Chapter Ten
Erik
I hadn’t prayed since the day before my mother had been taken from me. But in that moment, as I watched Cassidy say a prayer for the new girl who had basically died in her room that morning, I had to pray.
Something inside me said it would help. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t even know if I believed God was out there. But there was a drive deep inside of me that called me to do everything possible for this poor woman.
I didn’t know what it was like to be married. I didn’t know what it was like to be a parent. But I did know what it was like to regret. I prayed for Brianna and that if there was a God, He would keep her safe. I prayed that God would give her a chance to make things right and be the mother she knew she could be to her children.
My own mother had believed so powerfully in prayer that the moment made me feel closer to her. Even if I didn’t believe anything good would come out of that prayer, at least I had the joy of feeling close to my mother for the tiniest of minutes.
“All right, everyone, I know we are all worried about Brianna, but we need to keep going with our day. Cassidy, can you start handing out lunch, please?” Mr. March interrupted.
“Yep,” she replied with a fake smile plastered across her face.
It was hard to imagine that we were supposed to continue on with our day like nothing had happened. Something very bad had happened and I wasn’t really in the mood for sitting in boring group meetings while I talked about my plan for the future.
We were all oddly silent as lunch came around. Brad didn’t even bother to complain or ask what his meal was made of. Every one of us was thinking that what happened to Brianna could have easily happened to any of us. Hell, it had pretty much happened to me, although I only remembered the hospital and not the paramedics rescuing me.
“I don’t feel like groups today,” I said as Jarrod came around to gather us all up for afternoon group.
“You’re coming,” he said.
The firm expression on his face made it clear that I was attending group whether I liked it or not. Reluctantly, I went to afternoon group. He could strong arm me into attending, but he certainly couldn’t force me to participate.
Everyone from my unit was in group that day. I assumed that Jarrod had strong armed them like he had done to me. None of us looked like we wanted to be there, though. I know I kept thinking about the night I had fallen into the pool and how it could have been my last day. I imagined everyone else was thinking about the incidents that happened to them which could have been their last days.
“So, let’s talk about it,” Jarrod said. “We just saw a woman die and be brought back to life by a shock from a couple of paddles. What’s that feel like?”
He let the silence linger in the room as he waited for someone to answer. He waited, and waited; it was clear that Jarrod wasn’t going to move on until someone answered the question he posed to the group. He was a stubborn man and usually got his way with us. Eventually, someone always broke down and started to talk.
“It feels like shit,” I said to appease the silence.
“Why?”
For God’s sake, now I was going to have to keep talking. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. Nothing about the group session that day appealed to me. I had no urge to dredge up my emotions and I knew that thinking about Brianna’s incident was bound to stir something up inside of me.
“Because she had her whole life ahead of her,” I added.
“Has! She has her whole life ahead of her,” Kimber screamed at me. “She was alive when they left. She could make it.”
“I hope she does.”
“Okay, Kimber, you seem pretty emotional. Tell us how you are feeling,” Jarrod asked.
I was grateful for the attention being taken off of me. There wasn’t much that I felt I could add to the conversation. My brain was all twisted up with memories of my own past, and I could hardly keep myself together. I bet other people said that I had my whole life ahead of me and why would I have done what I did.
There was a lot of truth in the idea that I could see what was going on for other people better than myself. But really, I did have my whole life ahead of me. I was young, had money, a couple good friends, and if I could get a handle on the addiction I was realizing I had, I might even have a good life in my future.
“I’m pissed. Okay. Is that what you want to hear?” Kimber screamed. “She was a young, beautiful mother, and God is an asshole for doing this to her.”
“God did this to her?” Jarrod asked.
“She did it to herself,” I said almost under my breath.
“Don’t be an ass,” Kimber yelled toward me.
Kimber was pissed off. She was angry at Jarrod, at me, at God. I could see the hate spewing out through her eyes. There would be no talking any sense into her that day. It was the first time any of us had seen her get really emotional. Even though Kimber didn’t know the new girl at all, there was obviously a little of herself in Brianna and that scared her to death.
“I’m not trying to be an ass. We control our own actions. The night I got so drunk that I drowned myself in my swimming pool, I can’t blame that on God. He didn’t force feed me those drinks all night long.”
“Okay, let’s not get into the whole God thing,” Stan added. “The fact of the matter is that we all need to take responsibility for our actions. Not just what we do to ourselves, but what we do to the people around us.”
“Did you talk to your daughter?” Jarrod asked Stan.
“Yeah, we talked. She yelled, and I apologized. She yelled some more, and I told her I was sorry some more. When it was all said and done, she invited me to come visit her when I get out of here. She said she has a spare bedroom and that my grandkids are excited to see me.”
