I shake my head. “That’s not what my sponsor would say.”
Wyatt sighs. “Listen. I like NA as much as the next addict. It does great things for a lot of people. But in my opinion, that’s one thing twelve-step programs get wrong. You don’t have to be defined by your addiction, and you don’t have to go back to square one just because you messed up. You still have all the tools and skills you’ve developed this whole time you’ve been clean, and you can use those to stay clean. One mistake doesn’t mean you have to turn in your chip.” He shrugs one shoulder. “But hey, that’s just my opinion.”
The smile that tugs at my mouth feels fragile, but at least it’s real. “I like your opinion.”
“Me too. Generally speaking, I think my opinions are pretty good.”
The three-legged black cat takes that opportunity to reappear and try to walk across what’s left of my pancake breakfast.
“Oops! Hi, little buddy,” I say, gently picking it up and redirecting it onto my lap. “Sorry, that food’s not for cats.”
Wyatt laughs and tilts forward, scratching the cat behind one fuzzy ear. Wyatt’s abrupt proximity makes my stomach lurch, even if his attention is focused exclusively on those of the feline persuasion.
“This is Haze,” he says. “I’ve had him for three years. He’s the most annoying cat on earth.”
“Isn’t every cat the most annoying cat on earth?”
“Yeah, but mine actually wins.”
Haze rubs the side of his face against my palm, thrumming out a low purr. “I can’t believe he’s really sitting here, doing this. Most cats I know stay as far away from strange humans as they can get.”
“Haze might be the most annoying cat on earth, but he’s also the best.” Wyatt’s giving him this big soppy grin, like he’s an absolute idiot for little void cats, and I love him so much more for it.
Wait. Love?
Nope don’t go there nope nope nope. Especially not right now.
I turn my attention back to my plate. The pancakes have gone cold and slightly mushy now, but it’s for the best; my stomach is still uneasy from last night. I take a tentative bite of sausage instead. “Okay,” I say after I’ve swallowed. “Okay. I’m telling this to you, Haze, so you can hold me to it. Last night was…a blip. That’s all. I’m not starting over. I’m continuing.”
“I like that. A blip.”
I do too. Although a part of me worries, as I keep one hand moving at a slow and steady pace down Haze’s lavishly undulating spine, that this is still the wrong way to think about it. Am I making excuses if I let myself believe that one slipup does not make a relapse? Is that just giving myself permission to slip up again—and again—and again?
I can’t afford to keep doing this. I can’t go back to how I was. Never.
But the idea of starting over…it makes me feel like something’s been carved out of me. It makes me feel hopeless. And that feels even more dangerous.
“I was gonna go to a meeting today,” Wyatt says after a while, once I’ve made nibbling progress through half my sausage. “Maybe you’d like to come with me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”
And it is. As much as a part of me resents the idea of being back there, sitting in one of those hard folding chairs in a church basement, picking away at stale doughnuts, it’s where I need to be right now.
I just wish I could reach inside myself and excise the shame that has taken root in my gut, growing like a tumor.
Haze mraows loudly and smashes his face against the underside of my chin, a gesture of pure adoration that I do not deserve, not even from a three-legged black cat.
I wish I could see myself the way Wyatt sees me.
But I can’t.
23
I’ve been to my fair share of NA meetings. For the most part, they’re all the same—they follow a very specific formula, even if who’s there and the content of what they have to say changes. I know Wyatt said I don’t have to start over, but I feel like it chisels away at a piece of my heart every time someone gets out of their chair to receive a chip. Especially the black ones for two or more years. That’s what I had, before I fucked everything up.
“How are you feeling?” Wyatt asks me after, once we’ve settled into our seats at the diner next door. The waitress was quick about bringing coffee; I cup my hands around the warm mug and tip my face toward the steam.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Disappointed in myself. Annoyed. I keep wishing I could rewind and make a different choice, but that’s obviously impossible. So I guess I’m just stuck here with the consequences of my own stupid decisions.”
“It’s going to feel that way for a while,” Wyatt admits. “When I had my first relapse, I hated myself for weeks. Ended up spiraling, started using again for a few months before I was able to get myself checked in to another detox.”
I glance up from my coffee, meeting Wyatt’s gaze across the table. “I didn’t know you relapsed.”
“Oh yeah. Three times. Everybody does.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Or a lot of people, anyway. If you managed to stay clean after your first go-round in rehab, you’re a unicorn.”
“I did. I mean…I had a great support system. I had Shannon—she’s my sponsor, or she was, anyway. She was basically my best friend back in LA. And I had gotten involved in the art scene right around that time too, so I had those friends. Had to ditch a few of them because they were still using, and the rest I kind of…”
That was one of the hardest parts about getting clean. My first connections to art people had been through other users. People who could, it seemed, just do a little casual coke on the weekend and be perfectly fine afterward. I mean, maybe not. I didn’t know their lives; maybe they were just as broken as I had been. But I always felt like I was different. There was a section of my brain hell-bent on killing me, and the rest of my brain was more than happy to let it try.
Of course, now I’m thinking about how I still haven’t texted Shannon since the slipup. I don’t even know if I can. How can I admit to her what happened? After everything she has done to help me get—and stay—clean? It feels like a slap in the face.
And now that I think about it, I haven’t texted her at all, period, about anything, in like…weeks.
It’s a classic Ely move. My brain loves sabotaging friendships. Every time I get a good one, my shadow self is right there to be, like, lol, bitch, you thought.
“You have support here too,” Wyatt says. His voice is soft, gentle, as if he thinks I need convincing. “You have Michal, and your roommates. You have…well. You have me.”