Chapter Eight
Erik
The words had come out of my mouth before I could sensor them. I had been thinking she was the most beautiful woman I had seen in a very long time, but as she stood there, my mouth spoke before I could stop myself. I really wasn’t the type of guy who gave out compliments to women. It even caught me off guard.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I had actually said the words out loud or not. She turned to look at me and then back toward the cabinet. I expected her to say something; I wasn’t sure what I thought she would say, but surely she would have some sort of response to the compliment I had just given her.
I had an overwhelming urge to kiss her. To be honest, I had felt that way since I had first laid eyes on her, but now I felt like I couldn’t hold back. I shouldn’t have gotten so close to her because the second I walked over to the cabinet to hand her the stack of papers that were left on the table, I was close enough to smell her. Close enough that my senses had taken over and the words had escaped me before I could hold my control over them.
A light, flowery scent combined with what I thought was cinnamon made Cassidy smell good enough to eat. Oh, how I would have loved to nibble on every inch of her body. Seriously, I didn’t know what had come over me. I didn’t nibble on random girls. I screwed them. I wasn’t a flowery kind of guy. I wasn’t a crafting kind of guy, yet there I was, crafting and thinking about the flowery scent of this girl.
“Here are the papers,” I said as I handed the stack of collage paper to her and tried to totally ignore that fact that she hadn’t responded to me telling her she was beautiful.
“Thanks.”
She turned around to face me and then quickly back to the inside of the cabinet and stayed there for much longer than she needed to. My hand reached out to touch her shoulder, but then I decided not to. I wasn’t thinking straight. She was only being nice to me because she worked there, nothing more and nothing less. I had to be imagining the chemistry going on between us because I had been away from women for so long.
Cassidy was still close to me. She didn’t push me away. She didn’t seem to mind my close proximity to her. There was a primal urge that had me wanting to press her up against that storage closet and bang her. My body was hard with even the slightest possibility of feeling her wetness around me. My brain could only think about sex in that moment. All reason was long gone, and somehow, I felt like the possibility of having this girl was real.
“We should get you back to your unit,” she said as she expertly closed the cabinet and stepped away from me at the same time.
She didn’t look at me as we walked back to the unit, and I tried not to look at her. But it was impossible not to watch her as she walked in front of me. Her ass was insanely perfect in a pair of tight, black scrub pants. I physically had to hold onto my own hands to prevent myself from reaching out and grabbing her ass cheeks.
It wasn’t like me to have to control of myself. Normally, I was the center of attention. The girls would throw themselves at me; they wanted to land me just as badly as I wanted to land them. Girls literally showed up naked in my bedroom, just wanting to screw and take a selfie of us together in bed.
I wasn’t complaining. Most guys my ages wouldn’t complain about the number of women I had. But it got old. The same lines all the time. The same women, even. Well, not literally the same women, but they all tended to blend together. The women at my parties laughed at my jokes, dressed in tiny outfits, did drugs with me, and any sexual thing I asked of them. When I would get bored, I would come up with random things to do in the bedroom, just to see if they would do it.
“Pour that shampoo all over yourself and roll around on the tiles,” I had said to one girl when I was drunk.
She didn’t even hesitate. Before I knew it, she was slipping all over the ground.
It wasn’t real, though. That was the problem. The girls who showed up in my bedroom weren’t there because they had gotten to know me and thought I was a great guy. They were in my bedroom to say they had slept with Erik Levy, the Silicon Valley tech millionaire.
I didn’t blame them. I was much more at fault than they were. I could have said no. I should have said no on many occasions. But I was caught up in the drugs, booze, and girls at the time. There were plenty of guys in the Silicon Valley who were millionaires and didn’t act like total jerks. They had a normal life with friends and family, but I was on a totally different road.
Now, as I watched Cassidy walk, my primal instincts flooded back to me, but my clear head also brought a bit of sense. I knew I couldn’t have this girl. I knew that it didn’t matter if she was beautiful and intelligent; she was out of reach for me. It was an entirely new feeling for me. I didn’t normally feel like a girl was off limits, but Cassidy had to be.
A girl like Cassidy wasn’t going to fall for a guy that was in treatment, anyways, and definitely not a guy who was barely participating in treatment. If I ever wanted to land any sort of stability in my life, I really had to take more control of my decisions.
Certainly, I felt like people exaggerated my drug and alcohol use. I still felt like I could control myself. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to hang out at Paradise Peak through the end of the program. The staff was nice, even the other patients seemed pretty enjoyable. Suddenly, the idea of making the most of my time at the rehab center seemed like the best possible option.
I wouldn’t have to be alone at Christmas or feel bad for not going home to visit my father. The idea of staying at treatment was much more appealing than I had imagined it would be. It gave me the excuse I needed not to deal with my family.
Not only did I feel a little more motivated to explore what Paradise Peak had to offer me, I was also going to avoid the uncomfortable holiday season back at my big house all alone. It was perfect and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it earlier.
