Page 27 of Salvaged Heart
“Let’s get out of here tonight.” Beckham’s voice startled me.
I was zoned out, watching the early morning sun bouncing off the soft ripples in the lake, sending glittering prisms as far as I could see, and hadn’t heard him approach. My sketch pad sat on my knee, pencil floating just above its surface, but the page lay empty. A thousand images were bouncing around my head, but each time I pressed the graphite tip to the page, they slipped away just beyond my reach. I had thought coming out here might help unlock something, or at the very least, I could draw the landscape, but no such luck.
“You’ll get it back.”
I hoped more than anything he was right. Usually, my art was easier to grasp the closer to sober I was, but in recent weeks, that part of myself had been completely inaccessible.
It was maddening.
“What did you have in mind?”
As reluctant as I was to venture back into the real world, maybe getting away from the manor would help. It definitely couldn’t make things worse. We hadn’t left once except forour daily treks to AA meetings. Beckham had started getting groceries delivered just so he had an excuse not to leave me even for an hour. I couldn’t tell if he was afraid I might use or afraid I might hurt myself, and to his defense, it could go either way at any given moment. I was starting to feel like a caged animal, pacing back and forth day after day, but this cage was of my own making.
“It’s a surprise. You feel good enough to ride?”
My pulse jumped just at the thought. It had been two weeks since I last felt the road beneath my bike. I’d been too sick after that first AA meeting Beck had dragged me to against my will. We’d had to Uber to meetings since then, which surely cost Beck a small fortune, but he hadn’t complained once.
“Heck yeah.”
He grinned down at me. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
We fell into a comfortable silence. With anyone else, the need to fill these sorts of moments with noise or movement would have been suffocating, but something about Beck’s presence calmed my soul. I didn’t need to speak for him to hear me. With him, I could simply exist.
We sat watching the lake wake up around us. Boats began to float out from the nearby docks, and people set up for the day on the beach at Ramsey Creek Park. Even the wildlife seemed to be coming to life around us. Beckham held out his hand for me to grab, pulling me up, and we ambled into the house together.
Things were starting to come along with the renovation. Several rooms were already completed, including the living room, dining room, and third-floor study. The upstairs bedrooms had fresh coats of paint and were waiting for the floors to be refinished. Next week, the cabinets for the kitchen were due to be delivered, and our focus would turn to completing that room before moving on to the most daunting project of all, renovating the bathrooms.
Beckham had been an incredible asset in getting the project completed. It would have cost us tens of thousands to pay a contractor to do all the work he was teaching me to do for free. I was even enjoying it. I’d never pegged myself as the type to enjoy manual labor, but it was calming, therapeutic even, and to my shock, I found I was good at it. I still enjoyed the design side over the doing side, but spending my days focused on completing a project had done wonders for my mental health.
I still thought about using every day. I still missed the high I got from a fix like one might miss oxygen, but the need felt manageable now. If I could stay in this controlled environment that Beckham had created for me, I would be strong enough to beat this thing once and for all. I wasn’t ignorant enough to think it would be enough. Getting clean might have been a mammoth effort, but it was nothing in comparison to the arduous task that staying sober would be.
The outside world was a terrifying place where I was sure to face temptation at every turn, and I couldn’t stay here forever. But life on Arbor Ct. was a means to an end. We would finish the house, Beckham would help me pay for rehab using the jewelry we had squirreled away, and then we would part ways. Him, back to his perfect little life with Laurel in Tennessee and me, off to begin my new one–first rehab, then six months minimum in a sober living community, as well as intense therapy. In a year, when I had fulfilled my condition of the will, I would pay Laurel and Margery back for the items they hadn’t known I’d stolen, and I would be free. Well, free of guilt, at least. This illness would haunt me the rest of my days, but for the first time in a long time, I found I actually wanted to live, not just exist.
The only part that left a choking feeling in my throat was that while the end of the summer marked the start of my long-awaited journey to permanent sobriety, it also marked the end of my journey with Beckham. I didn’t know when he had grown onme, when he had crossed over that line between annoying and friend. But the fact he had wormed his way into a heart that had barely been beating since Jonah’s death—the fact I thought of him as a friend at all—well, that meant the world to me.
“You’re quiet this morning.” I was quiet every morning, but each day, he acted like this was something new. “Did you want to go to a meeting now or this afternoon?”
We never missed a meeting, and while I had yet to talk at one, I found them helpful. Hearing other people’s stories of how they fought their way up from rock bottom and were thriving was the fuel I needed to keep going. The raw honesty of those who slipped up and the support they received from the group regardless reassured me that my misses would be okay as well, if and when they came. I finally felt part of a community, even if I remained a silent member, much to Beckham’s contempt.
“I feel good now, but I will let you know if it changes. Let’s get to work.” He gave me the same long assessing look he always did before relenting and hustling me upstairs to the library to begin the grueling task of removing all the books from the shelves so we could start cleaning and re-staining them.
“Beck,I am really not sure about this.” In fact, I was sure Beckham had lost his damn mind.
We were parked, still straddling the bike, out front of a live music venue well-known in this area for hosting some of the best cover bands from the surrounding states.
It was also a bar.
The last place my ass should be.
So why he’d now brought me directly into temptation’s clutches was beyond me. I pushed my visor back over my face,ready and willing to escape while I still had the willpower to do so, but Beckham leaped off the bike.
“Beck,” I whined.
“Easy. I wouldn’t bring you to a bar, Anders. I’m not cruel.”
“Sure looks like a bar to me. The big neon sign right there even says it.”
“And the smaller sign almost directly below that says what?” I hadn’t noticed it, but I squinted, reading the smaller print.Sober night, the third Wednesday of every month.
