Cool. So, I’ve officially humiliated myself twice in front of Wyatt Cole, which has got to be some kind of photography-student record. He freaking owes me…but now I feel like I’ve kicked a puppy. I can’t hold his gaze. The big sad cow eyes have become too much.
I pretend to pick a loose thread out of the bottom button on my shirt. “Right. Wow. Okay.” Be the bigger person, Ely Cohen. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat like that.”
“It’s all right,” Wyatt says, showing me the exact kind of quick and easy mercy that I would never have given him. “You’re right. I’ve been avoiding you. It’s just…I mean, you know. I don’t have to tell you what it’s like…between us. It’s hard to keep things…”
He trails off and I steal a glance up. Wyatt has one hand braced against the light table, his slim hip jutting out slightly to graze his tattooed thumb. His face, when I dare to look that far north, is tipped away from mine as Wyatt stares fiercely at some point on the far table.
He likes me, he likes me not. And he likes me!
Okay. He wants to play professionals? I’ll be professional.
This is the problem with being around genuinely good people. They never fail to make me feel about as charming as a nugget of dog poo on Mark Zuckerberg’s flip-flops. I feel like a perv for fantasizing about that tattooed thumb digging into my thigh when Wyatt is over here trying to be an adult and shit.
“It’s fine,” I say at last, stuffing both hands into my jean pockets. “So I guess…Tuesday, then.”
“Tuesday,” Wyatt agrees. He finally looks back at me and smiles, the same smile I remember from the club, with white and slightly crooked teeth. A dumb, golden retriever–type smile.
Well, I think as he finally walks away, my heart still pounding between my ears and my hands clenched into unseen fists. Well.
I’m fucked.
8
WYATT
I don’t see Ely often during school hours.
It’s an intentional choice, obviously. I even double-checked her schedule in the admin office to make sure I knew when to be mysteriously unavailable at my office—which might be overkill at this point, but I don’t trust myself. The thing about being an ex-addict is that you aren’t under any delusions about being a good person; you know exactly how far you’d go if given the chance. I constantly have to stay one step ahead of my own atrophied conscience. Outsmart myself before I can outsmart myself.
Despite intentionally ignoring her, I come close to texting her one night over the weekend. I have Ely’s number programmed into my phone from when she texted me after our night together, before I figured out she was a student. Before I looked at her portfolio again and discovered it was just as brilliant as I’d thought at first glance. She has real talent.
That could be why I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete the text I’ve typed out three separate times: Still on for Tuesday? An innocuous question, maybe, but I wouldn’t text any other student asking it. Which tells me everything I need to know about my own motivations.
“Fuck it,” I mutter at last, erasing the message and tossing my phone onto my desk. It startles Haze, who darts off onto the floor and vanishes into the other room. “Sorry.”
I’m not big on Narcotics Anonymous anymore. Not big on twelve-step programs in general. But they do have their place. And right now, I need the sense of stability and grounding that NA is really, really great at providing. I get plenty of support from my SMART Recovery group online. Or I did, anyway; since I started at Parker, the virtual meetings don’t fit my schedule anymore. Guess I’m gonna be making more appearances in person.
I toss a couple books in my satchel in case I want to spend time reading at a coffee shop after and head out. The Sunday night meeting is at a church a couple of blocks away. Every time I show up one of the members strongly implies this means I have no excuse not to be there every night—which is honestly part of why I keep my distance.
Most of the group has already gathered by the time I arrive. It’s the usual crowd; I spot Marcus, Karabeth, Ji, and Doug clustered together by the sign-in sheet where people on court-ordered meetings get their forms stamped. I occupy myself with the food table. Even when I was the one here on a judge’s orders, I had to admit that these grocery store powdered doughnuts hit the spot.
There’s no official leader at NA meetings. Everyone’s supposed to be on an equal footing here—which means the meeting starts once everyone has found a seat somewhere and one of the attendees volunteers to read the opening text. I have it memorized at this point.
“Hello, everyone.” Marcus is the chosen tribute this time. Which is great because Marcus is both my sponsor and my favorite out of everyone who comes to these things. “My name is Marcus, and I’m an addict. Welcome to Narcotics Anonymous. Let’s open this meeting with a moment of silence for the addict who still suffers….”
I might have over ten years under my belt, but being back at these meetings still serves a purpose. Just being here as a sign to people earlier in their recovery that you can do this, you can get and stay clean long term. But it’s good for me too. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how bad things used to be if you don’t remind yourself.
“Hi, I’m Wyatt, and I’m an addict,” I say about half an hour in, when there’s been a long enough break without anyone else speaking up.
Everyone murmurs the requisite “Hi, Wyatt,” and I plaster on a cursory smile.
“I’ve been clean for ten years and four months”—this earns a scattering of applause—“and I’m glad to be back with y’all tonight.”
I put a lot of effort into not looking at Doug, who is probably giving me a judgy look. I honestly have no idea why Doug hates me so much. Instead of looking at him, I focus on Marcus, who offers an encouraging nod and a wink.
“I grew up down in North Carolina, in a military family,” I continue. “My dad, both granddads, all my uncles, my brother…pretty much every man I knew went into the Marines straight outa high school. It’s not that you couldn’t go to college or get a different job or something, just that nobody did, and so nobody really knew how to do anything else. I had one cousin who got into State, and we all had no clue if we were supposed to congratulate him or not. It was like, Good for you, I guess, and good luck paying down those loans. There was always this unspoken implication that my cousin was a coward too afraid to enlist.”
I have no idea what happened to Rory, actually. We haven’t kept in touch. Maybe I could have reached out at some point along the line—the two black sheep of the Cole family connecting—but having gone to college doesn’t necessarily mean Rory is cool. For all I know, he feels the same way about me as everyone else in our family. Maybe he just learned enough in college to hide transphobia by pretending it was about feminism.