Me: no, I’ll be alright. Just holed up in the bathroom trying to figure out how to be a normal human again.
Wyatt: You should leave. I can call you an Uber. What’s your address?
Me: I’ll be ok. I came here with my roommates, I don’t want to ditch them.
Wyatt: I’m sure they’d understand your sobriety is more important.
Ophelia and Diego, naturally, have no idea I’m an addict. It’s a part of me I’d hoped to leave behind in California. I should have known that four years clean doesn’t make me the same as everybody else. They said that a million times in meetings, and I filed it away as information irrelevant to me. After all, I’d reinvented myself once; I could do it again.
Me: i’m fine. seriously
Wyatt: Have you been to a meeting in New York yet?
I cringe and bite the inside of my cheek. Honestly, I had kind of hoped to just…not go back. NA was helpful. I used to need it every day—sometimes more than once in a day, in fact. But it’s been four years. Aside from parties with unanticipated cokeheads presenting themselves in front of my camera lens, I actually do pretty well most of the time.
Me: No. I don’t want addiction to become my life, the way it used to be
Wyatt, of course, replies almost instantly to that one.
Wyatt: If recovery becomes your life, that’s not the worst thing in the world. Have you told anyone else here about your history? Do you have any friends you trust?
The little ellipsis at the bottom of the screen suggests he’s typing another text. A part of me doesn’t even want to know what he’ll say. It’s going to be something grotesquely kind and wise, and I don’t deserve either of those things from him.
From anyone, really.
It’s my own fault for texting him. Now I’ve gone and made myself look pitiful in his eyes. Now he’ll want to fix me, and the thought is terrible enough to make me wish I’d stayed home tonight in the first place.
Wyatt: Recovery isn’t something to be ashamed of. But I get it. And I’m here, if you need to talk.
Oh, fuck me.
My stupid brain can’t decide if I’m embarrassed beyond all belief or if it was worth it. My predictions were right, of course. Everything Wyatt says to me feels like a hug, his fingers squeezing my shoulders and the skin of his cheek warm against mine.
But he didn’t sign up to be my sponsor. Or my dad.
And I don’t want him to be either of those things either.
I shut off my phone and stand, shoving it into my back pocket and facing myself in the mirror once more. I pinch my cheeks; it only serves to make me look feverish. I make a face at my reflection instead and turn and open the door and find myself face-to-face with Ophelia.
“Ely,” she says, looking as surprised as I feel. “Hi. Enjoying the party so far?”
She has a beer in hand, so she’s already enjoying it far more than I am. “Sure. Yeah. How about you?”
But of course, Ophelia’s too smart to fall for that. Her purple-painted lips tilt into a frown. “Are you okay?”
A ragged laugh shudders up from my chest, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel like I’m on the verge of bursting into tears.
Ophelia’s eyes widen and she reaches for my hand, squeezing tight. “Come here,” she says, tugging me after her. “Let’s go get some air, yeah?”
I follow her through the stuffy main rooms of the apartment and into the bedroom, which is less busy—just a few people hanging around sharing drinks and chatting in lowered voices. Ophelia pushes open the window and climbs through, out onto the fire escape. It’s a warm night, balmy, and smells like smoke. I realize why when I peer over the railing and spot someone a couple of stories below leaning against the rail, the lit coal of their cigarette a glowing ember in the dark.
Ophelia sits down near the edge, her legs dangling out over open air. She pats the spot to her right and I join her, watching my feet hover far above the sidewalk. My socks, the ones with pineapples on them, look childish juxtaposed with Ophelia’s pink fishnets.
“You good?” she says, shooting me a quick look.
Outside is better. There’s air on my face, even if it’s tobacco laced. And I prefer the sound of honking cars and miscellaneous shouting to the white noise of a drunken party. The old Ely would be horrified by how square I am now, but it’s true.
“Yeah,” I say. “Working on it.” I press my palms to my face and blow out a heavy breath, trapping that heat against my cheeks for a moment before I let my hands drop. “Sorry. I know this isn’t flattering.”
“What do you mean?”
I’m already kicking myself. This isn’t flattering—who says that? It sounds like I’m fishing for reassurance. “Nothing. Sorry. I just…got a little freaked-out for a second. But I’m fine now. It’s fine.”
But somehow this only serves to make Ophelia look even more concerned. “What happened? Do I need to talk to someone?”
“No—god, no, nothing like that.” I have to say it. There’s no way around it now; Ophelia’s already drawing her own conclusions, and they’re probably worse than the truth. Not that I could have kept my past hidden much longer anyway. At some point she and Diego were gonna notice that I never drink with their other friends. Or smoke. Or, apparently, do lines of coke.
I dig my fingers against the grate of the fire escape and try to focus on that, on the chilly iron against my skin.
“I’m in recovery,” I say. “I used to be an addict.” Twelve-step programs would say I still am, but that kind of language has always stuck in my craw. “Opiates, mostly. Heroin. Sometimes other things too.” I can’t look at Ophelia. I don’t want to see the expression on her face: Pity, perhaps. Or disgust. Instead I focus on my words, on saying them as if by rote like I’m reciting a script someone else drafted. “Anyway. I’ve been clean for four years, but things like this can be hard for me sometimes.”
I pretend to be overly concerned with my nails for a second, digging at a cuticle as if I’m the kind of person who gives a shit about my cuticles.
“We could have stayed home tonight,” Ophelia says. I’m surprised by how gentle her voice sounds, almost apologetic. I glance up and find her face still close to mine. I don’t see pity or disgust there, no matter how hard I look. “It would have been just as fun to do something else.”
“I’m usually okay, actually. I mean, it’s been years. I didn’t have any problem when we went to Revel. But sometimes I see something and it triggers me, then I’m all…” I flutter a hand in the air, not sure how else to explain the way it’s like your mind breaks down all at once, decomposing into disjointed parts. One second you feel like a human, and the next you’re a quivering puddle.