“That’s great, Stan,” Jarrod replied.
We were all just filling the time. Jarrod was a good therapist to try and get us to talk, but we really wanted to know how Brianna was doing. It was weird to me that I cared so much for someone who I didn’t even know. I really couldn’t remember a time when I had met someone and actually liked them at first, so feeling so bad for Brianna was a huge emotional step for me.
Group session dragged on for the whole hour as Jarrod tried to fill out time and take our minds off of what we had witnessed. As the hours of the day went by slower and slower, we still hadn’t heard an update about Brianna. My blood was boiling at the lack of information. Someone had to know what was going on with her. If she was alive, they just needed to tell us. If she was dead, they could do the common courtesy of telling us that, as well.
“Hey, guys, who wants to go swimming?” Melanie asked.
Everyone said yes. Not that we all actually wanted to go, but any sort of physical activity was likely to keep our minds occupied more than sitting in a group sharing our stories. I had waited for over a week to try out the hot tub; it was going to be fantastic.
I was nervous to go swimming. I couldn’t deny it, but I knew I had to just do it. If I started avoiding pools because of what happened to me, there would be no possibility that I would move on.
When we walked outside, Cassidy was sitting on the edge of the pool like she was about to get in. She had on a hideous, red, one-piece swimsuit that clashed with the red in her hair. I had to assume that the suit was standard issue at Paradise Peak because Melanie also wore the same one.
Although the style and color of the suit was clearly horrible, Cassidy wore it like a model. Her curves hugged the edges in all the right places. If I had to guess, I would say that the red suit was probably two sizes too small for her, but Cassidy had probably done that on purpose in an effort to try and look somewhat cute in the large piece of fabric.
“Everyone needs to read the rules and abide by them. If anyone is horsing around, they will not be allowed back in the pool area for a week,” Melanie called out.
We all diligently read the rules as we walked past and put our things on lounge chairs. I could tell a few of the other patients had been to the pool before as they walked straight over to a stack of towels and took one for when they got out. There were a few people who went right into the big pool without even touching the water to see how warm it was.
With the frigid air around us, I knew the pool had to be heated, but I still had a need to dip my toes in the water before I just jumped in. It reminded me so much of home and the new big mansion I had that looked over San Francisco. It had been a bit of a lavish purchase, but it was still my home and I couldn’t wait to get back to it. The only thing I really hated about my house was that it was empty. The entire place was extremely lonely when I was the only one there and there were no parties going on.
When I had purchased the home, it was for the sole purpose of throwing some kick ass parties. And boy oh boy, had there been some amazing parties. But now that I was getting clean and sober, I was making other plans for my future and I couldn’t help but think how impressed a potential girlfriend would be if I invited her over to my house. It made me smile at the thought of a nice, cute girl walking around and taking in all the views from my pool deck.
“You’re smiling,” I heard Cassidy say as she slid over next to me on the pool ledge. “I don’t think I’ve seen you smile much at all this last week.”
“I smile when you’re around.”
“I would call it more of a flirting smile, though. This smile seems to be more genuine.”
“Hey, my flirting smile is very genuine. I genuinely like to flirt.”
I chuckled at my own description of my flirting style. It was a bit awkward getting called out by Cassidy for flirting with her. But she wasn’t making me feel all that bad. It felt like we were having a normal conversation. Not a forced or awkward exchange, which was refreshingly nice to have.
Cassidy was a cool chick. That was what went through my head when I was near her. Of course, I also had much more indecent thoughts that ran through my head when she was near. Like I wondered how she would moan when I licked her delicious wetness. I wondered what her red hair would look like as she lay on my bed while I thrust inside of her. But most of all, I wondered what her pierced tongue would feel like when she licked up and down my erect shaft. The thoughts burst through my head before I had the chance to calm them, and before I knew it, my body was fully erect.
Quickly, I jumped into the pool to hide the evidence of my desire for Cassidy. I had started to feel a bit panicked as I thought about the pool and remembered the incident that had landed me in the hospital. I had to distract myself to keep from getting wrapped up in those memories. I reached up and gently pulled her into the water with me.
“Come in,” I said as I held onto her ankles.
“I was coming; you didn’t have to pull me,” she grumpily replied.
“You were coming?”
It was a childish play on words, but I couldn’t help myself. Cassidy laughed, but then turned away at the comment. She made her way toward the other end of the pool where there weren’t as many people.
I felt like a teenager who was at a resort with his friends. I could certainly see why the treatment facility had a heated swimming pool. Even though I had a pretty rough experience in my own pool, swimming generally brought about very good feelings for me.
“So, is this how you act with women outside of this place?” She turned to confront me when we were far enough away from everyone else.
