Page 1 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

One

“I’m Gary. I’ve been watching videos of dirty maids for three years.”

A murmured response of hey Garys echo as Gary’s shoulders droop. Standing at the front of the room, his familiar face sighs as he shifts his weight between his feet.

In any other circumstance, hearing that sentence would make me laugh so hard I’d piss myself, but in the din of the stuffy Methodist church basement, I nod sympathetically from my back-row seat. We all know his story—Gary shares the details of his porn addiction nearly every month.

Someone clears their throat, a few metal chairs scrape across the linoleum floor, a phone dings with a text, and I take a sip of coffee that tastes like it was brewed at the dawn of time—same as it does every month.

I wince the second it hits my tongue and spit it back into the Styrofoam cup in my hands. Disfuckinggusting .

“And, I don’t know,” Gary continues, “I was doing so good. Didn’t watch a single video for a month. But then—” His eyes widen. “I couldn’t stop myself.”

His nubby fingers scratch the beard covering his face like the fur of a mangy dog as the paunch of his belly is barely contained by the oil-stained Ledger Motors I’ve always wondered how long the signs of addiction are there and missed. How much time people could’ve spent doing something if they only knew where to look—if I would’ve known where to look, maybe Zeb . . .

“Or your mom?” I press. “Did she have a kink? I think porn addictions are less common with women, but”—I sweep the hand not holding the brewed feces around the room with a chuckle—“who are we to judge how someone gets their rocks off?”

The room takes a collective blink as Gary massages a temple.

“Uh.”

He looks at Mel.

“I’m not—”

“How’s your sex life with Deb?” I pivot; he’s clearly not interested in why his parents’ issues might have contributed to his current situation.

Maybe it’s something happening now that’s triggering his obsession.

Maybe Deb needs to spice things up— yes!

“Is it the cleaning or the outfit that gets you excited?”

His eyes widen and Mel’s jaw drops.

“Maybe it’s Deb?” If she’s not helping, no wonder he’s dripping over Sally.

I can’t believe I’ve never asked. He can’t do this on his own; he needs her.

Maybe he doesn’t know to ask. She might have no clue.

If she did more, maybe Gary wouldn’t even be in this room.

“Have you ever asked her to dress up? Or take a toothbrush and—”

“Scotty!” Mel snaps from the podium, stopping my words dead with her could-freeze-a-fire glare. “Enough.”

I frown; she softens, looking at Gary with a sincere smile.

“Gary, is there anything else you’d like to share today?”

He shakes his head, seemingly resigned to his fate of watching nude women clean other people's houses, and drops like a bag of wet cement into his chair.

“As many of you know,” Mel says, sliding one hand along the edge of the podium before running it through her cropped blonde hair.

“I became an alcoholic about five seconds after the phone call my daughter was killed in a car accident. A drunk driver ran her off the road on her way home from the library—she was in college down in Georgia—and her car wrapped around a tree. I had never drunk more than a glass of wine before that, but once I got the news . . .” Her voice trails off and she shakes her head.

“I couldn’t stop. Bottles and bottles and bottles of the stuff trying to bring her back.

” Somehow, she smiles. “But I’m happy to report that today makes six months since I started the Ledger’s Ledgers and six months without a drop of alcohol.

” A wave of soft applause breaks out. “And, as you know, I have no qualifications to be up here talking about addiction other than the fact I have one. I don’t share my victory to brag, more to give hope.

Inspire you in those dark moments where it feels like you have no choice—no purpose—you do.

It took an unexpected friend of mine explaining that sometimes a change we make can impact seven others around us.

And those can impact seven more and so on.

Seven doesn’t seem like much when problems feel so big, but”— she shrugs—“at the end of the day, it’s a lot of sevens. ”

The people around me smile earnestly; they have delusional hope.

Inside: I feel nothing.

Because though I have no addiction, I recognize it for what it is: a ruthless sonofabitch that takes no prisoners and holds no punches, strangling the light out of anything good.

An eclipse lasting for generations. And while I don’t disagree that one person can impact seven, I’ve never seen it do anything positive.

Every ripple caused by addiction leads to a tsunami that ends in a hellscape.

When people call warm praises and congratulations, I speak over them.

“Do you think it will last?” I ask, silencing the sea of addicts. Mel looks at me from her position at the front of the room, taking a sip from her cup. “Or do you think the next time you notice she’s gone you’ll uncork a bottle?”

“Scotty,” she says, tilting her head slightly. “I notice she’s gone every damn second of my life.” Before I can say another word, she looks to the rest of the room. “Who would like to share next?”

I patiently wait for the woman with a food addiction to share her problems with hiding snacks before I begin offering my suggestions.

Even in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the August air is thicker than the backside of a swampy ball sack.

Outside the church, rolling hills form the backdrop as the rest of Ledger’s Ledgers fan out across the parking lot to their vehicles.

As many people as vices. Drugs, alcohol, sex, food, shopping .

. . it’s a world I’d never know to believe in if I didn’t grow up knee-deep in a cesspool of it.

There aren’t enough people in the town of Ledger, North Carolina to have addiction-specific meetings like AA, so Mel made up her own six months ago, playing off the town’s slogan of Life on the Ledge.

The addicts, no matter the vice, come together the second Sunday of each month to form an underground congregation of the damned.

“You have to stop doing that, Scotty,” Mel says, taking a drag of her cigarette as she stands next to the LL sign in her usual attire of blue jeans and a Blue Ridge Blooms Nursery T-shirt.

The lines on her upper lip curve toward the cylinder in her mouth like a mountain road until she blows the smoke in the opposite direction of where I stand.

“You can’t interrogate everyone like a damn cop when they share.

It’s hard enough to give problems a voice, you can’t make it worse. ”

I pin her with an annoyed look. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

She chuckles, smoke puffing out of her mouth like a dragon. “I know that, but they don’t. You don’t share and your questions come off as judgmental.”

I make a disagreeing grunt but say nothing.

“And you try to convince everyone that it’s up to others to fix their problems. ”

I scoff. “And?”

She rolls her eyes. “And it’s not. When you have a problem like this, nobody else can fix it. Nobody else can care more than you or it won’t work.”

This is the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard of, but I don’t argue. She won’t listen.

“Why do you keep coming to these meetings? I didn’t know your parents, but I’ve heard stories. You’re nothing like them.” She raises her eyebrows. “Or your brother—the good kid who made bad choices.”

Her cigarette crackles with her next drag.

I do not tell her that because of all those people she listed I’m more fucked than any person who sits in that depressing basement. Instead: “Moral support.”

She scoffs, dropping her cigarette and stamping it out with the potting-soil-covered toe of her tennis shoe. “You’re full of shit, Scotty,” she says, waving toward a police car pulling slowly into the parking lot, friendly smile overtaking her face.

When the car stops next to us, I physically pinch my lips together with my teeth to contain the feral growl that begs to come out.

Ford Callahan. Yet another reason my life is the way it is.

Only back in town nine months from whatever circle of hell he went to reign over for the last twenty years, I’ve interacted with him once, avoiding him ever since.

As much as I’ve worked to ignore him—giving a wide berth to every parking lot I see his truck parked in—just knowing he’s in the same town as me has afflicted my body like a flesh-eating virus. His proximity makes me itch .

“Officer,” Mel says warmly. Gag. “Good to see you today. You know Scotty?”