“All right, there you go,” Cassidy said as she walked me onto the unit and then turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said and reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry for being inappropriate. The words just came out before I could stop them.”
“It happens all the time.” She laughed and then looked down at my hand on hers.
“I bet it does,” I said and pulled my hand away.
“I’m joking, Erik. It’s never happened before,” she said as she took another step away from me. “I’m not really the kind of girl who people call beautiful.”
Surely, she was joking. Did Cassidy actually not realize how truly pretty she was? Her clear skin looked like milk; it was perfectly smooth without even the slightest sign of aging. Then there was her red hair. It wasn’t a dull or brownish color; no, instead her hair lit up a room as the lights reflected off of the shiny deep red tones.
“That can’t be true,” I managed to say. “You are beautiful.”
I was one hundred percent sincere. I wasn’t trying to bullshit her and I wasn’t trying to get anything in return, I just really hated the idea that she didn’t think she was beautiful. Cassidy was both beautiful outside and inside; she was the ideal of what men looked for in a woman. It baffled me that such a beauty really couldn’t see what she brought into the world simply by being herself.
“You better get back to your room,” she said as she pulled the door shut.
She didn’t look like she believed me at all, but there was a small smile on her face as she left me on the unit. I was glad to be right where I was. For whatever reason, I was at the treatment center and I finally felt like it was good for me. Even if I just used the time to relax and better myself, that would be at least worth the time and money I was putting into it.
There was a new sense of purpose as I went back to my room and crashed on the bed. Somehow, my embarrassing incident with Cassidy had just motivated me to make a little effort and participate. What was the worst that could happen if I made an effort and participated during my treatment at the facility? I didn’t really see a down side, except maybe lack of sleep from getting up so damn early.
Lunch in the dining room, afternoon group therapy, evening individual therapy – I went to it all. I didn’t always participate, but I made more of an effort than I had since arriving. Even my conversations with Jarrod during my individual therapy were much deeper than they had been before. There was still a wall up around me, but I felt like I was in letting people see a little bit of me.
“Erik, we are doing an AA meeting tonight; why don’t you join us?” Jarrod asked as he gathered up a few of the patients.
“I’m not really into that.”
“You’re not into what?” Jarrod asked.
He wasn’t asking sarcastically; he genuinely seemed to want to hear what I had to say about AA meetings. The truth was, I didn’t know all that much about them. What I thought I knew was that everyone stood up and admitted to being alcoholics and then prayed to God to forgive them. I didn’t have anything against people who went to AA meetings, they obviously had helped a lot of people, but it wasn’t really my thing.
Religion had never been my thing. Well, before my mother passed away, we had gone to church, but very infrequently. When Mom was sick, we went almost every Sunday. I prayed for her to get better; my brother and father prayed for her to get better. But God clearly wasn’t listening to our prayers because she died.
After my mother’s death, religion no longer had a place in my life. I didn’t have time to pray to a God who wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t have the energy to think that someone was going to make things better for me. Instead, I took on the mentality that only I could make life better for myself. I couldn’t count on God, I couldn’t count on my family; the only person I could count on was myself.
“You know, all that religious stuff,” I replied.
“Hey man, I understand. I’m not all that religious either. Why not give it a try and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come back next time. We only meet a couple times during the week. It’s not a required meeting, so you won’t lose points or gain points based on attendance.”
Normally, I would have said no. Hell, even if he had asked me earlier that morning I probably would have said no. But I had spent the whole day participating in groups and meetings and I just figured what could one more meeting hurt? I was on a roll and decided to give it a try.
“All right, I’ll come, but I’m just going to chill, if that’s all right.”
“You can participate as much as you want.”
Jarrod seemed pretty proud of himself for luring me into coming to his AA meeting. I wanted to tell him not to get so damn excited; I wouldn’t be going to any others, but I decided to just sit quietly and see what happened. He was a good guy who clearly wanted to help me.
“Hey, everyone, I hope your night is going well,” Stan said as he got up and started the meeting.
It was a bit of a shocker to see Jarrod sitting in the seats and Stan up front leading, but I just went with the flow. I didn’t know what to expect at one of these meetings.
“I’m Stan. I’m and alcoholic, it’s been twenty-eight days since I had a drink,” Stan continued on.
“Hi, Stan,” the group said in unison.
“Tonight, I wanted to talk about a phone call I had with my daughter. It went really poorly. That’s putting it lightly. Actually, she cried and screamed and told me I was a horrible father to her during her entire life.”
Stan looked down for a moment to compose himself. I hadn’t seen much emotion at all from the man since I had been on the unit with him. He normally kept pretty much to himself and didn’t interact much more than the usual pleasantries. I felt bad that his daughter would say such horrible things to her own father.
