Page 18 of Reclaim Me

“All of that to say, even when you’re clean, there are still going to be moments like this. Moments when your past jumps out of the woodwork and reminds you of all the things your addiction has cost you, of all the ways you’ve been left behind. In those moments, you’ll ask yourself what the point is. You’ll think about giving up, but you can’t because it might be too late to fix the past but you still have an entire future to show up for.” Even though I’m not buying a single word that’s just come out of my mouth, I steel my gaze and meet the eye of every person in the room, saving the new kid for last. “For some of us, that future starts today. Right here, in this room, with these people who are determined to help you show up as your best self, and I gotta tell you, my friend, you couldn’t have picked a better place to be.”

There’s no applause when I leave the makeshift stage in the church basement, which is to be expected because this is a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, not an awards ceremony, but I’m still bothered by the silence. By the way, it settles around me when I take my seat at the back of the room, a collective but silent ‘what the fuck?’ from everyone in the room who won’t say it out loud.

“Who else wants to share?” I ask, stretching my legs out in front of me and crossing my arms over my chest to appear relaxed when I feel anything but. Thankfully, a short, blonde woman from the middle row on the other side of the room stands and takes the stage. Her name is Jess, and she’s been coming to these meetings since before I took them over. We’ve chatted a few times over the stale coffee in the back about how her addiction to opioids cost her custody of her children. Today, she shares about having an unsupervised visit with them for the first time in two years.

Once she’s done sharing, the meeting moves along as normal. Nearly everyone shares except the kid in the back. He stays glued to his seat, chewing his nail and bouncing his leg, even after we wrap up. When I sit down beside him, his shame and anxiety is palpable. It scents the air around us, triggering the part of me that knows exactly how it feels to be where he is right now.

“I’m Hunter.” I extend my hand to him, and he glances at it like I’ve just offered him a bomb, so I pull it back. “What’s your name?”

He pulls his finger out of his mouth and wipes it on his pant leg. “Taurin.”

“When’s the last time you used, Taurin?”

Bloodshot brown eyes flick between my face and the front of the room, and at first, I think he’s not going to answer me, but then he does. “Yesterday morning.”

I let out a low whistle that’s full of wonder. “First day is always the hardest.”

“I know.” Taurin curls in on himself, wrapping his long, thin arms around his stomach. He pins his chin to his chest and closes his eyes. “That’s why I can never make it through day two.”

“How many day ones have you had?”

“Five,” he whispers, his voice a tremor or pain.

Five. Five attempts at getting clean at such a young age. He can’t be any more than sixteen, and here he is, fighting demons I wasn’t able to get a handle on until I was more than half his age.

I place my elbows on my knees and clasp my fingers together, studying his defeated posture. “You want it to stick this time?”

Taurin nods. “I need it to.”

Something about the desperation in his tone resonates with the desperation inside of me. With that burning desire to be driven by something other than the need to have something you know will destroy you if you continue to hold on to it.

For Taurin, it’s his drug of choice.

For me, it’s Rae and all the things we lost when I stopped being able to hear my better angels because the voices of my demons got too loud.

I stand, and Taurin opens his eyes, watching to see if I’m going to stick around or abandon him like I’m sure so many people have before. I extend my hand again, and this time, he takes it, allowing me to help him out of his seat.

“Then we’ll make sure it does.”

8

RAE

Now

After my post-dinner paternity confession, Aaron sleeps on the couch in his office. I spend the night curled up on my side of the bed, texting Dee about the fight and the run-in that inspired it. When she finished spamming my phone with voice notes that were nothing but her laughing manically at Riley being the one to put my business on front street, she pressed me for answers about Hunter, asking me questions that forced me to lay in the bed I share with Aaron and think about Hunter more than I have in years.

Okay, that’s not true.

There hasn’t been a single day since I left New Haven that I haven’t thought about him. I mean, it’s kind of impossible not to when I’m raising a little girl that’s grumpy like he is in the morning and stubborn as a fucking mule, just like him. But outside of that, I’ve passed hours wondering how he is, if he’s clean, if he’s alone, if he’s alive, torturing myself when I knew there was no safe way for me to find out the answer to any of those things. And now that I know, I wish I didn’t because knowing has turned my life upside down.

I wake up the next morning on a mission to try and turn things right side up again. In my mind, that means putting on the sexiest, slinkiest nightie I own, tousling my curls into an intentionally effortless mess, and sneaking down the stairs to Aaron’s office to make up with him so he doesn’t go to work mad at me. To avoid going by Marcy’s room and possibly waking her up, I take the back stairwell that leads to the kitchen, stopping short on the second to last step when the scent of coffee alerts me to the fact that someone is already up.

Aaron prefers espresso to a traditional brew, so the moment I hear the coffee maker going, I know it’s Marcy waiting for me. Part of me wants to turn around and go back to my room, but I make myself move forward because I refuse to cower and hide in a house I help pay for. When I hit the last step, Marcy comes into view. She’s standing at the island, fully dressed in a pair of khakis, a button-up with horizontal, pink lines running up and down the starched white fabric, and a white sweater tied around her neck. She looks like she’s about to go play a round of golf at the country club, which is funny considering that it’s six in the morning and the sun has barely risen. I would ask her what she’s doing up so early, but I already know because everything, from the set of her shoulders to the half smirk she gives me before she takes a sip of her coffee, suggests that she’s been lying in wait for me.

“Aaron has already left for work,” she tells me, her voice laced with faux innocence while her eyes dance with spiteful glee. “He seemed upset. I think he slept in his office last night.”

Although it’s disappointing to hear that Aaron has left without saying goodbye to me or wishing Riley good luck on her first day at a new school, I don’t let any of that show on my face. I can’t give Marcy the satisfaction of having upset me the way she suspects I’ve upset her son.

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