Page 23 of Reclaim Me

“I didn’t cry.”

“That’s not what I heard.” I flip him off, which does nothing except make him laugh. “Seriously though, Hunter, you’ve got to stop holding yourself to this impossible standard of perfection. You’re an addict. The people you sponsor are addicts. That means they know, first and foremost, that you’re not perfect. Hell, they probably prefer it.”

Despite hating being called out in such plain terms, I find myself nodding and thinking of the conversation I had with Taurin after the meeting I’d written off as a failure. I took him to the same Waffle House I take all my sponsees to—the one where I met Rae on the night she saved my life—and we talked about how frustrated he’d been with all the examples of perfection during recovery that he’d been subjected to during his other attempts to get clean. He told me my impromptu share had made him stick around to hear more, and then he’d ask me to be his sponsor.

Watching him battle his way through turning days of sobriety into weeks is the one good thing that’s come out of Rae’s return to New Haven.

“Hey, kid, I’ve already told you one time that you can’t do that in our bathrooms!” The loud and sudden outburst causes everyone in the cafe to turn towards the sound. Nate and I watch along with every other person in the building as the manager marches someone out of the back, where the bathrooms are, toward the front door. From where I’m sitting, I can see that the person is young, a teenager by the looks of it, but their face is obscured by the hood slung over their head. They say something to the manager, their voice too low for me to hear from this distance, and the guy shakes his head in disgust.

“I don’t care. That’s not an excuse for you to use our facilities like your own personal bath house.”

“Hey.”

I don’t realize I’m standing until I look around and see that everyone I was just close to eye level with is now gazing up at me. The manager pauses as I cross the room, his features frozen in fear as I invade his space.

“H—how can I help you, sir?” he asks, tipping his head back to look up at me while the kid he’s still holding in his clutches goes completely still.

“Well—” I pause, allowing my eyes time to rove over his scrawny chest and find the name attached to his employee badge. “Tim. You can start by letting the kid go.”

“Oh, sir, you don’t understand, this young man was?—”

“Doesn’t matter. Short of a few very specific things that would have necessitated a call to the police instead of a personal escort out of the building, there’s nothing he could have done that would make this public spectacle necessary, so let him go before I’m forced to remove your fingers from him myself.”

Most people take a threat of physical action from me very seriously. Tim is no exception. He peels the fingers of his right hand off of the kid’s arm and drops the book bag he was carrying in his left on the floor, then he turns and scurries away.

“I’m sorry you had to experience that,” I say, bending at the waist to pick up the book bag and pausing altogether when I realize that I recognize it and the pair of beat up Air Force One’s it’s sitting next to.

Snatching the bag up, I right myself immediately. “Taurin?”

He turns to me slowly, his eyes wide with fear and his shoulders slumped with shame. It’s been a few days since I’ve seen him, and while he never looks particularly put together, I never assumed he was unhoused.

“We should go before they kick us out,” Nate says, appearing on my left side while Taurin stands awkwardly to my right. It doesn’t take but a second for Nate to realize that something is off. “Everything okay over here?”

“Yeah,” Taurin says weakly, at the same time I say, “Hell, no.”

Nate huffs out an uncertain laugh, glancing over his shoulder at the counter where Tim is glaring at the three of us. “I think it’s safe to say that whatever is going on is going to have to get sorted out outside of here.”

Without another word, Nate strides out of the cafe, and I fall into step behind him. Taurin sighs and comes along, too, but I think it’s only because his book bag is still in my hands. We make it all the way to my car before Nate rounds on us with his brows lifted in a silent order for one of us to explain what’s going on.

“Nate, this is Taurin, my newest sponsee. Taurin, this is Nate, my sponsor.”

Nate extends his hand, leaving Taurin with no choice but to shake it. “Good to meet you.”

“You say that to all the people you watch get dragged out of cafes?”

“Hey.” I cut my eyes at Taurin. “Watch your tone, man.”

“It’s all good, Hunter,” Nate says, easygoing as ever. “We’re addicts, Taurin. I’ve met people under a lot worse circumstances and still said it was nice to meet them.”

Taurin’s eyes narrow into slits. “I’m not an addict. I’ve been clean for two weeks now.”

“Son, I’ve been clean for twenty-five years, and I’m still an addict. It’s just the truth of our condition. We’ll always be addicts even when we don’t remember what it feels like to be high.”

“Kind of wish I was high right now,” the kid mumbles under his breath.

“Don’t say that,” I growl. “Look, you’re angry and embarrassed because of what happened back there, but that’s not an excuse to be rude to someone who’s just telling you the truth.”

“Whatever.” He pulls his hood down further until it’s covering the sides of his face completely. “Can you just give me my bag so I can go?”

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