Page 32 of Salvaged Heart
It was unlikely, and she knew it. I'd tried to give Anders a list of contact details on several occasions since he joined the group, but each time, he'd either ripped it up in front of my face or I'd found it lying in the trash a day later. The closest to an argument the two of us had ever gotten into was over his unwillingness to connect with anyone else. Still, it had become clear to me that Anders did not trust easily, and the fact that he allowed me to help him in the first place was a rare gift—a gift I had taken advantage of and destroyed less than an hour ago.
How could I have been so stupid?
“We'll find him, don’t worry, Beckham.”
I wanted to scream at the false confidence in her tone. There were a million places he could be by now, the worst of which was dead.
No, I couldn’t let myself even consider that possibility.
Kara turned her phone on full volume, placed it in the cup holder, and backed out of the driveway at a startling speed. “I have no idea where else he'd go,” I confessed.
“I know a few spots.” I didn’t need to question her to know what she meant. She knew where dealers hung out, where Anders would immediately gravitate towards if he wanted to score.
“Will you be okay? I don’t want to…” I let my voice trail off. I needed Kara’s help more than anything right now, but if it came at the cost of risking her sobriety, I didn’t know if I could do it. I had already messed with one person’s tonight. I couldn’t risk another.
“I will be fine. I've been clean for a long time. You don’t need to worry about me, but I will tell you if it becomes too much.” I just nodded in understanding.
We pulled up on a couple of spots on this side of town, and each time, Kara jumped out of the car, disappearing to speak with someone she recognized, showing them the picture I'd texted her of Anders on her phone. It was shitty of me to hide in the car while she did all the talking, especially when it put her face to face with people who'd enabled the addiction that had almost taken her life. But we both knew if I left the car, I couldn’t be trusted not to put someone on their ass if we found out they had sold to Anders. By the fourth stop, I was growing frantic, and my entire body was shaking with an uncontrollable need to do something more. Kara’s soft shake of the head as she walked back in my direction killed me, but I tried to reassure myself that another non-sighting meant another person Anders hadn'tbought from, and the greater the chance he hadn’t broken his sobriety. It was a feeble hope, but it was all I had to cling to.
“That was the last one I can think of.” She sighed as she slipped back into the car, hands flexing over the wheel. “We should go back to the house. Perhaps he returned while we were gone. Maybe he just went for a ride?”
“Maybe…” Kara’s phone rang loudly from where she had left it in the cup holder, and my breath caught. It had beeped many times while we drove all over the town, but the news had been the same each time. No one had seen him, no one had heard from him, but everyone promised they would contact us if they did.
“Mark, hey.” She listened intently to whatever he was saying, a look of relief blooming on her face. My heart started, but I forced myself to breathe deeply, calming my racing pulse in case the news wasn’t what I thought it was. “We will be right there, thank you.” She hung up and flashed me a smile. “Mark has him. He’s safe.”
“Is he…?”
“He turned up at an AA meeting a little over thirty minutes ago. Mark just happened to be there.”
I pressed my head into the seat rest behind me and drew in the first full breath I'd taken since Anders had pressed his lips to mine. The wave of relief was staggering, but so was the crash of guilt that followed closely behind it. I'd been so quick to presume that Anders would have run off to get high, so sure, in fact, I had spent hours tearing all over town in a desperate need to find him. Instead, he sought help and guidance from the only resource he had, that wasn’t me. He had chosen to stay clean even when he'd been betrayed by the person who was supposed to keep him safe. He had still chosen life.
My heart squeezed painfully in my chest, and I pressed my eyes tightly closed, refusing to let the tears that had been brewing all night finally fall.
He was okay. He was okay. He would be okay.
17
ANDERS
“My name is Anders, and I am an addict.” A murmur ofHi Andersrippled around the room. I wasn’t sure what had encouraged me to stand. The meeting had been wrapping up, but an unknown force pulled me to my feet. I drew in a deep, grounding breath, testing the sentence in my mind before allowing the words to roll off my tongue. “I have been an addict for almost nine years, and… I will be an addict until the day I die.”
I paused, letting out the weight of it all in a long sigh. These truths were all things I knew deeply about myself, yet saying them out loud to a room filled with strangers took a whole other level of bravery I didn’t know if I had.
No, not strangers, allies.
“But as of today, I am twenty-six days sober, and for the first time ever, I feel like I can actually do this. That I might survive this…that I want to.” A wave of soft claps chorused around the room, the encouragement lighting a new fire under me. “Tonight was a difficult one for me, and in the past, it would have been enough to make me use again…but instead, I found myself here with all of you.”
My hands fussed nervously with the hem of my shirt, rolling the cotton between my fingertips, my stare burning a hole through the fabric. Eight pairs of kind eyes looked back at me expectantly, eager to hear anything I had to share with them even as the minutes ticked by, and I remained frozen in silence. “So, thank you.” I finished abruptly, taking my seat.
“Thank you, Anders.” A kind-looking, older gentleman, who had introduced himself as Mark when I arrived, said from opposite me in our tight circle of chairs. It was a smaller gathering than the one Beckham and I usually made it to, being much later at night. Maybe that is where the confidence to get up and speak had come from. “Thank you for sharing with us.”
I gave him a tight smile and closed my eyes as the chairs around me emptied. The other members chatted with one another as they left. I'd made it here, made it to safety, but now the meeting was over, and the reality of the choices I still had yet to make was creeping back in. I could give myself five minutes. Five minutes to feel all the emotions spinning inside me like a hamster on a wheel, and after, I would do what I did best. Push all that weight down, package it up for later, stand up, and get back on my bike. Then, I’d do something I was less good at and face the consequences of my actions. I didn’t know where I'd go—nowhere wanted me after all—but if I could survive the night, the sun would rise tomorrow, and I would be strong enough to figure it out.
A familiar presence entered the room. My body hummed with every step he took until he appeared at my side. I wanted to jump to my feet and run. I wanted to jump to my feet and land in his arms. His hand hovered over my shoulder, not touching but comforting nonetheless, before he balled it into a fist and dropped it back to his side. I hated that this man who gave affection so freely now wouldn’t touch me.
I’d fucked everything up.
“I’m proud of you.” My entire being craved his company, his words of praise lighting me up, but the shame of what happened between us earlier still haunted me.