“You know the part about the call that hurt me the most though?” Stan asked as he looked back up at the group. “She was right. Every single word she said was exactly right. When she was young, I was on tour. I barely stopped back at home. My wife, well my ex-wife, finally got sick of it and left me.
“But she was damn good to me. Anytime I was in town, my ex offered to let me have Rosie. She would even bring Rosie to my tour bus when I was close to town. But I couldn’t be bothered by a little girl. I was rotten.”
“You’re a good man, Stan,” Kimber yelled out. “We know you mean well.”
“Thanks, Kimber, but is meaning well and doing well actually the same thing? I’ve been off the road for five years now. I drink more than I eat. I never go to my daughter’s house and visit with her. I’m a grandfather, you know. But I wouldn’t trust myself around little children. I’m useless, and I don’t want to be like that.
“I want to be the kind of grandpa that the kids beg to come see. I want to offer to watch her children for a weekend and let her and her husband have some time together. I’m not here just for me this time. I’m going to get sober because I want to be remembered for doing something better than playing the damn drums.” Stan was starting to tear up. “Well, I guess that’s all I had to say. Thanks for listening.”
“Thanks for sharing, Stan,” Jarrod said as he stood up and patted Stan on the back.
I was moved by Stan’s story. He seemed to really care about his daughter now, and I couldn’t help but hope they would work things out. I had noticed that everyone was really supportive in all of my group sessions. It was a new thing for me, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it just yet, but I could see how that support was helping others.
“Does anyone else have anything to share?” Jarrod asked the group.
“My last boyfriend hit me. I don’t care that my current boyfriend doesn’t have a job and is old. I feel safe with him,” Kimber said as she stood up.
Everyone froze and looked at her in shock as they waited for her to elaborate or ask a question. But she didn’t say anything else and just sat back down.
“Thanks for sharing, Kimber.”
I saw Jarrod look toward me, and I avoided his gaze almost instantly. I didn’t have a thing to share at all. I wasn’t going to spill my personal business there in a group with a bunch of addicts. Sure, I had attended the other groups throughout the day, but they had asked questions about sobriety, support systems, and making plans for the future. We hadn’t shared our fears or hopes and certainly nothing as personal as what Stan and Kimber had shared.
A few other people shared their stories as I sat quietly and listened. It was brave of them to reach out to others, but I didn’t need that in my life. I was simply at the rehab facility so I could relax and refocus before going into the movie business. I didn’t need all the sharing and mumbo jumbo. I knew myself and I knew how to move forward.
Drugs and alcohol had been fun, but I could give them up. Hell, I had even gone through some bad withdrawals when I arrived, so surely I wasn’t going to start back up with that stuff when I got home. I was pretty positive that I wasn’t going to have any trouble staying sober when I finally left the facility.
As the meeting ended, I snuck out the back and tried to make it back to my room before Jarrod saw me. I knew he was going to want to ask me how I liked the meeting and I didn’t want to have to lie to him. It was uncomfortable. The truth about the AA meeting was that everything in there made me uncomfortable.
I didn’t like the way everyone answered things in unison; it felt like some sort of cult. I didn’t like what I felt was over-sharing when people stood up and talked about their personal life. AA meetings seemed even more intimate than regular group sessions.
The only thing I could say that I liked about the AA meeting was that there was a lot less God and preaching in it than I had expected. The other observation I had was that the meetings seemed to be helpful to others.
“You look like you’ve had a good day,” Kaitlin said from the nurses’ station as she buzzed me back onto the unit.
“It was better than I expected.”
“A couple more days of this and you’ll be in a room with a door,” she said dramatically.
“I can’t wait.”
“Yeah, it’s always nice to have a little privacy. If you want some snacks, there’s fruit out there. Otherwise, nothing much going on this evening. I’ll just be over here trying to stay awake.”
“Yeah, why are you working so late tonight?” I asked as I tried to hold a normal conversation.
It was surprisingly hard for me to have a decent conversation while at Paradise Peak. I was out of my element, and everything I said seemed to sound ridiculously nerdy to me. There certainly wasn’t a way to act cool when you were in a rehab center. It was also hard for me to talk to people I didn’t know without alcohol in my system, that was something I had to get used to again.
“Susan’s brother died,” Kaitlin said. “Really sad. I guess it was sudden and unexpected.”
“That is sad. I’m sorry.”
“We all die eventually. Make sure you’re keeping in touch with your loved ones. Sooner or later, they will be gone. You don’t want to have any remorse about that.”
“Very true,” I said and quickly made my way back to my room.
Her words had hit me when I was vulnerable. I had just spent the entire day in and out of groups and therapy. My emotions were raw. I couldn’t help but think about what I would feel if I lost my brother or my father. We fought and were angry with each other, but I would be sad if they died. I would be crushed if I never had the opportunity to see them again. I wasn’t sure they would feel as bad if I died, but I knew in that moment that I was going to have to reach out to them, even if it was only for my own personal wellbeing.