by Ashley Love
“You’re never going to quit, are you?” She shakes her head, almost laughing. “There’s always a reason, always an excuse, just something to keep you right where he wants you—”
“This isn’t a game!” I whisper harshly, now becoming angry. How can she be so heartless? “You know, I’m trying. I’m getting my shit together…but I love him.” She rolls her eyes, looking away, and it makes my blood boil. I continue adamantly, “Aimee, I love him and I can’t just cut that off. This isn’t some high school thing. Don’t you think it’s a little beyond that? Can’t you give me just a little more credit? Put yourself in my shoes.”
She snaps her head back to me when I say it, and though I can feel her response ready on her tongue she holds it back, her eyes softening and I finally feel like I have the upper hand.
“Yeah…put yourself in my position. What if it was Kevin…and you’d been through everything that Lex and I have…something tells me you wouldn’t just be like, ‘fuck off, Kev, not my problem’—”
“Okay, I get it.” She holds up a hand to stop my speech. When I’m quiet she sighs and drop it again, looking at me with the most sympathy I’ve ever seen when Lex was the topic of conversation. “I get it, I do. I just worry…that you’re sucked in to this thing, and yeah he’s in rehab and that’s great, but what happens when he gets out and—”
“We cross that bridge when we get there,” I assure her, my voice and heart overflowing with thankfulness that she can finally just see how it feels for me, just a fucking little bit, to be stuck in the position that I’m in. “I’m trying not to worry about what could or couldn’t happen, because it will make me a crazy person, it will.” I nod and she laughs despite herself. “And you can’t worry about that either, because really you have as much control as I do…which is none.”
She nods and I know she gets it, finally she gets it. I slump my shoulders and continue exhaustedly,
“I’m just so tired of you hating me for something that I don’t really feel is my fault. I can’t help how I feel.”
“I know.” She puts a hand on my shoulder, reassuring me. “And I don’t hate you.”
It feels good to hear her say it, to know that I finally just told her the truth and she’s okay, even if the truth isn’t very pretty yet.
“Can we please just get through this wedding? Mom is driving me absolutely bonkers and this is just going to make it worse,” she pleads, putting her other hand on my shoulder and I laugh, nodding in agreement.
“The next thing out of my mouth was about to be something along the lines of please don’t tell her.” I shrug and she smiles at me.
“Deal.”
5
The half hour drive to Pasadena isn’t as bad this time as the first. My hands aren’t shaking nearly as hard, and in place of his duffel bag is now a small box in the passenger’s seat. Just something simple I threw together for him, a sort of transitional gift to help him settle in to this new place.
I put the car in park and take a deep breath, readying myself for anything and everything that I’m about to see and feel. Judging by his voice on the phone, I know he’s still weak. I know I’m going to want to help him, to do this for him if I could, but I can’t.
The sliding glass doors give this place the illusion of a hospital, and the white linoleum floors, white walls, and sterile smell only further the image. It’s slightly uncomfortable, the whole vibe of this place, not cozy and homey like where I’d been.
A second sliding glass door brings me into a big lobby, empty but for a few tall plants in the front corners of the room and one small receptionist’s desk, but no one is seated there. A security guard stands outside a set of double doors to my right which, I assume, is where I need to go.
He gives me a polite nod and I push through the first door and again through a second set and it opens to a small room with lots of windows, floor to ceiling windows, and a few round tables. It’s almost like a cafeteria minus the food; just tables and linoleum floor and it’s sort of intimidating with no one sitting around, like no one wants to be here. I look out the window into what appears to be a small side yard, just a grassy patch with a small dirt trail outlined with wooden logs leading away around the side of the building. In the distance there are lots of trees, most bare but for some sparse browning leaves, and more trails, and it’s sort of like a nature habitat or a state park. I’m waiting for the little squirrels to scamper out from hiding, but I suppose it’s still too cold outside.
A small window with a desk set into the wall sits off in the corner, and a woman eyes me curiously behind the glass but I’m sure she can tell I just don’t know where the fuck I’m supposed to be. I apprehensively approach the desk but she’s looking at me politely, with kind, understanding eyes. She smiles softly.
“Um, I don’t know exactly where I’m supposed to be.” I laugh, a little embarrassed and she smiles bigger, almost in a knowing way.
“You’re here for visitation?”
“Yes.”
She nods. “You’re in the right place. I just need you to sign in here.” She pushes a clipboard at me. “I need your name and the name of the patient, and your identification, please.”
I set the small box on the side of the desk and fill in my name, and Lex’s, and I pull my license from my pocket and slide it to her with the clipboard. She looks at the clipboard, then at the card, then at my face before handing it back with a nod and typing something into a computer next to her. She pushes back from the desk.
“I’ll have someone get Alex for you, just a minute.” She steps out of the side door and paces down a narrow hallway leading out away from me before stopping outside a door and knocking twice softly. She pokes her head inside and then starts back toward me. “You can have a seat, someone’s getting him right now.” I nod and gather up his box, taking a seat at the closest table.