“No. Outside of here, the women throw themselves at me so I don’t have to work as hard.”
She didn’t hide the surprised look on her face. But it was the truth. I didn’t have to chase them: they came to me. But that meant I didn’t get to pick the caliber of the women I slept with either. If they showed up for me, I banged them; there was no picking and choosing which ones I wanted. I had them all.
“Oh, wow, this is you working hard? It seems more like a teenager trying to show off for his high school crush.”
“Ouch. Are you always this mean to men? Or is this just for me?”
“I’m always this mean.” She laughed.
I got a quick glimpse of her tongue ring and it sent shivers through my body. I had to feel that damn thing on my shaft, and soon. Or at the very least, I wanted to slip my tongue into her mouth and feel the weight of the silver as it moved and touched me.
“When did you get the piercing?” I asked as I looked at her mouth.
“A couple of years ago. It was one of the worst nights of my life.”
“Then why did you keep it?”
“Because it reminds me of how far I’ve come.”
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t imagine you drinking like a wild woman. You seem so nice and so sweet.”
“It’s an illusion,” she said and playfully pushed me away from her. “I’m not this sweet outside of here.”
For the briefest of moments, her hands had been right on my chest. I saw a flash of something cross her face as she pulled her hands back into her own personal space. Instead of staying away from her, I moved back toward her. She wanted me near her; I felt it. I felt the desire she had building for me. There was no denying she was flirting with me, too. Her flirting wasn’t nearly as overt as mine was, but Cassidy was looking at me like she wanted to drag me into her bed and play with me all night long.
She was playing coy and I understood that. We probably shouldn’t have even been talking. But the more I talked with her, the more I felt like she was someone who I’d like to get to know.
Of course, I wanted to get to know her naked in my bed. But that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to talk to her. Cassidy was interesting and fun, and I really needed that kind of conversation at the moment.
“I don’t think it’s an illusion. I think you really are a nice girl and maybe the wild girl wasn’t you, but I still wish I would have known the wild version of Cassidy.” I laughed.
“No, you wouldn’t have wanted to know me back then. I was horrible. I was mean and bitchy and didn’t have a moral compass at all.”
“So, like I am right now?”
We both laughed and leaned against the side of the pool as we continued to talk. Cassidy looked over at Melanie, so I moved a little farther away, just to make things seem a little more professional between us.
“Yeah, you were a giant ass when you got here.”
“I didn’t want to be here at all.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Well, I want to have a career and I want to invest in this movie studio. So, I guess technically, I wanted to be here because I wanted those things. But it was my best friend Spencer who really wanted me here. I had almost drowned in my swimming pool and he rescued me. Thought I had a bit of a problem and didn’t want me to die, so I came here.”
“Do you have a problem?”
It seemed like a trick question that one of the therapists might ask me. But my answer to the question changed on a daily basis. I could see how Cassidy had viewed me when I said I didn’t have a problem before, and I was starting to see her point. I did have a problem; I just wasn’t fully ready to admit it yet.
“I didn’t think I had a problem. I thought I could control it. But I’m starting to see that maybe I couldn’t control it. So, yeah, I did have a problem, but I’m in control now.”
“Oh, that’s funny,” she scoffed.
“What?”
“A little over a week here and you’re totally in control? Sounds like a pile of shit to me.”
“Hey, I’m not out of control like Brianna. I’m honest about my use and I know I had a problem. But it’s all better now.”
“You really are dense if you think ten days at a treatment facility is going to fix all your emotional issues.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have emotional issues. I was just talking about my drug and alcohol use.”
Cassidy was annoyed with me. She had moved toward the middle of the pool and she stood straight up while she talked to me. It was clear we were no longer flirting with each other.
“So, you drank yourself into a pool and drowned, but you did it for the fun of it? You don’t have any emotional issues that you need to work through? You’re ridiculous.”
She didn’t give me a chance to answer her questions and instead stormed off to a lounge chair on the other side of the pool by Melanie. It was clear that our little flirting session was officially over.
No, I didn’t have mental issues. How dare she try and put that crap on me. I wasn’t crazy. I just liked to party and it got out of hand sometimes. Maybe she wasn’t use to people getting better as quickly as I was, but I didn’t have all that shit to deal with like other people did. I didn’t need the emotional lovey-dovey stuff that others needed. I had been alone for years and I liked it that way.
Actually, I had even been thinking about reaching out to my brother and my father to try to find some sort of peace with them, just because of what Stan had said in group. I didn’t like the tension in my family and wanted to just make one last effort to heal things between us. If my efforts didn’t work, that was fine, but at least I could say that I tried to mend our relationship.
