Page 62 of My Sweetest Obsession
“She was her mom’s best friend.”
He raises his palms. “There you go! She has people. People who love her, people who are going to support her and take care of her, people who aren’t fucking triggered by her.”
I glower at him.
“What? You know as well as I do that that woman is your trigger. Not one of them; she’s it. Period. End of story. All the guilt and pain you feel that makes you want to pick up again stems from what started with her the night you first met. All the actions you took after that were tied to her. You look back and don’t even recognize that person who did those things because you were in the throes of addiction. Both to drugs and whatever dopamine your system was creating where Ivy was concerned. Then, the guilt over your actions sent you spiraling again. But in the end, it’s always been about her, hasn’t it?”
It has.
But it doesn’t mean I want to hear that the only way to keep myself level is to leave her when she’s in such a vulnerable state.
My hand shakes on top of the table, my knee bouncing wildly under it.
I need a fucking cigarette…
“Don’t look at me like that, Cam. You asked me to be your sponsor because, and I quote, I ‘always give it to you straight.’” He leans forward slightly, gripping his mug. “Even when you don’t want to hear it. And right now, what you need to hear is that you need to walk away from her. Let your mom play grandmother and step into that role and do what needs to be done. Let her friends support her. What you don’t need to be doing is going over there and going down on that woman.”
“Jesus, Dale…”
I glance around the diner to ensure nobody heard him, and the waitress approaches with our meals in time to force me to hold back what I was about to say to him.
“Here you go.” She sets my breakfast in front of me, but the plate full of eggs, bacon, toast, and potatoes suddenly doesn’t look as appetizing as it sounded when I ordered it.
Dale, however, grabs his silverware and dives right into his steak and eggs, slicing them up as soon as she walks away while he glances at me. He pauses with his knife mid-air. “What? Are we pretending that isn’t what happened?”
I run my hand through my hair again and shake my head. “No, that’s exactly what happened, but you don’t have to sound so…judgmental about it. You should have seen her, Dale…” My chest tightens picturing how distraught she was. The pain and frustration in her eyes when I opened that shower still haunt me. “She was hysterical. A complete mess. She was breaking, and I couldn’t just stand there and watch that happen to her.”
His brow furrows, the lines there deepening. “Why not? Why do you always have to be the one who comes to her rescue? Why couldn’t you have called Marlo, or Trina, or even your mother to come over?”
Fuck.
He isn’t wrong about that.
Any of them would have been at the house in twenty minutes if I had called, and they would have figured out a way to calm her and get her through the breakdown moment.
But that would have been twenty minutes too long.
“You know why.”
He finishes chewing the food in his mouth and swallows. “Because you love her?”
I give him a sharp nod.
How could I stand there, watching the woman I love suffer so much and not do something to help? How could I leave, knowing she would have to wait twenty more minutes like that to have someone hold her and comfort her?
“Do you, though?”
His question stiffens my spine, my blood running icy cold. “What the fuck kind of a question is that?”
He points his fork at me. “The kind you should actually be asking yourself if you haven’t already, and I don’t think you have. You’ve been obsessed with this woman for over four years, Cam. And obsessed is the right word. You let her take control of everything about your life; you let your feelings for her destroy your relationship with your brother, who was your best friend and the closest person to you. You let it destroy your relationship with your mother because you couldn’t come clean about why you and Drew were fighting. When you couldn’t have her, you turned to alcohol and drugs to try to deaden the pain and guilt over what you had done. And it was all based on a lie you told her that night by pretending to be your brother. Is that any way to start any sort of relationship? Does that sound healthy to you?”
“Fuck you, Dale.”
He holds up his hands, still clutching his silverware between his fingers. “I’m playing devil’s advocate here. Literally my job. This woman triggers you in every way possible, and if you continue to stay in her life, you’re going to continue to get dragged into these highly emotional situations that are very likely to push you toward picking up.”
Dale shoves another bite into his mouth and chews, giving me a moment to think about his warning.
I cringe as the memory of holding the heroin in my hand and twisting the cap off that bottle of whiskey flickers through my head.
