Recovery (The Addictive Trilogy Book 3)

by Ashley Love

  “Yeah, yeah, I get how this works.” My tone tells him to shut up again, and he does.

  But not for long. “Leala…” I can hear his nerves tingling, feel them the same way I feel mine. My chest feels heavy, my heart sunken down to its bottom, pressing on my stomach, making me sick.

  I finally ask, defeated, “Why did you say all that shit to me the other day?”

  “'Cause I meant it. I wasn’t bullshitting you, okay? I meant everything I said, I just…wasn’t thinking about any of this.”

  “It just…slipped your mind,” I supply, my voice empty and he sighs on the other end.

  “God, don’t do this. Don’t start analyzing everything I fucking say to you, alright? I meant what I said. Shit like this just…comes up, and I gotta deal with it,” he explains, but his little explanations are starting to sound like those same old excuses he’s had from the beginning. That nagging little part of me that wants to still doubt him, that wants to wonder if he can really change, starts eating at me again.

  “Well, you need to start thinking before you go and do shit that’s gonna bite you in the ass.”

  “I know. Can you…can you just help me out? I’m stuck in this fucking place or I would do it myself, you know that. But I don’t trust anybody else to take care of this for me.”

  Trust. There it is again. Addicts can’t be trusted. Haven’t I been hearing this all along? It was different before, when I thought he was getting better, when that little nagging part of me had slipped down, and I start to think all this time I’ve maybe been going against my gut. Of course he trusts me, what’s not to trust? I’ve given up immeasurable amounts of shit in my life to do anything and everything he’s asked of me since the day I met him. Has he done that for me? Would he? I wonder, when it comes to him, what I’ve been confusing trust with for so long.

  I take a deep breath and let it out, my resolve softening a little in a way that worries me, as if I can’t control it anymore. “If you’re fucking playing me, Lex…”

  “I’m not,” he says quickly, almost too much so. “Leala, I’m not.”

  Naturally I would say that I trust him, but I can’t shake my suspicion that it’s another lie. And I’m wondering exactly what this is that I’m feeling right now, that tells me despite everything I know that’s wrong with this picture, I’m gonna go along with all of this anyway.

  21

  “He doesn’t trust anybody but me.”

  She rolls her eyes again. It hadn’t taken her long after I walked through the door to pry it out of me, all of this shit that’s eating at me. Sam’s good that way. Or maybe I read like a book. Either way, our dinner and movie night has become littered with Lex’s problems almost effortlessly. If I weren’t so worried about all of this drama he’s jerked me into the middle of, I’d be pissed at how obvious it’s becoming that his shit always manages to work its way into my life whether I like it or not. Guess it’s easier to see now that I’m actually trying to make a life for myself that isn’t centered around him. Was I really that twisted up in him before? I can’t imagine it was ever worse than this. I pretend that it wasn’t, for my own sanity.

  “I don’t even know if he trusts you as much as he just knows you’ll do it,” she says matter-of-factly, throwing a handful of sliced onions into a pan so that they spit and hiss angrily against the heat. “That’s what you’ve become to him, Leala. Just a means to an end.” She pushes the food around just as moodily, and I can tell all of this is wearing on her. I’m sure this is why she’d waited as long as humanly possible before bringing him up at all even, much less allowing for him to become frequent conversation.

  “So what am I supposed to do, huh?” I shrug. Then I say, just as easily as Kyle had explained it to me the might before, “Once I do this, it’ll all be over.”

  “No it won’t! Is that some shit he told you?” She laughs in disbelief, looking at me over her shoulder. “'Cause when this is over, there will just be another mess to take on. He’s gonna be on probation for years for this bullshit, and there you’ll be, stuck right there in that mess with him.” She shakes her head at me, asking almost mockingly as she turns away again. “You think he can get a job? Take care of you? Support you and pay for your house and picket fence and put food in your fantasy children’s mouths?” She shakes a skillet in her hand and flips its contents effortlessly.

  I roll my eyes. “Oh come the fuck on, Sam—”

  “YOU come on!” she shouts, letting the pan clatter back onto the stovetop, and the sheer volume makes me jump. I don’t dare answer her, and she takes a deep breath before turning to look at me over the bar. “Listen to yourself. Open your fucking eyes and look how deep in bullshit you still are. He’s barely kicked the drugs and you’re just sinking deeper and deeper in his fucking problems.”

  There’s something sad in her voice and it makes me feel pathetic, small and weak at the kitchen table.

  “He makes his living as a liar, remember that part? Saying everything and anything he has to to get what he needs, just to make a fucking deal? You see how that shit happens now?”

  “This isn’t the same—”

  “Of course it is!” she says over me. “Get away from him. Let him deal with his own trouble for once in his life. See what he does.”

  “I’m not putting him through some kind of fucking test—” I start angrily.

  “This isn’t a test,” she interrupts again. “This is you using him for another damn excuse to not take care of yourself.”

  I shout defensively, “Then what the fuck am I supposed to do? Huh?”

