by Ashley Love
RECOVERY
Copyright © 2016 by Ashley Love
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
1
I know I cried for at least an hour solid once I heard the front door close and I knew it…I knew he was gone. I knew if he was sentenced to prison I wouldn’t see him again. They would take him away that afternoon. I wouldn’t even get a fucking goodbye. I sat on the floor of the shower and cried until I couldn’t cry anymore and I was dry…my tears were dry and my body was dry, all because I sat there so long…in misery, crushed, heartbroken, completely inconsolable.
My world had come to an end.
He was my world…and now he’s gone.
When I step out of the shower my legs are wobbly and unstable. My whole fucking existence is unstable. It’s really over.
I’m alone…and it’s over.
I feel alone but when I shuffle into the bedroom I am immediately slapped with the evidence that he was here, his black boxers still discarded at the foot of my bed, half tucked under the comforter that’s barely hanging onto the mattress, the sheets still a rumpled mess as we left them. If I weren’t fresh out of tears I would cry a few more.
From the outside I imagine it would seem weird to watch myself cross the room, to see my hands lift the fabric from the bed. If I didn’t know me I would think I was crazy. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m crazy but he just left and I already miss him and I just want him here, I need to feel close to him. These are the things no one admits doing in the midst of an emotional calamity such as this. This is the wife putting on her husband’s shirt after she throws him out of the house, even if it smells like another woman. This is the desperate quest for comfort that knows no bounds of sanity.
I slip the fabric up my legs, the rest of me still naked, and I’m comforted somehow. In some sick way he’s not so far gone. When I peer down the hall I see a lump of rumpled fabric on the floor. I walk slowly toward it, quiet steps padding against the carpet until I recognize it as one of Lex’s hoodies. I scoop it up, pressing it to my chest and in an instant I’m back in that cold rehab bedroom, that same nagging feeling of loneliness tugging at me like it always does when he’s not around. I’m also hit with that same dread that I have to give something up…but this time it’s not the drugs.
I tug the hoodie down over my body and flip the hood up over my hair. It hangs to the middle of my thighs and for a moment I wonder why in the fuck he won’t just buy clothes that fit him. Then my exhaustion kicks back in and when I look back down the hall into the bedroom I can’t even bear to think of laying in that bed after last night. But my body is so tired, I need somewhere to rest. I want those moments to linger in that room for as long as I can stand them, if for no other reason than to convince myself that it was real, what happened last night. So I turn to the couch.
The wrinkled sheets still carry his scent even though he didn’t sleep on them the night before, and I curl into them, curling into him and trying to push the thought away that he’s gone now and I have no one to tend to, to worry over, to consume my thoughts with other than myself.
It’s time to take care of me now, but part of me just isn’t ready.
* * *
Hours later, I reach for my cell phone blindly as it's shrill ring sounds from the coffee table.
"Hello?" My voice grates harshly against my vocal chords, sending pain ripping up into my skull. Even my eyeballs are pulsing.
"Hey." The single word makes me shoot up into a sitting position, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, and suddenly I'm wide awake, heart racing.
"What are you doing?"
"Smoke break. We just finished up. I need you to do me a favor."
It's Lex, and on top of the fact that I never expected him to be calling, there's tension in his voice, an uneasiness that a cigarette or ten cigarettes can't break. I can hear wind whipping into the phone and I imagine him standing on a curb in his puffy jacket, shoulders shrugged up toward his ears.
"What?"
"Can you pack up my stuff that's by the couch?"
I peer down at his duffel bag, unzipped, some of the contents strewn about nearby on the floor. Somewhere in my mind I see the tiny square baggie lying among the articles of clothes and I blink several times until it disappears. If only it had been that easy before.
"I need you to bring it to this place in Pasadena..." He goes into giving me directions before I can process what's going on. He's…he's going to rehab.
"Lex, what's going on?" I finally ask, stopping him mid-sentence to make sure my mind isn't misleading my heart into this feeling of relief that's washing over it. I don't know how much more my emotions can be fucked around with today.
He sighs. "Do I have to fucking spell it out for you? Wait, you just wanna hear me say it, right?"
"This isn't a fucking game, Lex," I say harshly before my voice softens, something like hope winding its way into my words. "You're going…today?"
"Yep."
His single syllable confirmation makes something explode inside of me. All of these years of torment and grief, of saving his ass and cleaning up his messes and watching him suffer, it's over. It's all over. An unfathomable weight lifts from my shoulders in an instant and my heart swells along with my hope. It's all over.
"All your dreams are coming true, Leala. I'm going to fucking rehab. Don't you at least have something to say?" he asks sarcastically and I realize I haven’t spoken. I hate that he’s trying to set blame on me, like this is some scheme that I’ve cooked up that he wants no part of, and while in truth he may want no part of it, I don’t understand why he can’t see that he’s saving his life, that he’s worth saving.
