“Ada called me last week asking for money, which isn’t anything new. I told her she can come back to our apartment. I give her safety, and she refuses. I’ve attended a dozen groups like this before to figure out how to get her to realize she needs to live. And that’s why I’m here. I need someone to tell me how to make it happen.”
I clasped my shaking hands and pushed my elbows into my thighs to stop my bobbing legs. “I-I want her back. I need her back.”
The therapist nodded like she was unpacking what she’d heard. “We’re all here because we care, and it’s not a one-way journey. But I challenge each of you to remember that the person you’re trying to speak to is not who you believe they are. You’ll end up disappointed if you think they’re someone else when you talk to them. And one way to help with the disappointment is to stop talking.”
“Don’t you get it? If I stop talking to her, she dies. My parents are having a wedding renewal coming up, and if she tried, they’d probably talk to her again.” I covered my wrist with my other hand and squeezed it, my pulse pounding against my fingertips as anger floated up from my belly into my throat, the pressure making it hard to breathe. “What are we supposed to learn from coming to these meetings? Are we supposed to just let the people we love wither away and fucking die?”
I couldn’t hold back, my voice growing with the surge of fury rising inside of me. The sensation of everyone’s eyes on me and the room’s stillness clawed at my throat, paralyzing it. I swallowed through the unbearable pressure, preparing for the quiver that would happen once I gained my voice again.
My cheeks puffed as I exhaled a long breath and wiggled out the tightness in my jaw. With a throat now raw from suppressing the urge to scream, I cleared my throat and trudged on.
“I wish I could go back in time and make sure she didn’t get behind the wheel. I want—” I closed my eyes, held back the sudden blur of tears, and clenched my wrist harder. “I want her to come home.”
“Sometimes you just need to let someone hurt without telling them how to deal with their pain,” the therapist said from my left. “You can keep the line of connection open with her, allow her a place to stay, or help her get to rehab if she wants that, but you can’t force sobriety onto someone. They have to choose it for themselves.”
It was an impossibility for me to not try to help Ada, especially when she didn’t even have the will to survive anymore. For the last two years, she’d toed the line between life and death. I couldn’t just sit idly and let her make the mistake again and again.
I rested my elbows on my knees and stared at the floor. I’d witnessed what happened to Ada when my parents cut her off, how quickly she spiraled.
Each day, I carried the burden of guilt as I slowly began to understand that my unwavering trust in the special connection between Ada and myself made me oblivious to the early indications of her addiction.
I’d end up waking up to a phone call worse than the night she totaled her car—she’d be gone forever.
After the support group ended, everyone walked out into the buzz of people involved in various activities both inside and outside. On Sunday afternoons, the Collective hosted an afternoon potluck event to help with community building.
I had a hard time getting into the laughter, music, and conversation, so I slid on a pair of dark-lensed glasses to hide my bloodshot eyes. I managed to get through the crowd without drawing any attention.
That was interrupted when someone called my name. I looked over my shoulder as Leon Walker, one of the founding directors, waved at me and headed my direction. I’d seen him around, but we’d never spoken to each other. I wondered what he wanted to say.
“Hey there,” Leon said, offering a hand to shake. “Been seeing you here on Sundays, and I haven’t introduced myself to you yet.”
The smile I had forced through made my lips ache. For someone who ran a whole-ass community center, it was a little jarring that Leon reached out individually. This place saw a ton of people, but somehow the three founders—Leon, Toryn, and Mariah—always made an effort to befriend everyone and make them feel welcome.
“Hey, how’re you doing?”
“Ah, you know, busy as always. Scheduling summer programs always get hectic. Gonna have a full house for the next few weeks,” Leon said, nodding toward the crowd of kids running around in the background. “Wanted to know if you were interested in hanging around for the potluck. We got a wonderful local barbecue place hosting, and it is out of this world.”
“Unfortunately, that won’t work out today,” I said, affecting my voice with regret as I nodded my head to my car. “Maybe next time.”
“Well, potluck will be here all summer,” Leon said without any judgment in his tone.
That was one thing that kept me coming back here, how no one ever pressured anyone to stay. Some people left for months before returning to the Collective, and every volunteer welcomed them with joy.