I watch down the hall as that same door opens and a tall, athletic-looking man steps out, turning away from me and walking the remaining length of the hall before disappearing to the left around the corner. I sit and wait a few quiet minutes. It seems too silent, me being the only one in the room other than receptionist girl who is holed up in her little window desk, and then the sounds start to become more familiar as I hear the soft chatter of a TV program floating down the hall. It looks like it opens into a larger room on the other end, and I can make out a few card tables and the very end of what looks to be a chair or couch in the small opening that I can see from where I’m sitting. A few guys cross the room and disappear from my sight, but I turn my attention away abruptly as that same man is coming back down the hall with Lex trailing a step or two behind him.
He looks small next to that guy—who I imagine must be six and a half feet tall in comparison—and skinny as a rail despite his baggy clothes, his sneakers thudding dully against the floor as he drags his feet. I stand as he comes in to the room and walk around the table to meet him. His eyes aren’t red-rimmed but instead look slightly sunken now, the color faded to a dull gray-blue, the hollows beneath them slightly bruised and making him look just as exhausted as I imagined he would.
I hug him gently, for the first time in two long weeks, squeezing around his shoulders and he feels bony and frail in my arms. He’s always been skinny but his frame used to be so much stronger, and even if he was feeling weak he always gave the façade of a hardass, he always put on that face. He doesn’t say anything, just wraps his arms around me and he feels a little stronger when he pulls me against him, but just for a moment.
I wonder if his weakness is exaggerated in my mind because of these two weeks we’ve been apart. Shit, I don’t even remember the last time I hugged him before that. Maybe my memory is just off. Or maybe the reality of the situation is finally weighing grave on my heart for the first time since all of this began so long ago. I’m finally afraid of how bad off he really is, of how I may have lost him for good if he hadn’t come here. This might be his last chance.
We take a seat at the table and he looks relieved to be off his feet. I remember how exhausting it was those first few days; just moving around would take what little strength I had left right out of me after a while. I survey his face, not really sure if he’s happy I’m here or just slightly relieved to see a familiar face, but he smiles at me a little across the table and it’s good to see him. Despite everything, it’s always so damn good to see him.
“I brought you something,” I tease with a grin, pushing the small shoebox wrapped in generic brown mailing paper across the table. He grins back at me tiredly.
“What?” He shakes it obnoxiously like Christmases that seem so long ago now, and I laugh, kicking him under the table.
“Open it.”
His hands tear at the paper feebly, hands that were once strong and rough, now trembling and unsteady. “Fucking tape.” He grits his teeth, trying to joke it off, and I let him. I know he’s fresh off the drugs; I know he’s exhausted. I know he’s feeling so much that he will probably never let me know.
He finally gets into the box and shuffles through the contents, pulling out the lighter and pack of cigarettes thankfully.
“Muah.” He kisses them as if they’re a million dollars before laying them on the table and I just watch him. With my hands folded under my chin, I watch him take delight in something so small as ten dollars worth of crap shoved in a shoe box, and it hits me that he really has nothing else left. When he finally looks up at me his eyes are strangely clear, a peculiar vacancy there that makes me wonder if over the past two weeks it’s hit him, too.
He pulls out the deck of cards, unfolding the top of the box and sliding them out, fanning them in his hands and shuffling them, and I want to remind him that they’re just cards, but I can’t bear to stifle the joy that he seems to find in the simple gift. He thumbs through the pages of the novel, the last item in the box, and turns it over in his hands, studying the front and back covers.
“It’s called a book, Lex.”
He looks up at me unamused and I give him a winning smile. “Shut up,” he laughs. Even his laugh is tired. He shakes his head before placing the book back into the box, following it with the cards, nestling them into the empty space beside it. He looks up at me again. “Thanks.”
He’s clean. For the first time it finally hits me why this feels so familiar; it was so long ago but we’ve been here before. He’s off the drugs for the first time in five years…five fucking years. One fifth of his whole life he spent in another frame of mind, as another person, only fleeting glimpses of who he was before surfacing to haunt us both. It’s been enough to drive me to the end of my rope time and time again, and now…just as soon as it came it’s gone again. The drugs are gone.
Something in his voice, the softness in his eyes, and the way he’s still trying so hard to put up a wall, to be strong even when he’s been broken down to his lowest, it draws me to him. I get up and walk to the other side of the table to sit next to him, sliding my chair over until the legs of it are wedged next to his and our hips are touching and he puts his arm around me, pulling me in against his shoulder. I slide my arm around his waist, between his back and the chair and I feel his spine against the bend in my elbow, feel his ribs when I wrap my other arm across his stomach. I try to push it down, knowing that this is the worst, knowing that it can only get better from here.
“Are you okay in here?” I ask quietly after a moment, not looking at him, my eyes unfocused and cast off into the room somewhere. I feel small next to him, curled in to him sadly.
“I’m fine. I’m just tired.” His arm curls in further against my neck, his hand hanging loosely in front of me. I study the pale scars across his fingers, how some of his knuckles are swollen and pronounced from being broken so many times, hands that have protected me and given me pleasure, that have held me and harmed anyone who hurt me.
