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Willa’s breathing is deep and slow and her eyes are focused on something in the distance, though they aren’t really looking at it. Her eyes are looking inside, reviewing, remembering, figuring out how to tell me what she wants to say. I’m not sure I want to hear it.
It’s what she says to me that breaks me. “You’re enough.”
Willa could have said anything to me right then, anything at all. But she said that.
I inhale and stare at her. My instinct is to look away, but I don’t. I smile, though I have no words to offer her. If I did, they would mean nothing.
I’m at Promises Malibu. It’s a drug rehabilitation center in you guessed it, Malibu California. At least it’s not jail. After crashing my Ducati and damaging a police car in the process, I still don’t know how I got out of that, but I did. Call it a fuckin’ if you want because it is.
Rehab is awful, just as expected. And it’s not even the fact that I don’t have access to drugs or alcohol. I think I can do without the drugs for a long time. Maybe even forever.
But I’ll tell you what orwhodrives me insane. Grunner. Who cares what his last name is. He’s a seventy-five-year-old man who refuses to wear pants. I don’t know about that motherfucker. He’s nuttier than all hell, but he finds entertainment in making me miserable.
Like the night he decided to play “Home” by Michael Bublé for an hour.
First of all, I’ve never liked any of the whiny bastard’s music, let alone a song that reminds me of Amberly, because every love song does.
Finally, I had to stand up and say, theatrically I might add by waving my hand in his face, “I’m gonna shove that iPad up your ass if you push Play one more time.”
He growls. No, really, growled and bared his stained-yellow dentures at me. “I’d like to see you try, nut sac.”
I smile and sit back down thinking I might have made my first friend in here.
They have me on a schedule. One I have to follow. It starts with a daily reflection and what they say in the brochure is a deliciously chef-prepared meal to get you energized for the day of recovery. Bullshit.
After breakfast, one-on-one counseling with a therapist.
Also, bullshit.
Then we talk more, but this time in a group. It blows my fucking mind the shit people bitch about.
Then lunch, more individual counseling, because God forbid you have alone time, and then guess what happens? No, really, take a wild guess.
I’ll wait. You know I have plenty of time.
Group time. More time to share with others on addiction and trauma, and you know, life skills, because apparently, if you snort a grand a week in cocaine, you have no life skills. I’m not saying I snorted a grand a week, but I suppose there was a time when I did. Possibly. You do enough of that shit and you won’t remember how much you spent anyway.
The rest of the afternoon is more individual therapy, and I’m really fucking glad this is a thirty-day program because four weeks of this shit and I’ll never touch drugs again to stay out of this hellhole because this place blows.
Oh and after dinner, we get in a group and sing.
No, not really, but it sure fucking feels that way. They hold a group-dedicated meeting to help you master one step at a time in the 12 steps.
I still smoke. They don’t take that away from me, though part of me thinks they should.
With all this scheduled therapy, you’d think I wouldn’t have any time for myself. And you’d be right, but I hardly pay attention to everything they’re saying. Most of my time is spent inside my own head, obsessing over a girl I destroyed.
Scarlet comes to see me after I’m there two weeks. She brings Shade and then she hands me the book forBeauty and the Beast. “What’s this?” I look at Shade. He says nothing. Doesn’t look at me much. We’re outside on a wooden bench in front of the building.
“Thought it might help you,” she says, her wild blonde curls blowing in the warm fall air.
“With what?” I laugh, blowing out smoke into the air. I wish she’d take me home and she wants me to quit smoking. One step at a time, I tell her. But then I stare at the cover, instant hate in my blood. “Wanting a loaded gun?”
“Stop it.” She pushes my shoulder. “I know you care.”
I do. That’s my motherfucking problem. My mind’s okay with not caring, but my heart says I need to.
The change between not being in love, and falling, can be subtle. The change can happen so slowly you don’t know the difference, if you’re better off, or worse for doing so. Until it hits you and it blows you away and makes you someone else completely. The difference so strong it’s impossible to ignore.