My blood flipped from fire and flames to ice and shards of glass. Our interactions had evolved into a loop of predictability. I could count measure by measure what she’d say, yet still her words still cut into my heart, leaving behind a little less of myself and my fight for her to find the will to live.
“Why did you come?” I asked, too tired to try to fight anymore. Ada stopped, her wild eyes locking onto mine. I clung onto the meager spark of lucidity that flashed through. “Be real with me. Why did you come?”
Ada’s mouth flapped open and closed as she smacked the side of her neck. Before she could answer, a souped-up truck pulled into the fire lane, bass pumping hard enough to vibrate in my knees. I couldn’t make out the who was behind the wheel, but when a deep voice called Ada and flashed his lights at us, I gritted my teeth to stop myself from running over and slamming the guy’s face into the steering wheel.
“I need money. Something to get me through the week,” Ada said, her voice trembling while she wrapped the oversize T-shirt it around her hands like a noose.
“I can’t do that. If you want to get help—”
Ada was already running toward the truck, pulling the door open with both hands. I could hear the argument through the opened window as it drove off, the brake lights blurring through my tears.
Sometimes I wish I could stop crying for Ada. My mother didn’t cry when Ada walked out of her last rehab, too spent on energy and worry. By that point, my parents had split, and Mom had moved out of my childhood home to her own apartment. It was as if that trifecta had scooped my mother’s soul out of her body, ripped it to shreds, and shoved back into the empty shell.
At the time I believed the rickety road of life had shaped her cynicism, and her desperation for Ada’s survival had vanished. It was a trap I’d promised myself I wouldn’t fall into, and as easy as it would be to follow her, I still couldn’t do it.
I headed back inside, refusing to leave Dakota hanging. Thankfully, the demand for concessions had died down. Grabbing bottle of water out of the cooler, I guzzled half of it down, cooling the rawness in my throat.
“You wanna go to the after-party?” Dakota asked, tender worry in his eyes.
I was touched that he tried to get my mind off of Ada, and I summoned a smile to reassure him. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll pass.”
Dakota bumped shoulders with me. “I figured. Let’s hang tomorrow, then. Evie asked if she could go skating with her friends, and I could use someone to play teacher for them.”
It wasn’t a request, and it’d be an act of futility to argue. We got through the end of the fundraiser and cleanup, but the thought of going home alone still nagged at me. Tomorrow I’d have to reconcile with Ada because this was the time of month where I needed to ensure her prepaid phone wasn’t fucking ruined.
I watched the cars disappearing from the parking lot, and an itch to see Nik again tickled my skin. Nik did have a way of making me forget about the pain. Thinking about his hands alone made me feral. The dude was extraordinary, that was for sure.
I grabbed my phone and scrolled for Nik’s number, grateful that I’d already made plans with him. I’d worry about Ada tomorrow, but right now I had nothing else to lose.
NIK
Tristan and I kept our eyes on the kids while they ran laps around the infield. The team had a lot of newcomers this year, most of whom were eager to show off their skills.
“All right, y’all, let’s line up for some exercises. There are balls over near the bleachers, and I want everyone to find a partner and begin doing throws for a bit,” Tristan said with a loud clap, pointing at home plate.
I shuffled my feet, unable to stay still. The entire practice I’d been thinking about Micah and trying to figure why the hell I’d agreed to seeing him later. It’d be easy to shrug it off and say it was about getting my dick wet, but I knew it wasn’t.
Hooking up with Micah was the freest I’d felt in years. But there were risks, and I didn’t take risks. Working at Sunrise showed me how all it took was one crappy week and I could be off the wagon.
God, was I making a mistake?
It was a gamble to bring it up to Tristan because he may not even have an answer, but what the fuck else did I have to lose?
“Do you think it’s bad if you play it safe with life?”
Tristan didn’t answer for a while. I stole a quick look and saw his mouth twisted to the side, eyes squinting in the distance. He looked like he was about to answer, but the kids were going into the restless part of practice. I jogged over and told them to get in their positions and gave a ball to the first pitch.
Our attention stayed focused on the game, pumping out praise to one of the kids who caught a high kick and gained an out. The game continued, and Tristan and I slipped into our roles, which was basically to make sure none of these five-year-olds hurt themselves and ended up in the hospital.
We hooted at a home run, handing out high-fives. After the kids settled down, Tristan returned to his stance, eyes on the field. “Everyone feels like that at times,” he finally answered.
I had a real hard time believing that Tristan felt like that. He had a guy that made him look goofy as fuck in love, and if it wasn’t that, Maddie sure as hell kept these dudes on their toes.
“Sure, but I’m not that normal dude who’s got something to offer. I got no education. Hell, I barely got a GED. The only things I do in my life that isn’t dealing with recovery is a weekly pottery class and coaching for this team. That’s it.”
It felt like lying that I left my relationship, or whatever it was, with Micah out of the conversation, but I had this urge to protect it. As much as I’d been trying to convince myself that it was because of the mind-blowing sex, it wasn’t. It was how he hit me up at random and pulled me out of the safety of my routine, how he made all those boring bits seem less annoying.
Tristan faced me. He had his serious eyebrows going on, which meant he was deciding what to say. I called it his professor stare because I imagined it was a look he gave his students at the university.
I watched the kids play, their joyous faces like warm sunshine. Their laughter was the purest sound I’d ever heard. They had so much love inside of them and all this potential. Yet I knew that some of them wouldn’t make it very far, just like I hadn’t, because they’d seen some shit.
It made me want to protect them even more, but I knew the world was way bigger than me, and it would eventually sink its dirty claws into them. It always did.
“How would you describe me to these kids?” I asked, knowing I’d thrown Tristan off by my random shift in conversation. It may not have made sense to him, but I really felt like I was on to something, and I was able to say what was bugging me out loud. “You wouldn’t just tell a five-year-old I’m an ex-junkie?”
“Of course not. That’s—” Tristan rubbed his fingers along the side of his jaw and drew a harsh breath, his cheeks puffing. “You’re not obligated to give all the details of your life to people. Everyone has demons. Some are trying to make amends with them, and others push them away so they don’t have to look at them. Not many people can face them like you do.”
I rubbed my thumb along the scars on my veins, the ones I spent an extra ten minutes every day covering up. “I just don’t wanna be a cliché, man. But I have to be careful because all it could take is a bad week and I’m back where I started.”
Tristan gave me a kind smile and said, “You have way more wisdom than you give yourself credit for, so try to follow your gut every once in a while and see where it takes you. There’s nothing wrong with being a little impulsive now and then.”
Tristan’s advice sounded eerily close to Duncan’s. As much as I believed what they had to say, recovery didn’t stop. My throat grew tight, and I rubbed over the scars on my arm.
“Hey, Tris . . . could you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