  “I’m supposed to do your thinking too now?” She laughs, shaking her head, but she softens when she looks at me again. “I dunno, Leala. All you used to talk about was vet school and puppies and shit, so do that.” She shrugs, moving to the stove to turn the knobs off. “Get the fuck out of Los Angeles. Go to vet school, fix sick animals. You can’t fix sick people, they have too much free will.”

  “You think I should leave town?” I ask as I watch her move to the sink.

  “You think you’re gonna get your shit together sitting around here?” She laughs, but its lost on me, and it dies in her throat quickly. “No offense, but…been there, tried that,” she adds more sympathetically.

  I sigh, irritated, raking my fingers back through my hair. “Well…what the fuck, where am I supposed to go?” I ask, half smart-assed because I know she doesn’t have an answer, and she surprises me when she leaves the room, only to return again quickly with thick folded papers in her hands.

  She tosses the stack onto the table and it hits with a smack, unfolding slightly, revealing red and blue lines like veins running through large gridded paper. Maps.

  I ask, “What is this?”, looking up at her dumbly.

  “Looks like the answer to life’s most burning question.” She smiles slightly, walking back to the kitchen and reaching into the cabinet for bowls. I finger the edge of the maps gingerly, reading state names printed boldly, daringly at the top of each page.

  “And I’m supposed to just...flip through here, and pick somewhere? Just like that?”

  “Well, I don’t know how many people you know who use logic for this type of thing. So, yeah, that’s the idea. Just don’t tell me you wanna fly across the world to New York. I get the whole escapism thing, but that’s a little extreme.”

  I listen to her scraping the pans contents into our bowls, the sound of the wooden spoon against the Teflon as grating as metal on metal as my eyes blur over the grid lines of the pages. I blink, clearing my head and folding them up tight again, pushing them away slightly. “Maybe I should just…I dunno, stay here…work it out.” I don’t dare look at her when I say it.

  She sighs and all I hear in it is disappointment. “Leala, listen to me…you have to understand where I’m coming from. You have to take yourself out of the situation. When you looked at yourself from the outside with the drugs, you knew it was time to change. You k
now what’s going on with him isn’t okay. You know that.”

  The tone of her voice grates on my nerves, my patience close to running dry from constant lectures, people constantly thinking they know what’s best. What about what I want?

  “So when things are fucked now I’m supposed to just…run away?” I bark back.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you made that decision. For you. And it was a good one. It was the right one. You just…have to stop thinking of his problems as your problems. All you should be worried about is your future. Whether he’s a part of that or not is really up to him at this point.” She shakes her head, and the way her lips purse isn’t lost on me, the hopelessness in the way she tosses her head when she adds smartly, “But if you’re thinking about it like that…running away, I mean…it won’t do you any good, anyway.”

  “God, I feel like I’m in rehab all fucking over again,” I growl, my elbows snapping down onto the table as my fingers rake back through my hair, fisting it tight at the back of my head, my eyes squeezing shut in frustration as her palms slap down onto the counter.

  “Good! Because, if we’re being honest here, you’re still in recovery, you will be for the rest of your life.” It’s matter of fact and makes me look at her again. “And not just from the drugs but mostly from that jackass who threw your life into this fucking tornado that you’re trying to pick up the pieces from. He’s a natural disaster for chrissake,” she says with disgust. “And you know what, sometimes when there’s nothing left to salvage, you pick up and move on, somewhere new, somewhere far away, 'cause you’re a damn fool to stay and let it happen again.” She snatches our bowls up moodily and rounds the counter toward the table where I’m seated. The heavy ceramic thumps down onto the table in front of me, tipping slightly and sloshing its contents around so that a caramelized onion slides down its side before the bowl stills again. “And, I can say this because I love you, you’re starting to get what you ask for,” she snaps.

  I slowly look up at her standing over me. “You know, you can just spare me the berating bit, 'cause you’re starting to sound like my mother.”

  It’s quiet for only a moment before a smirk spreads across her mouth. “There she is.”

  “What?” My brow draws in confusion.

  “Leala with a spine. I’ve missed her.”

  I scoff, shaking my head as she slides into the chair across from me, her voice gentler now as she looks across at me.

  “I’m not saying you’re spineless. You’re strong, you’re a strong girl who stands her ground and doesn’t back down, you’ve proven your point, if that’s what this is all about.” She gives me a pointed look, sliding the stack of maps close to me again. “But now you’re just being an idiot.”

  22

  I pull into the parking lot of Chase bank and my anxiety is still at a record high, despite the two cigarettes I sucked the life out of this morning, which are now, at noon, lingering in my mouth as a mere bad taste. I go over the system Kyle and I hashed out detail for detail: ten banks, ten grand each, only two or three drops a day to avoid suspicion. As if all of this isn’t fucking suspicious enough.

  But we’ve been over every other damn option, none of which panned out in my favor.

  “Can’t we just convert to a couple pre-paid credit cards? Buy some museum pieces? Something that doesn’t look like we have a bunch of fucking money laying around?” I’d asked in haste, nervous and anxious with Kyle putting pressure on me to get this rolling, teamed with a big move out of the city, out of the state, looming over my head.

  “Right, 'cause it's gonna look any fucking less suspicious when Lex who knows fuck all about art is busy framing a Jackson Pollack.” I was surprised he even knew who the fucker is.

