound like you’re here for a rendezvous, okay? Make it suggestive.”

  “What?” I took offense to Bobby’s command, but he didn’t seem to care. He gave me a thumbs-up and ran back to his idling car.

  Despite my misgivings about the covert-ops-style mission Liam’s sponsor had concocted, I pulled forward, waiting to approach the gate until Bobby had maneuvered his car behind mine. At the bottom of the driveway, the call box was positioned just as it would be at a drive-thru. In other words, I drove up to it expertly and rolled my window down out of sheer muscle memory.

  The ringing seemed to go on forever after I’d pressed the red button that loomed below the speaker. I hung up once and redialed, as if that would make some sort of difference—which it did, I found out, after four more rings. Liam answered without saying anything. I knew he was there because I could hear him clearing his throat.

  “Liam? It’s Mischa.” To the best of my abilities, I tried to sound flirtatious, or at least hide the fact that I was still mending from the massive heartbreak he’d caused.

  “What’re you doing here?” Liam was slurring, but somehow his Australian accent helped instead of hindered.

  “Are you okay? I went to the restaurant looking for you.” For a bad liar, I sounded pretty convincing.

  “Ya wanna come up?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I tried not to sound overeager. “I need to see you.”

  “Then tell that fucker to get off your tail,” he snarled through the call box.

  I tensed in my seat. He knew. Trying my best to sound clueless, I asked what he was talking about.

  “You know what I’m talking about. Tell Bobby to leave me… hell alone. He doesn’t get i
t, got it? He doesn’t get me. But if you wanna see me? Be my guest. Can’t turn down a pretty face.”

  “But, Liam—”

  “I’m not talking to him. That’s the deal. Take it, leave it.”

  “Fine. Hold on.” I took my finger off the red button. Somewhat reluctantly, I got out of my car and made my way back to Bobby’s station wagon. I was afraid of him the way I had been afraid of my high school gym teacher, another stern nerd with an undercurrent of mania.

  “Liam knows you’re here. I think he’s drunk. He says he’ll let me in if you leave.”

  Bobby banged his steering wheel and let out an irritated exhale followed by a couple of deep breaths. This was a man in desperate need of anger management training. “Your presence will do him no good. I’m the one he needs to see,” he said.

  “I’m sure you’re right, but I don’t know what to do.” I looked back toward the house, wondering how I could possibly handle the situation if Liam was in fact on the brink of suicide. “This was your idea,” I reminded him.

  “Fine,” said Bobby, exhaling through flared nostrils. “Listen… Dammit…”

  “Just tell me what you want me to do when I get up there.” I was becoming impatient, worried my invite would be rescinded if I waited too long.

  “You need to get him to call me.”

  I shook my head. “What if he refuses? I can’t force him to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

  “Someone’s gotta stay with him through the night, okay? And it looks like it has to be you.” In his voice was resignation, defeat. I actually felt bad for him. Did this man have a life outside of Liam? Was there a Mrs. (or Mr.) Bobby to go home to?

  “Are you married?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.

  Bobby held up his left hand indignantly. “Happily,” he answered. “Why?”

  “No reason. Listen, I’ll try to get him to call you.” As I started to back away from his car, Bobby reached out to grab my right hand like he was trying to yank me inside.

  “Do not have sex with him! Do you understand?”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said, ripping my hand away. “Who do you think is the sex addict here?”

  Bobby scowled and shifted his car into drive. “Liam could do a lot better than you, you know.”

  “Ha.” I couldn’t believe the same person who had begged for my help was actually insulting me. “Actually, I think it’s you he could do better than.” Although I tried to hide it with anger, I felt Bobby’s put-down killing the good mood I’d just been enjoying. Of course I knew Liam was out of my league, but to hear someone else say it brought me right back to high school, to all the times I’d been teased for being too short and too curvy, for having big breasts, or for buying an extra slice of pizza at school lunch.

  I turned and marched back to my car, willing the newly enlightened Mischa to make a reappearance. I am here for Liam’s sake, I coached myself. This is not about me, or my insecurities, or Bobby’s stupid insults.

  “Good work.” Liam’s voice piped in over the speaker box as Bobby’s car disappeared over the hill.

  “Thanks,” I said, not quite sure what I was in for as the solid wood gate that stood before me disappeared into the stucco wall that lined the property.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I hadn’t imagined Liam as a homeowner. In my mind, he lived in an apartment—on the nice side, but certainly not a penthouse or anything so lavish. Yet here he was, in a neighborhood so nice I had never even heard of it before. I advanced slowly up the windy driveway to his house—a white, modern-looking affair surrounded by lush green palms lit by spotlights. The place was intimidating to say the least, the kind of swanky retreat that would be profiled in an interior design magazine. Had he really made that much money being in a band? I had mistakenly assumed that Liam’s story was just like the ones I had seen on TV about musicians who had made money too young and lost it all on drugs or gambling or multiple divorces, or all of the above. But clearly he had done all right for himself.