"It's not gonna work if you don't want it to, Lex."
"Well I guess it won't then. You know I don't wanna go to rehab, you know I don't want to fucking go. But I have no goddamn choice. It's either rehab or prison, and if I go to prison I'll do something fucking stupid and get my ass locked away for good."
"Why can't you just see this as an opportunity to get better? Why can't you just want to get better?"
"I just don't, okay?" he snaps. "This is who I am…this is the choice I made, and I just have to fucking live with it."
"Stop punishing yourself." My voice almost breaks but I keep it together. I bite the inside of my lip to keep it from trembling.
"Easy for you to fucking say," he mutters before taking a breath and releasing it, and I hope with his sigh he's releasing a little bit of the worry, feeling just a tiny bit of the relief that I know has to be in his heart that he's not going to prison, that he's getting a second chance. "I'm going to rehab, Leala. Just shut up and be happy."
The phone goes dead and while I would normally be angry for him hanging up like that, I'm not. I can'
t be. For the first time in a long time, I really am just fucking happy.
* * *
The cold isn't as bitter as it has been for days past as I climb out of my car in the parking lot of East Del Mar Recovery Center. I take the slight warming as a sign—today feels like a good day for a new start. This feeling intensifies when I see Lex standing on the curb by the entrance to the building talking calmly with a uniformed officer who I'm assuming shuttled him to the facility. His squad car sits a few yards behind with its flashers on.
I shoulder Lex's bag and make my way across the lot, just the sight of him making my chest tight because for the past hours I've been doing nothing but convincing myself I'd never see him again, that I was done with him. But at this point I don't know what it will take for me to ever really be done with him. When I'm close enough for him to spot me in his peripheral he turns to me and I can almost see him tense from where I am. I wonder if he's thinking about the shower this morning; I wonder what he thinks of me now.
I let his bag slide from my shoulder to my hand as I step up onto the curb next to him. "Here."
"Thanks." He takes the bag from me but drops it to the sidewalk as I wrap my arms around his neck and he reciprocates, leaning down toward me to allow me a better grip on his tall frame and he squeezes me against his chest gently.
"You okay?" I ask softly into his ear and he nods against my cheek.
"Are you?" he responds as my arms loosen from his shoulders and he holds my hips to steady me, eyes searching mine. I know his question is bigger than this moment but I choose to stay present. We've both spent too long looking back.
"Better now." I smile softly and he returns it.
He picks up his bag. "I'll call you, you know, when they let me." His eyes are uncertain and it breaks my heart.
"I wanna go in with you," I say before I can stop myself. He sighs and gives me a pleading look.
"Leala, don't do this."
“Sorry, I just…I don’t want you to go in alone.” I can’t even look him in the eyes because I know I’m being ridiculous, and after this morning this probably just makes me look borderline obsessed but I care about him and I can’t help that, crazy or not.
“I’ll be fine.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and I look up at him. I want to hug him again, I want to kiss him. I love him. “Plus, I don’t even think you can come in. Not yet.” My face falls a little and his hand squeezes my arm gently, his eyes softening a bit. “Maybe when I get a room and stuff, yeah?”
“Are you sure?” I wring my hands in the edge of my jacket so I don’t touch him. I wouldn’t be able to let him go. This is it.
“Leala, please, for fucks sake…” He sighs, slightly rolling his eyes and he turns away a little, his hand falling from my shoulder. I’m instantly colder.
“Fine.” I cross my arms over my chest moodily. “Go.” The edge in my voice makes him turn back to me. I wonder if he wants to go any more than I want him to.
He reaches out a hand to cup the side of my neck, his skin cold against mine. “I’ll call you, okay?” His thumb rubs over my jaw, the wind whipping around and between us. It blows my blonde hair in my eyes and I tuck it behind my ear. His hand doesn’t move.
“Okay.” I look up at him and back toward the building behind him, then back at him. I’m scared for him. I know he’s tough but I wonder if he can do this…alone. It seems like he’s always been alone. It’s not fair.
He pulls me to him gently with that hand, still on my neck, and I rest my chin on his chest as his lips press to my forehead, his deep exhale stirring the hair around my face. I let my arms fall to my sides and just as I start to steady them on his waist he steps back hurriedly, turning away without another word and walking swiftly toward the front doors of the center, his heels scuffing against the pavement. The wind whips around me in a flourish and I clutch my arms around myself, feeling alone in that moment, and when he looks back at me, just a chanced look, I realize half of this battle we’ve been fighting is just the simple fact that as long as we have each other…neither of us will be alone.
2
“Leala, can you give me a hand with these?”
I don’t hesitate when I hear my mother’s voice because I know she’s not so much asking for my help as demanding it, the tone under her words saying, “You’d better get in here,” which is what I respond to.