Before I could come up with an excuse to way to break off the conversation and head to my car, Leon asked, “How do you feel about volunteering?”
I blinked, thrown. Definitely didn’t intend for this guy to show up asking me about that. “Like, objectively or personally?”
“I was aiming for personal, but now I’m curious about your opinion,” Leon said, tucking a hand into the pocket of his denim shorts.
“I can be persuaded either way depending on the circumstance, but I can’t say in good conscience that I won’t come up with an excuse to get out of it if something else comes up that’s more motivating.”
Leon’s laugh was famously infectious and impossible to avoid joining. It settled the jittery melody humming under my skin, and the tight fist gripping my heart loosened.
It was the first full breath I’d taken in the last half hour.
There was still laughter in his voice when Leon said, “I’m not sure if this’ll be an easy sell, but Hard Knox Roller Derby is having a fundraiser where it’s an open lap to the public. All the concession sales will go to the Collective.” He knocked his knuckles against the clipboard and handed it to me. “You free?”
The bout was Wednesday. Ada had played on the derby team for three years while she was in college and had loved it. When she’d first joined, I thought she’d lost her damn mind, but when Ada got her mind fixated on something, she was going to do it no matter what anyone said.
Before we’d figured out that she was using drugs, she’d faded off the roster. She’d also been telling us she withdrew from classes, but after we saw the drugs hidden in her bedroom, my parents found out she’d failed out of her last semester.
She’d been on pills and coke for six months.
I still went to see the derby team play, still clinging, in a sense, to the Ada I missed. I hadn’t heard from her in several days, but this could be a lifeline back to her, to get a glimpse of the fun and life of her past. Her interest in something again.
I still followed the team on social media. New people had joined since Ada’s time, and the long-timers were still hanging around.
“Yeah, I’m free,” I said, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. I clicked the pen top on the clipboard, wrote down my name and number, and handed it back to Leon. “I got a friend who’ll come too.”
Leon did a small fist pump. “The event is at the World’s Fair Park at seven, so we ask that you show up an hour before.” I nodded along, feigning ignorance, as if it was my first time ever doing it.
I got back to my car and found multiple texts from Ada, continually apologizing and begging for my forgiveness. I couldn’t make Ada get clean, but there was a chance if I showed her what used to make her happy. Maybe then she’d want to try.
I hit the button and called Ada. When the line connected, I took a breath and said, “There’s something I want you to check out.”
There was music booming on the other line, mixing in with an argument I couldn’t make out. After a full minute of waiting, Ada said, “Tell me where I need to be and at what time and I’ll be there.”
She didn’t say goodbye when she hung up, which had become the norm between us. Ada had lost most of the light that had burst out of her. Now all that remained of her presence was a miasmic fog and its death grip on my throat.
The connection between us was fading into obscurity. Loneliness washed over me, sending shivers down my spine and making my stomach churn with nausea. I rolled down my window and closed my eyes, feeling the warm breeze brush against my face as I wished that loving someone didn’t have to be so torturous.
NIK
Deliveries at work were always a pain in the ass because Sunrise depended on local farms for our stock. Spring meant a whole new inventory to figure out. Which would’ve been no big deal if the new trainees would stop with their fucking smoke breaks.
“Yeah, well if shit doesn’t start settling down, I just might say fuck it and take a long smoke break myself,” Walt said as he pushed a cart of meat delivery past me. Apparently, I’d said that last bit out loud.
“If you wanna quit, you can take that up with Duncan tomorrow, but I need you to be doing your full eight,” I said while flipping through the recent delivery’s inventory sheet. An unexpected hard freeze pushed through the east and left many of the vendors scrambling to find ways to get what inventory they had to us. Which meant the delivery bay was a constant flow of drop-offs, leaving our backroom in chaos.
And then the Wi-Fi went down in the store.
I flicked a glance at the open bay where three produce trucks had backed into the loading area and shook my head. “Hell, on second thought, I may join you.”
After a couple more hours, Duncan came in the back and gave us the good news—the Wi-Fi was fixed. Some of the tension in my jaw released.
“Now we’re back into the twenty-first century, I should be able to get all this finished by the end of the day,” I said, ushering Duncan away from the mess. “All I need is another coffee or four.”