“I worry about you.”
“Don’t.”
“I can’t help it, Lex.” I turn my head to look up at him and he’s staring straight ahead, eyes trained on the table, lids blinking only to wet them. They never focus. He’s here but he’s not.
“I’m okay.” It’s not very convincing, almost like he’s saying it to himself, but he nods for emphasis. He finally looks at me. “You wanna come outside? I need a smoke.”
I nod, smiling a little. “You’re lucky I brought you some.”
His arm slides from around my shoulders. “Yeah, usually I gotta bum one.”
I don’t miss how he pushes on his knees, using both hands to help him get up. My hand goes to his lower back to steady him and he steps away quickly, shrugging me off as he grabs the carton and lighter from the table.
As we head for the door he unwraps the pack and slides two out before slipping it into his pocket, tucking one behind his ear and nestling the other between his lips. He cups his hand around the lighter as I push on the heavy glass door and he inhales deep as he follows me out, putting the lighter into his pocket and pulling the cigarette away with his other hand, blowing a trail of smoke upward and over my head. The wind carries it away as the door closes behind us.
We walk across a gravel yard, almost like a playground without any of the swings, over to an area of picnic tables with trees sparsely planted around the perimeter. Lex puts a hand out to steady himself as he steps onto the seat and sits on the table itself, pulling the hood of his jacket over his head and zipping the front before leaning over so his elbows are on his knees. He takes another drag on his cigarette.
I fold my arms across my chest, a little cold but mostly studying him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m here, huh? Isn’t this the answer?” he says, sitting up and gesturing around him. The bitterness laced in his voice makes me bristle slightly.
“To what question?”
He puts the cigarette back to his lips and the ember brightens as his cheeks sink in before he pulls it away, smoke rolling from between his lips as he says from the back of his throat without exhaling, “I guess that’s what I’m supposed to figure out.” He blows the smoke out when he can’t hold it anymore. “Right?”
I scoff. “You ask me like I know.”
“You’re the one who’s been here…done this.” He says it like he’s mocking me and I roll my eyes.
“It’s not exactly the same for you,” I answer matter of factly.
He shakes his head, looking off to his side, studying nothing particular in the distance. “Well, shit, I guess I’m on my own then,” he says quietly.
He smokes the cigarette almost down and neither of us speaks, he just looks off over the trees. I wonder where he wishes he could be right now. I know it’s anywhere but here.
His head turns back to me and his eyes are still vacant in a haunting way, but I know his mind is anything but. The questions will come. I know they’ll come soon and when he starts to feel again everything is going to turn upside down farther than it already is. The test will be if he can hold his footing as his world turns, if he can weather all of the storms that are ahead.
“I’ll help you…if you need me,” I say after a moment, quietly but in a firm tone. He looks so lost, alone in his mind, but there’s no way that after all the shit we’ve been through he could possibly doubt I will be there for him through all of this.
“I know.” He sighs and pushes himself up from the table and I take a few steps to close the space between us. His arms come up around my neck and he lets them drape over my shoulders, reaching across to grab one elbow and letting his arm hang against my back, the butt of his cigarette still nestled between his fingers, barely burning. I wrap my arms around his waist in the same way, my arm hanging down from his lower back, and I tuck my thumb in the back pocket of his jeans, the hem of his sweatshirt bunched up just above it. He rests his chin on my head. My ear is pressed to his chest, listening to his heart thump exhaustedly, something inside of me willing it to just keep beating, to hold on through
all of this pain.
“What a fucking mess.” I feel him shake his head a little above me, his deep sigh painfully hopeless.
“We’re gonna get out of it, Lex.” I nod against his chest, the bone of it pressing into my cheek. I would promise him if I could, but all I can do is hope.
I hope we do. I really fucking hope we do, because something inside of me can’t help but know that this could work. If we both just got our shit together…it could work. And a bigger part of me is scared to think; scared to even wonder if it didn’t work out. Could it ever feel like this with anyone else? Could it ever be this real? Because even through all of this shit that we’ve face, together and apart, I’ve never had anything more real than this feeling that I have with Lex. I don’t know if I could let someone be this much a part of my life again, if he were to go away. And even if he went away, I don’t think this feeling ever would, ever.
He brings the cigarette up to his mouth again, and I feel his chest expand and see the butt hit the gravel to the side of us, my head sinking back down against him again as he exhales. “Have you talked to Kyle?”
“Why would I talk to Kyle?”
“'Cause he’s your friend,” he says, as if it’s simple logic.
I sigh. “Kyle’s not my friend, Lex.”
“Oh okay, you’ve just been hanging around him for five years for no good reason,” he says sarcastically, pulling back a little, and I look up at him, annoyed.
“That’s like saying Bruce and Tyson are my friends. Those are your fuck up friends,” I explain, a little harsher than intended but it’s true, those guys aren’t friends to me, or to Lex for that matter, if we’re being completely honest. He still steps back from me, a little offended.