  Before getting out of the car, I glanced in the rearview mirror and cursed my flat hair that desperately needed a trim. I adjusted my bra underneath my shirt, a little boost to the cleavage, and checked my teeth. Then I remembered the state that Liam was supposedly in and cursed myself for being vain. The truth was, I had jitters about what I was walking into and worried that I wouldn’t be able to do or say the right thing to help him if he was in dire straits. I had spent the past few days trying my best to forget how much I cared about Liam, to write him off as an ill-advised fling, but now I was being asked to care about him again and my feelings had come back all too easily. I desperately wanted to be the one who could help him and worried it might send me into a deep depression if I failed.

  Nervously, I made my way down a dimly lit stone path to the front door, which opened just as I walked up. Loud rock music blasted from somewhere, seemingly everywhere, probably through speakers set inside the walls or something fancy like that. Liam was already walking away from the door, his back to me as he patted his right hip to the music.

  Oh no. I am officially entering the void. I wandered inside and shut the heavy wooden door behind me. There was silence—no pleasantries exchanged, no faux-polite greetings—as he led me past the dark wood staircase in the foyer and into the kitchen where a sea of liquor bottles littered the counter. For the first time that I’d ever seen him outside work, Liam wasn’t dressed like he’d been styled for some edgy rocker photo shoot; instead, he was wearing loose, navy blue athletic pants and a faded, tight gray T-shirt. Grabbing one of the bottles, an expensive-looking Scotch, he unscrewed the cap with his teeth and took a swig before turning to face me. Liam’s face was a wreck—as much as it could be at least. Dark circles loomed under his eyes. The stubble on his cheeks was patchy, as if he had started to shave but given up out of exhaustion.

  “So what? Are you here to save me? Bobby’s worried about me so he sent a little Trojan horse?” Liam finally made eye contact with me. There was sadness in his glassy eyes.

  I shrugged, fighting the urge to run to him, throw my arms around him. “He said you’ve been MIA for three days.”

  “And the last time that happened I got all sad, right? Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drink?” He held out his bottle of Scotch.

  “No thanks.”

  “I’m sorry, I formed that as a question. What I meant was: drink.” He walked around to the side of the counter where I was standing and placed the bottle in my hands, manipulating my fingers so that they grasped its neck. “Please, join me in my misery, Mischa.”

  Before I could think to protest, I took a small swig. The Scotch burned my throat.

  Liam snapped his bottle back with a fake look of disgust. “Lightweight,” he teased. He shuffled over to the fridge, retrieved a bottle of water, and walked it over to me. “Wait,” he said, and fumbled for a glass in one of the cupboards. “Only the finest for my finest guest.” He twisted the cap off the bottle and poured the water.

  “You’re scaring me, Liam,” I said as I accepted the glass. “You’re not acting like yourself.”

  “As if you know who myself is! As if Bobby knows who myself is! You know who I am? You see this house? Look…” He took my wrist in his free hand and led me clumsily out a sliding glass door to the backyard. On a flat stretch of lawn, there was a bizarre-looking mountain of guitars and amplifiers, most of them bashed in and torn up. I saw an ax, a shovel, and a shiny aluminum baseball bat lying on the ground by the detritus.

  “Whoa,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, whoa.” Liam picked up the bat and began swinging away at a semi-intact electric guitar. “You should try it! It’s very cathartic.”

  “What are you doing? Why are you destroying your instruments?”

  “My instruments? Ha-ha. I’ve got the only instrument you need right here, baby.” He dropped the bat and walked deliberately toward me with his lips puckered, taking my face in his hand
s as if he were about to kiss me. “C’mon, can’t you just give me a smile?”

  “Liam, please.” I grabbed his shoulders and held him at arm’s length. “Talk to me. I know I don’t know you that well, but I’m the only person you’ve got right now. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Ignoring me, he leaned in, his mouth agape. I felt his breath, hot and sour-smelling, against my lips. I hadn’t realized it was possible that a kiss from Liam could ever be unappealing, but this time it was.

  “No.” I backed away, stumbling a little over my own feet and feeling my legs go weak. Deciding to sit before I fell, I allowed myself to crumple to the ground. I had no idea what I was doing; I was in over my head. Bobby was probably right—I wasn’t the person Liam needed to see right now. But here I was.

  Liam went back to destroying his electric guitar with a bat, and it went on like that for several minutes. I sat and watched while he hacked away, neither of us speaking. I searched my brain for what to say but kept coming up empty. What would Bobby do? I thought to myself, only half kidding. And then it dawned on me: The minute he arrived, Bobby would have gone straight to pouring all of Liam’s alcohol down the drain, devoted twelve-stepper that he was. I shook my head, ruling it out as an option. Being much smaller and weaker than the loose cannon who was presently bashing expensive musical equipment in front of me, I had no business agitating him any further.

  When Liam determined his latest victim was sufficiently wrecked, he dropped the bat and walked over to where I was sitting. I patted the ground beside me in the hope that he would sit, but he shook his head, hovering at my feet in a menacing stance, a demented twinkle in his eye.

  “Wanna go to bed, little Mischa? Misch-Misch? Mishmash?”