So, how could Cassidy say I had emotional issues? She didn’t know me at all. She didn’t know I was humble and could reach out to my family. And she obviously didn’t know my family hadn’t even bothered to worry about me when I had been pulled out of a pool almost dead. She needed to keep her opinions to herself if she didn’t know what she was talking about.
I climbed out of the pool and wrapped the towel around me as I made my way back inside. One of the technicians from the locked unit helped me back onto my unit and I went straight to the telephones. Cassidy didn’t have a clue who I was. I would prove it by calling my brother right at that moment.
“Hello,” a man’s voice answered when I called Heath.
“Heath?”
“No, it’s Robert.”
My stomach churned as my Dad answered the phone. I wanted to talk to Heath; I wasn’t sure I was ready to actually talk to my father. Heath was always the one I talked to when I called back home. But I remembered that Heath got a new house and the number I had was for my Dad’s house.
“Hey, Dad, it’s Erik.”
“How you doin’?” he asked.
“I’m good. I’m at a treatment center in Aspen for a few weeks. I’ll be here through Christmas time.”
“That’s good.”
“Are you and Heath doing anything for Christmas?”
“Same as last year.”
Guilt flashed through me as I remembered how I had canceled coming home to visit them last year. Instead, I threw a party at my house and drank myself into passing out in my bed with two young ladies whose names I didn’t even know. It certainly hadn’t been the best Christmas ever.
“Okay, well, I just wanted to check in. Tell Heath I called,” I said in an effort to get off of the phone. The uncomfortable feeling I had was overwhelming and I felt like it was getting harder and harder to breath.
“What is the name of the place you are at again?”
“Paradise Peak. It’s in Aspen, Colorado. You guys could come visit if you wanted,” I added before I could stop myself.
“Well, how would we afford something like that? Are you just trying to rub it in that you have money and we don’t?” he asked angrily.
I could feel his blood pressure rising through the phone and I knew I needed to get off the call. Out of all the conversations my father and I had had over the last few years, this one was one of the best. I felt it driving off course, though, so I ended it.
“It’s okay, I’ll see you when I get out. I’ll talk to you later, Dad. Tell Heath I called,” I said and then quickly hung up.
My chest hurt horribly and I went back to my room and tried to take a few deep breaths. My vision blurred as I steadied myself against the wall and tried to calm myself down. It shouldn’t have to be so damn hard to talk to your own family. I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t say “I love you” when I talked to my own father.
“Are you all right?” Cassidy asked as she stood in the doorway with a towel wrapped around her. “I’m sorry if I was rude to you. That was more about me than it was you.”
My adrenaline was up. I felt my blood throbbing through my system and as I looked at Cassidy’s erect nipples, I had to touch them. I had to get some sort of relief from the tension that had built up in my body.
I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into my bathroom and around the corner so no one could see us. I felt energized as I held onto her. My mind focused on what I wanted and how I was going to get it.
“It wasn’t you. I’m an ass. I thought we had established this already,” I said as I leaned in close to her neck and smelled her delicious scent.
“I’m a recovering alcoholic; sometimes I get judgy of others. I shouldn’t have acted like that. I’m sorry,” she said as she licked her lips.
Fuck, her lips were so sweet and plump. My body was hard with desire, but I kept myself a few inches away from her. Instead, I gently let my lips fall to her neck as I kissed her softly from her clavicle up to her ear.
She liked it. I heard a soft moan and felt her body relax as she let me kiss her neck. I couldn’t stop myself. I needed a release. I needed something to take the edge off of the anxiety that rushed through my body after talking to my father. Cassidy was like a drug that I needed a hit of and she had just given me the tiniest of tastes. Enough that I already craved more.
My lips moved across to the other side of her neck and again I started at the clavicle and moved up toward her ear. She leaned back against the wall and pressed her chin up to allow me to navigate her delicate neck. I felt electrified as the release of tension in my body happened. She was exactly what I needed.
When I pulled away, I saw a dreamy look in her eyes and suddenly wished I had a damn room with a door on it. There wasn’t much we could do in this room, but at least I could feel her lips on mine.
My eyes focused on her lips and I moved toward them with the promise of a bigger release than her neck had given me. My aching need was building up and I had to find a release that would satisfy me. My hand moved to her nipple and I barely touched her before I was stopped.
“No,” Cassidy said as she pressed her hand against my chest and pushed me away from her. “I can’t.”
She quickly slid out of the bathroom and down the hall toward the nurses’ station. And just like, that she was gone and I was left in a state of absolute frustration. Not just sexual frustration, but a total body anxiety that I needed some way of releasing. There were no drugs around, no alcohol, nothing that I could reach for to give me the relief I desperately needed.