“Good, you?” I ask.
“Good, good,” she replies. “I need some coffee. Can I fix you a cup?”
“Sure, I guess. Lots of sugar,” I say when I follow her over to the refreshment table.
She grabs the pot and pours us both a serving in the Styrofoam cups; then hands me the container of sugar packets and I take two.
“Thanks,” I tell her after I pour in the sugar and grab a straw to stir it around.
“No problem,” she replies while taking a sip of her coffee. “So, who are you here for?”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Who are you here for?”
Glancing around at the other three people who are milling about the room rather than taking a seat in the metal folding chairs formed in a circle, I tell her, “I’m here for NA. This is where it’s held, right?”
“Oh yeah. But who are you here for? Mother? Father? Boyfriend? Brother or sister?”
Sipping my coffee while I consider her odd inquiry, I say, “I’m not sure I understand your question.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you have this look about you, like you feel guilty and are only enduring this meeting to make someone else in your life happy.”
“Ah, okay,” I respond with a nod of my head. “Then, I guess I’m here for my boyfriend.”
“Then you should go ahead and prepare yourself and him for a relapse.”
“What?” I ask in confusion. “How can you say that? You don’t even know me. I’m done with pain killers once and for all.”
“I may not know you, but I am you,” she says. “I came here for a boyfriend once; and then a few years later, I came back for my grandmother. But it didn’t take until I decided to come here for myself, because I was tired of being an addict, tired of the piece of shit I had become after hitting rock bottom. You’ll figure it out for yourself eventually, but probably not until you reach your rock bottom.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I mutter. “But I don’t think my life, the things I’ve done for pills could get any worse.”
“I hope not. Good luck,” she says before she walks away and takes a seat in a metal chair. Once she’s sitting, the two men and another woman follow suit, each sitting with a chair in between them.
An older lady looking like a peppy Golden Girl with a big, poofy, white hairdo comes speed walking into the room a moment later. “Sorry I’m late. Are we all ready to get started?” she plops down into a chair, and then they all look at me as if silently asking if I’m staying or leaving.
I stay, sitting as far away from Debbie Downer as I can get.
And for the next hour, I sit and listen to the others, and even Betty White, talk about their addiction to narcotics and how they have tried and usually failed to overcome it.
Finally, the Debbie Downer, who is certain I’m going to fail, stands up and starts to talk.
“Hi, everyone. I’m Tammy, and this time I’ve been sober for four hundred and eleven days.”
Everyone claps for her, so she pauses to wait for them to stop.
“Do I think that I won’t ever do heroin again?” she asks aloud. “Nope. I won’t make that prediction or take that bet. But now I can admit that I hate myself when I’m using. I became a shell of the person I once was – a college graduate with everything I needed to succeed in life. I decided to waste it all away on chasing a high instead. I couldn’t give up heroin after I got pregnant, which is why I lost my baby. And I couldn’t give it up for my grandmother who died while I was locked up in a jail cell going through withdrawals. But this time, I’m determined to try and quit for myself, for the woman I used to be years ago before the first time I tried heroin at a party. It’s a night that I will always regret, because the drug and the addiction changed me without my permission. It took things from me, things I will never ever get back and will always haunt me. So, I’m not going to be a slave to the addiction any longer. I hope. Thanks,” she says before she sits back down.
Chapter Nineteen
Cedric
“How was the meeting?” I ask Ev as soon as she comes out of the church. She looks a little wide-eyed.
“Informative,” she says.
“That’s good, right?” I ask while offering her the spare helmet.
“Not exactly informative in a good way.”
“Oh,” I mutter. “Do you want to see if we could find another meeting someplace else? There’s probably several in Wilmington…”
“No, this one is fine,” Ev tells me as she puts her helmet on and fastens the chin strap. “I’ll come back on Friday.”
“Good,” I say. “That’s really good to hear.”
“I can drive myself,” she says while she waits for me to get my helmet on. “I promise I’ll come straight here and back.”
“I like coming with you,” I tell her. And it’s not just because I don’t trust her yet, but I know how hard this is and I want to be here for her every step of the way.
“Okay,” she agrees. “Come with me. It’s your time to waste.”
After the first NA meeting, I thought Ev was getting better.
She’s not.
Other than the meetings and going to visit her mom, she doesn’t get out of bed. She just sleeps, constantly. Even getting her to eat and shower is difficult. And I have no fucking clue what to do.
“We’ve got visitors,” Reece says when he knocks on my door.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.
I hate leaving Evelyn alone even for a few minutes when she’s been so depressed, but I don’t have a choice at the moment. If Lowell somehow bonded out of prison, I will put a fucking bullet in his head for what he’s done to her, not just while they were together, but by making a normal, happy girl into a ghost of herself because of his fucking pills.
For two years I thought I was keeping a good eye on Ev, making sure that she wasn’t hurt. I knew she looked sad and not like herself, but I had no fucking clue that he was feeding her ecstasy and oxy like it was goddamn candy.
“I’ll be right back,” I promise Ev with a kiss to her temple. She doesn’t even stir, still sound asleep.
Grabbing my cut from the closet, I slip my arms into it on the way up the basement stairs.
“Who is it?” I ask Torin and Reece, who are already in the bar.
“I think it’s three of the Aces without Lowell,” Reece informs me while staring at the surveillance video on his cell phone.
“Let’s see what the fuck they want now,” Torin mutters before he walks out the door first with us following him.
The three men are already off their brightly-colored crotch rockets, removing their helmets.
“What the fuck is this little visit about?” Torin asks them.
“We’re not here to cause any trouble,” the one with wavy brown hair says. He’s the same guy who was the first to leave before when shit got ugly and the rest followed him. “I’m Malcolm, the president of the Dirty Aces. These guys are Silas and Nash. We wanted to talk to you about our boy, Lowell, and his girl.”