Ultimately, they could really see the effort that Stephen was putting in. After all, he didn’t just make a phone call to apologize. He flew all the way there, walked for miles in the rain, and flew back the next day. It was the perfect triumph of a great effort, bad planning, and some lousy luck.
In AA, they say that you have to be willing to go to any lengths to complete the steps. I could see that he was willing. I was living on my own in the Venice apartment when one day, I got a call from him.
“Hello, Laura.”
“How’s it going?”
He cleared his throat. “If you’re free tonight, I’d like to—if you don’t mind, I think it would be nice if—can I take you out on a date tonight?”
“Okay.”
He took me out that night to this cute diner in between our houses. We started to laugh again. At the end of the date, he took me straight home. A few days later:
“Can I take you out again tonight?”
“Café Gratitude?”
“Let’s do it.”
That night we arrived at the restaurant, and right as we got seated a chipper server came up to us. “Hi, my name’s Jeffrey, and I’ll be your server today. What makes you happy?”
Stephen and I looked at each other awkwardly. I forgot that the servers ask you a cheesy (but still vegan) question every time you eat there. I’m all for gratitude, but tonight I wasn’t in the mood.
“Butts.”
Stephen smiled at Jeffrey. “Yes. For me as well: butts.”
We started over slowly. We dated again. Eventually, he asked me to move back in with him. Once I trusted him completely, I did.
I believe that people can change. If they have the willingness, if they see a need within themselves, they can reach down within and change. I hate when people use the phrase “you are who you are” as an excuse to let themselves be less than the person they could be. Stephen did a really thorough inventory on himself and made one of the most difficult changes possible. He hit bottom and got better because he wanted to live. I could see it in his actions and I could feel it.
Remember when I had my relapse at six months of sobriety? That was when I learned that I had to put my sobriety before everything else. That struggle gave me the courage to get my own place and have space from Stephen. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love him dearly through all of it. I never stopped loving him, but I knew that I had to put my sobriety first. I had to have faith that if we were meant to be together, we would be. It was either trust the universe, or stay with Stephen and enable his addiction. If I had just been okay with everything he was doing, he would have just kept doing it. In the end, I believe it made him stronger and he is a better man than the one I met at that party. He’s kinder, more compassionate, more loving. He truly appreciates every day that he is alive, and that’s a wonderful way to live.
It was a bit past our second anniversary when we finally looked around our Santa Monica apartment and decided we couldn’t be there anymore. The whole space was filled with bad memories. The fighting, the abuse, and the lies all took place here. We weren’t in that place anymore mentally, so why should we be there physically? We decided to move out and start over, fresh.
We found a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills, next to Frank Zappa’s old house. Joni Mitchell was down the street. It had this sweet 1960s Laurel Canyon vibe. Our neighbor across the street was this seventy-five-year-old gay hippie who would always have these massive, crazy parties. Stephen and I had a window on the second story of our house that looked out onto the street . . . and honestly, sometimes it was better than watching TV. The neighbor would blast heavy metal in the morning and sometimes have busloads of little people trekking inside to his parties. We saw so many of his young boyfriends coming in and out of the house. It became our favorite thing to guess what the drama was between him and the twenty-five-year-old blond hottie, or if he was going to make it last with the thirty-year-old swoopy-haired one. It was the best when they would have actual yelling matches, so we could finally hear the dialogue.
“You have my cat, man! It’s not your cat, give me back my cat!!” yelled the swoopy-haired guy from the front driveway.
“You’re not getting the cat!” Our neighbor yelling from his house.
“Well I’m not leaving until you give me the cat!” Then he threw his bag down onto the ground.
Okay, so many questions. We really needed more on this couple. With both of us standing at our second-story window, I turned to Stephen: “Popcorn?”
“Oh, that would be good. I think we’ll be here awhile. Don’t you?”
I smiled. “I do.”
CHAPTER 10
Maggie: Cat
The story of Maggie begins on my third date with Stephen. I casually mentioned to him how much I loved cats, because that is textbook how to get a guy. Stephen looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Then let’s get one.”
“Um. What?”
“Let’s go rescue a cat. Why not?”
“You want to rescue a cat?”
“Come on, Laura. Let’s go.”
The next day we headed over to the animal shelter in Compton. There was this tiny gray cat in a cage, small as my palm. He was so friendly and loving, and he immediately got into my hand and started purring.
“Stephen, look at this one.”
“Awwwww.” Stephen came over and scratched the kitten’s head. “I love him. Let’s take him home.”
“NOPE,” a voice said.
We looked up to see a stressed-out-looking woman with her hands on her hips. “That one is part of a set. You take him, then you take his sister. The black-and-white one. No one is separating them.”
“What black-and-white one?”
She pointed to the farthest corner of the cage. Half shrouded in darkness and half burrowed underneath cardboard shavings was a terrified-looking calico kitten. I tried to reach for her, but she didn’t budge from her spot. Okay!
I turned to Stephen. “Well, I guess we need to get this one to get the gray one.”
Stephen looked nervous. “Um. Two cats? How much would you be coming over to see them and pet them and such—”
“You know what,” the lady continued, “those two came in twenty minutes ago. You don’t even have to fill anything out. Just take them.”
Oh my God, how easy! “We can just take them, Stephen!”
Stephen feigned enthusiasm pretty well. “I heard! How . . . brilliant.”
I walked out of the animal shelter with one kitten in each palm. Later I found out that Stephen doesn’t even like cats. He had one when he was little and it was an angry little fucker that would bite and scratch him all the time. So he was a little afraid of them. He just wanted me to come over all the time and he was willing to do anything to make that happen. Which is sweet, but also totally insane. Suddenly he was stuck with two of them running around his apartment, peeing on everything, and climbing into his guitar amp. He didn’t even think about the fact that he would be stuck with these cats forever if our relationship didn’t work out.
But, bygones, because we had them now! We named the gray one Allen after my grandfather. Totally kidding—that would actually make sense. Our actual nonsense reason was that naming a cat “Allen” just made us both laugh really hard.