  At that point I’d gotten desperate, offered to shove it in an attic, thought about just dropping it at the center, letting Lex deal with it, skipping town without a word.

  We see where I ended up.

  Yep, here’s me, still just being an idiot.

  I spent all morning laying it out: two or three drops a day would put my last deposit on Sunday afternoon, I could swing over to the center after, hand off the account information to Lex, and jump on a plane.

  Only then did I realize it wouldn’t be that easy. As if anything ever is.

  Lex will need the money eventually. To get on his feet, pay his court fees, pay off Robson, start over. He’ll need it out a little at a time, transactions, checks. Tying it up in bank accounts means no one will be able to withdraw but me. Once I do this I’m still involved until all of his shit is settled. Stuck right here where I’ve always been. Cigarette one and two quickly followed this realization.

  This time I can’t even blame him. I did this to my damn self.

  Well, I haven’t just yet.

  * * *

  COLORADO. The map hangs open-faced on the arm of my couch, wind from the ceiling fan threatening to blow it closed as my suitcase mimicks it, slung open on the living room floor, winter clothes fluttering messily inside as they launch from the doorway of my bedroom.

  I have to get the fuck out of here.

  It had taken me all of two minutes standing shakey and sweating in the lobby of that bank to know this whole mess is wrong on an entirely different level than I’m used to functioning on. Reality check moment. I’ll be stuck right here in L.A. with Lex, handling his business, continuing to save his ass. He can’t even open a fucking bank account. He can’t do anything on his own for God knows how long.

  What am I doing?

  I have options. Lex doesn’t have any options right now. He made his decision, which was a good one, to go to rehab instead of jail. But he has to finish what he started. Then he’ll have his options.

  He’ll never have a future if he doesn’t finish what he started at the center.

  They’ll help him transition out, get a job, continue with his therapy. I didn’t have that help. I still don’t. I have to finish what I started, too.

  I have to help myself.

  I carry an armload of layering shirts into the living room, folding them haphazardly with shaking hands. I swallow the lump in my throat and realize sometimes people just have to move the fuck on from what’s happening in their life when they can’t seem to make sense of everything mixed up right smack in the middle of it.

  I’ve been waiting around, letting life come to me, waiting for some fucking self-help book to fall from the sky.

  COLORADO flutters down to the floor next to me.

  “Looks like the answer to life’s most burning question.”

  I pick up my cell phone, dialing deftly and cradling it between my shoulder and ear, continuing to pack my things.

  “Hello?”

  “Denver.”

  Sam pauses for a moment. “What?”

  “Denver,” I repeat, trying to sound more convinced this time.

  “Are you sure?” She knows what I mean now.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you packing?”

  “Yes.”

  She takes a deep breath, and I hear rustling on the other end of the line. “Okay, don’t stop. This…this works out kind of nice actually, my aunt has a house out there, like a rental house, you know, you want me to call her?” She sounds nervous and too anxious but I consciously don’t let it get to me. I can’t let anything get to me. I can’t feel anything until I’m away from here. Far away and safe. Anywhere but here will be safe.

  “A house?”

  “Yes. Stop asking questions and consider it divine intervention. Do you want me to call her?” She’s rushing and it makes me want to throw up. It makes me want to just cry and get it over with and stick this out.

  But I can’t.

  “Yeah.” Everything is just too much now.

  “Okay. Okay, just…keep packing. Call him, do whatever you have to do, just…keep your head on straight, okay? Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

 
; “Stop asking me that and make the fucking call,” I snap.

  “Okay. Hang tight.”

  The line goes dead before I can let myself realize that I don’t really even know what the fuck I’m getting myself into.

  23

  “Hello?”

  It’s taken me over an hour to muster up the courage to even call him. What’s worse is it only took me twenty minutes to pack up enough shit to make what I feel like is a survivable getaway.

  “I’m leaving.”

  It’s a completely gutless move, doing this over the phone. Even I know this. But to go to his face and give him a big ‘fuck off, I left your money with Kyle and backed out on you, have a nice life’ isn’t really something I can stomach right now. I can’t stomach leaving at all, but keeping this distance is making it easier.

  “Excuse me?”

  Even God doesn’t understand how grateful I am that he can’t see me trembling right now.

  “I’m…I’m sitting on a suitcase full of my stuff. I‘m buying a plane ticket. Out of L.A…out of…California. I’m leaving.” I hide my face when I say it. Saying it into a phone it even harder than I anticipated.

  “Woah, woah, wait a second. Leala...what the fuck are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  I try to pretend that he doesn’t sound genuinely worried.

  “I can’t keep doing this.”

  “Do...doing what? You’re not doing anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  He sighs. “No. No, that’s…that’s not what I meant. Just…do you wanna come down here and fucking talk to me about this, at least? You just call me and spring this shit on me? Fuck you, you’re not even gonna come say it to my face?” He goes from worried to angry in record time, and before I can stop myself I’m holding the phone away from my face so he can’t hear me sob into my knees. I hear him shouting my name into the phone and I put it back to my ear once I catch my breath again.