I’d agreed to come to dinner at my parents’ house when Aimee called me this afternoon. It’s rare anymore that we can all get together. Mom’s business is booming and she’s on-sight at projects until late in the evening on most nights. Aimee and her fiancé are house-hunting in Santa Barbara every weekend and I didn’t even realize how close her wedding is. It seems like she’s always at a tasting or a fitting or appointment of some sort. I don’t even know the guy.
So here we are tonight, pretending to be normal. Maybe it’s what I need.
Aimee and my dad are filling glasses with ice and counting out forks and knives. Setting the table has always been my duty since I was old enough to carry a plate into the dining room without dropping it. Now I can carry all four, all of the silverware, and all four glasses in the same hand and arm. Those years at the diner taught me well.
Still, my mother scolds, “Leala, use two hands.”
Always her way.
I set the places and my dad comes behind me with the napkins, setting a hand on my back and I turn and give him a weak smile. He’s wearing his age now, graying at the temples and in the part of his hair, and his eyes are tired but that same warmth is there as has always been when he looks at me. I’m his baby. He gives my arm a squeeze and moves past me into the kitchen again as quickly and silently as he came, and in that moment I think of Lex. Even when he leaves rehab, he has no family to go back to. I wonder how he would fit in here, and I decide it wouldn’t be pretty as my mother comes through with the salmon fillets. His tattoos would be too much for her Sunday brunches, his cursing too much for her charity teas, though I’m sure he would watch himself in her presence. He’s heard enough about her to know better than act up for the sake of doing it. And maybe…maybe he’ll be completely different when he gets out anyway. Maybe eventually she’d be delighted to have him here.
As I watch her in the kitchen fussing over the collar of my father’s shirt and picking invisible lint off of the front, however, I highly doubt this.
“What’s up with you?” Aimee asks as she passes me into the room, bumping my hip with hers on the way. She looks at me over the table as she sets out dinner rolls and smiles at me, and it makes me smile back.
“Nothing. Why?”
She comes back around to my side of the table. “You’re just quiet,” she says softly, studying me. She brushes the hair out of my eyes and I catch a glimpse of the ring on her finger. My sister is getting married, and I’ve missed it all. I’ll put on the dress like I’m supposed to and show up at the church, stand in the front, but I’ve still missed it all.
“Don’t have anything to say, I guess.”
Someday I’ll tell her I’m sorry.
She looks at me a moment longer, even as Mom and Dad come in and fuss with arranging the rest of the side dishes on the table, and it’s like she hasn’t seen me in ages. I guess she hasn’t. She’s my big sister, she’s supposed to be my best friend, and I feel like we don’t know each other anymore. We’ve been making an effort to meet up, but she always has other things on her mind, or rambles on about the wedding, or gets a phone call halfway through our lunch from her fiancé. I think his name is Kevin. But right now when we’re standing face to face in our parents’ house, the house we grew up in, and I feel like we’re strangers. My heart could just crumble from the loss. I want to know her. I want to be her best friend again. I need her to be mine.
“Girls, c’mon, sit down,” our dad says, and the moment is gone.
We all take our seats, the same places we’ve sat in year after year, my father and his girls, and as much as I w
ant to fit in here, I don’t. There’s too much guilt, a wall all around me, the bricks of it cemented together with all of the wrongs I’ve done to them.
“How was the tasting, Aimee?” My mother puts a window up, and I pull the curtains back, peeking out, watching my family exist in the empty space all around me.
Her face lights up. “Everything was amazing. Kevin loved the fudge cake, of course. The filling was to die for.”
“Chocolate is risky in a white dress, don’t you think?” The tone in her voice says it all. “If you’re stupid enough to get a chocolate cake and run the risk of ruining your wedding dress, it’s your funeral.”
“There was a vanilla spice cake we liked too,” Aimee replies a bit softer, her voice still harsh in the tense silence of the room, and I know the matter is settled.
“I’m sure it will be a hit,” my mother coos, and I don’t even know if I can force my food down if the evening continues on like this.
“You’re quiet tonight, Leala.”
I glance up from my plate and my dad is looking at me imploringly. I feel my throat constrict slightly. I hold my hand over my mouth, still chewing a bite, as if I’m going to politely answer behind my palm so as not to show the food in my mouth, but the truth of the shit is I’m stalling because I don’t know what to say. Does everyone really think this is supposed to just feel normal again?
“How are things going?” Aimee prods gently after a minute of my act and I take a sip of water, hoping it will help words come out easier.
“Everything’s fine. I guess I just have a lot on my mind.” I look at no one, just glance at the table cloth, my eyes darting here and there.
“It’s not that boy, is it?”
I tense instantly when the words leave my mother’s mouth. The fork that was on its way to my mouth returns to my plate and pushes at the rest of my food, my nervous eyes following it. Suddenly I’m unable to stomach the bite.